Seo what do people charge for

[ineedadollar]

I run a website, and get loads of emails offering to do seo saying "we can do it for £199 per month" etc
but i want to know what i get for the money. Ie and why it needs to be done monthly

 

[BenWells]

People work in different ways. Some people charge by how many hours work they do. Some people will create a 6 month plan tie you to a contract and state what they are going to do every month for this much money every month.

We work with a lot of small businesses who do not need a great deal of work doing so we will run an audit on the website point out what needs improving and charge them for the work. We would then go on to offer adwords to further increase the traffic to the website.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Answering your title question - Seo's charge for knowledge. Next time ask your doctor or lawyer same question, and you'll get pure answer.

 

[gau061]

SEO Charges are really complex issue to discuss. They are many factors you need to considers before you start any SEO project.

What should I charge? - Well, I believe it's really depends how much traffic you can delivered to clients. Also, you need to consider what is the value of client's one sale. Value of one sale can be $100 to $100000. Also, you need to consider which business type(small, medium or big) you are targeting. Can they afford or not?

But, I believe best way is to consider your cost and profit margin. When you see scope of any project, you can imaging and calculate your time and afford to deliver X number of traffic and then you can add your profit on top of it.

 

[Clodbuster]

Answering your title question - Seo's charge for knowledge. Next time ask your doctor or lawyer same question, and you'll get pure answer.

Ah but a doctor/lawyer has to have and be able produce registration and qualifications - SEO "experts" do not.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

I know because I have one of above qualifications.

But even with that, I still think it is easier to became doctor or lawyer than SEO specialist. Just because studying medicine or law all you need to do is learn, learn and one more time learn prepared and ready pieces of knowledge.

But for SEO, you need to figure out and think what can work what does not. You need to use your imagination, if you have one.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

 

[Ian J]

I still think it is easier to became doctor or lawyer than SEO specialist. Just because studying medicine or law all you need to do is learn, learn and one more time learn prepared and ready pieces of knowledge.

Blimey. I think I've heard just about everything now

 

[Clodbuster]

Come back to planet earth sunshine.

 

[Alan]

I run a website, and get loads of emails offering to do seo saying "we can do it for £199 per month" etc
but i want to know what i get for the money. Ie and why it needs to be done monthly

The emails you get making these offers, treat the same as you do from Mr Okawa who has just found $1,000,000,000 of unclaimed funds and needs you bank account.

Any SEO worth their salt are not spamming emails to get business. If you think you need SEO, go out and find one, through referrals or recommendation, and never expect to get something for cheap. SEO's aren't in the pay league of Doctors or Lawyers, but I wouldn't trust a cheap SEO like I wouldn't trust a cheap Doctor or Lawyer.

 

[ukbf0001]

I run a website, and get loads of emails offering to do seo saying "we can do it for £199 per month" etc
but i want to know what i get for the money. Ie and why it needs to be done monthly

That is a bit like asking a mechanic what he'll do to your car when you dont know what is wrong with it. Let me try and explain the 4 bits you need to have in place :-

1. Keyword Research - you MUST have done this - you need to know exactly what people are typing into Google each month and you need to know how well the pages that rank are optimised.

Example - I sell "candles" - Keyword Research will tell me that there are 1250 people searching on "buy scented candles" each month and that there are 400 competing pages - BUT also that those webpages have not been well optimised. This is great - high search volume, low competition. You may find oter keywords that are even better.

I use Rank Tracker for this

2. You write content based on the keywords you have targetted - making sure your webpage is well optimised (but not too optimised), you really need software to help save you time with this as well as compare your website against your competition.

I use Website Auditor it gives you very detailed analysis of your site plus other details , This is called onsite SEO.

3. You need to find out exactly where the competition get their links from (Google wont tell you). SEO SPyglass uses it's own link database with somewhere around (I think) 5 billion links. It will also tell you whether these places are no follow links, dodgy looking links, or are links that give great value and weight - eg a link from the BBC.

I use spyglass to do this - I couldnt do any off site link work without it.

All those pages have videos on that explain it much better than me.

4. Use Social Media and monitor it I use a tool called BuzzBundle that monitors 'everything everywhere' and when anyone in any forum including youtube etc mentions me - it alerts me - and lets me respond using multiple built in social profiles - so I can be me, or any number of other people.

I hope that explains roughly what an SEO does and also why it can be very expensive as it can be very time consuming - the results can take months depending on how busy your 'niche' is.

I'm not touting for work , I do my own SEO for my own products I sell online so that takes up nearly all of my time. I offer advice to people selling online - but it is paid for work. I typed the above just so you now hopefully have idea of the work involved.

 

[stevebrownlie]

SEO's aren't in the pay league of Doctors or Lawyers

http://www.bma.org.uk/support-at-work/pay-fees-allowances/pay-scales/juniors-pay-england

Junior doctors only just earn more than junior/trainee SEOs at the big sausage factory agencies.

In all seriousness though, the market chooses. If you offer terrible SEO work, nobody ever refers you clients, and you can only sell your agency work for £299/month you'll be rewarded much less than a doctor. If you can take nationally competing sites from a terrible position in the rankings to near dominance in a year or two, you'll be in pretty high demand and rewarded much more handsomely by your clients such that only the top consultants earn more.

 

[Clodbuster]

Years ago I was suckered into a monthly retainer to do SEO. After 5 months I could not see what had been done and no improvement. He had access to my admin but I know he only went on twice. I was assured I could be supplied with graphs showing improvements and websites with links back to me. None arrived so I cut my losses and got help from members of the forum.

I chalked it up on to the wall of experience.

 

[Ian J]

Years ago I was suckered into a monthly retainer to do SEO. After 5 months I could not see what had been done and no improvement. He had access to my admin but I know he only went on twice. I was assured I could be supplied with graphs showing improvements and websites with links back to me. None arrived so I cut my losses and got help from members of the forum.

I chalked it up on to the wall of experience.

Not sure what that has to do with "What do SEO's charge for" as we have already had countless threads on the many other aspects of SEO most of which are just repeating what was said in previous threads

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Years ago I was suckered into a monthly retainer to do SEO. After 5 months I could not see what had been done and no improvement. He had access to my admin but I know he only went on twice. I was assured I could be supplied with graphs showing improvements and websites with links back to me. None arrived so I cut my losses and got help from members of the forum.

I chalked it up on to the wall of experience.

You can cry your tears here sunshine:

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/skeptical-about-seo-why.357687/

 

[Clodbuster]

You can cry your tears here sunshine:

Can you read - I did say years ago - before I joined this forum. Besides I'm a big boy, no need to cry.

However it does highlight that there are reputable and disreputable SEO operatives. Just my penny's worth

 

[StevePoster]

In SEO they charge for their experience, knowledge, credibility, and effectiveness as a professional.

 

[Catherine333]

I think there are three main areas in SEO:
On-site optimisation - including keyword research and understanding, amending tags and content, reviewing alt tags, site speed, etc.
Content marketing - creating keyword friendly blog posts.
Off-site - link building - finding and building credible, quality links to your site.
If your business operates locally, e.g. a restaurant good SEO marketers will also push your local ranking.

You should be aware that SEO is a long game if it's to be done properly - any company that promises they can get you to position 1 in a month on Google is lying...

It’s important to distinguish a difference between PPC (instant results - your ad can be at the top of Google in under a week) and SEO (a long game made up of the factors above and many more as shown on the website searchengineland . com - article: Local Search Ranking Factors 2015, just search it on Google).

I find my clients sometimes have unrealistic expectations from SEO results thinking it is the same as PPC. SEO for me is a two-pronged attack. Doing the technical stuff to get your site climbing rankings but also improving user-experience/lead generation. It's no use to be the top of Google if your site doesn't convert. Usability also feeds into your ranking. Google want users to click and a result and not click back as the result is what they are looking for. An SEO marketers job is to make sure your web page shows for that search term and properly fulfils their search desire.

Hope this helps

 

[neils3]

I've recently launched a site just over a month ago, which is starting to rank in Google, here's what I've spent my time on:

Research

• Keyword Research - finding out what terms people search for in Google that are relevant to the site and then assessing the competition
• Competitor Research - what are similar sites doing well, what can I improve and what opportunities are there to stand out. Also, review of their website architecture
• Content Research - what are people searching for? What articles perform well for competitors. What questions do the target audience have?
• Website Architecture - using the keyword and competitor research, we define a structure for the website which helps users find the information they want quickly and also optimised for SEO

Setup

• Setup Google analytics and webmaster
• Setup Social media pages with banner/icon designs
• Setup for Google Local

Content

• Define Website Copy
• Define 6 Month Blog Plan along with SEO plan for each article
• Start Writing Content

Social

• Competitor social research
• Define social media strategy including what platforms, frequency, type of content
• Not started yet

SEO

• Optimise website for keywords defined earlier (aka On Page SEO)
• Site performance test and optimisation
• Link building plan and categorising types of links
• Not started link building yet

Might be missing a thing or two but that's roughly what we've been up to.

I don't see SEO as a stand alone marketing tactic, and think a good SEO strategy combines it closely with Content, Social and Influencer marketing.

 

[ineedadollar]

thanks bluenun, catherine and neil those are the type of answers i was after.
alot of the time you get the answer of knowlege or will help you rank higher but no one really says we will spend 5 hours doing this and this which is the annoying part

 

[ineedadollar]

Answering your title question - Seo's charge for knowledge. Next time ask your doctor or lawyer same question, and you'll get pure answer.

like most seo specialist you haven't answered the question properly
if i paid a doc for an hour of his time then he would spend it diagnosing the problem and giving medicine yes they need there knowledge to do so. but by paying a seo specialist i wanted to know what they are going to spend there time doing.
i.e will spend 5 hours doing keyword research or link building.
but what will be getting done the following month

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

doc - seo specialist

Guess what - Im both

 

[Digital Resellers]

Good question but I want to ask you a question, if you did pay someone for SEO what would you want to get out of it?

 

[Tedwood92]

I find with these types of businesses they would need to be transparent with how much their hourly rate is and what will get done. If they charge £50 an hour then £200 isn't going to do much as you'll only get 4 hours out of them. Also run a mile if they 'guarantee' results, no-one in the industry can do that.

 

[boring-friday]

I find with these types of businesses they would need to be transparent with how much their hourly rate is and what will get done. If they charge £50 an hour then £200 isn't going to do much as you'll only get 4 hours out of them. Also run a mile if they 'guarantee' results, no-one in the industry can do that.

Maybe not with 100% certainty but with 99% they can if they're any good.

They can definitely guarantee to refund if they don't meet their guarantee though

 

[Hospitality_king]

Also run a mile if they 'guarantee' results, no-one in the industry can do that.

I run a mile from all seo agencies period. Used em before and didn't break even on what we shelled out - apart from the self proclaimed genius firms, they all apply the same spam techniques and spam aint cool.

 

[Emu]

Its real snake oil stuff and it really isnt for everyone, some people dont need a website and dont need SEO doing. I do always wonder when I see SEO experts selling SEO as a service why they dont just get their own sites to rank and run a passive profit model from a system they create rather than working a job or creating a job for themselves with an hourly rate/retainer/having to deal with people but I am an anti social creature

 

[zigojacko]

I run a website, and get loads of emails offering to do seo saying "we can do it for £199 per month" etc
but i want to know what i get for the money. Ie and why it needs to be done monthly

On another note, and back to your original question, £199 per month will get you very little from any decent SEO company/freelancer that is aiming to make a real difference.

If this was for an organic search programme then it already instantly screams of automated junk that won't help you (cue article directories, social bookmarking, search engine submission 90's waffle).

Decent optimisation for search when carried out and conducted correctly takes a lot of research, time with a carefully thought out strategy designed to deliver sensible targets that can be achieved within your online marketing budget.

What your site might need to perform could be anything, we wouldn't know, but usually, a comprehensive programme should be covering onsite basics, technical elements, structure, architecture, permalinks and URL handling/rewriting, content, linkage (internal/external), imagery, content marketing, building relationships/outreach, developing brand exposure, earning inbound links, link profile maintenance, sales funnel enhancements, conversion improvements/paths - that's without even going into analytics, URL tagging/tracking, goals, filters, Google Search Console, rank tracking, reporting etc etc.

When done right, this just isn't deliverable for fees like £199 per month.

 

[zigojacko]

they all apply the same spam techniques and spam aint cool.

Not true, lots don't, but many do and what people would find most interesting, is almost all the large/well known agencies do this (basically buy their way to the top and when the algorithm catches up with them, they re-brand and start again).

 

[Alan]

why they dont just get their own sites to rank and run a passive profit model from a system they create rather than working a job or creating a job for themselves with an hourly rate/retainer/having to deal with people

Exactly, I'm an averagely good SEO and I would never sell my services to make someone else better off.

 

[ldjames]

Ah but a doctor/lawyer has to have and be able produce registration and qualifications - SEO "experts" do not.

Not to mention spelling.

 

[Hospitality_king]

I see SEO experts selling SEO as a service why they dont just get their own sites to rank and run a passive profit model from a system they create rather than working a job or creating a job for themselves with an hourly rate/retainer/having to deal with people

Agree totally.. But now you'll get the 'We prefer to deal with clients, as its what we do"

Self employed is the same, whether you run a consultancy, or an agency or a freelancer, they still take a hefty commission whatever the outcome for their clients.

Ahhh, the smell of commission for effort - as opposed to the commission for results model.

 

[Usman Ahmed]

You can't really expect to get results by paying £199 / month.

As with most things in life, you generally get what you pay for.

Look at SEO from a real life perspective.

Your a business, you build relationships with other businesses (which takes time) which bears fruit in this case links back to your business site which results in you moving up the search engine rankings.

Building relationships with other businesses takes time and a lot of effort.

With that in mind if you're not doing that yourself then you are going to have to pay a reputable guy to build those relationships for you which will cost you good money.

However if done right that money invested will be nothing in comparison to what you get back... great relationships and you being at the top of the SERPS.

To end it if you aren't going to be doing this yourself, then find an individual with a proven track record of solid results and hire him/her to do it for you

 

[ldjames]

You can't really expect to get results by paying £199 / month.

As with most things in life, you generally get what you pay for.

Look at SEO from a real life perspective.

Your a business, you build relationships with other businesses (which takes time) which bears fruit in this case links back to your business site which results in you moving up the search engine rankings.

Building relationships with other businesses takes time and a lot of effort.

With that in mind if you're not doing that yourself then you are going to have to pay a reputable guy to build those relationships for you which will cost you good money.

However if done right that money invested will be nothing in comparison to what you get back... great relationships and you being at the top of the SERPS.

To end it if you aren't going to be doing this yourself, then find an individual with a proven track record of solid results and hire him/her to do it for you

Rubbish. We (coincidentally) pay £198 per month and get exactly the results we want. It's absolutely possible if you a) do a certain amount yourself, b) see through the sales pitches to the fact SEO is not complicated.

 

[Hospitality_king]

Your a business, you build relationships with other businesses (which takes time) which bears fruit in this case links back to your business

But you'll never get enough links this way to have an effect on the serps. Since everyone else has the same idea and plan, these sole traders with their amazing sites (which I doubt exists) will end up so peeved off with the onslaught of little webmasters/optimization firms hassling them, they'll tell you where to go.

Also, every trader who agrees to this will have a links page so full of junk links very quickly, it cannot possibly be targeted, so of no use/value to anyone apart from link builders looking to rip off contact info and sends a signal to spam those sites for more link exchanges.

 

[stevebrownlie]

Its real snake oil stuff and it really isnt for everyone, some people dont need a website and dont need SEO doing. I do always wonder when I see SEO experts selling SEO as a service why they dont just get their own sites to rank and run a passive profit model from a system they create rather than working a job or creating a job for themselves with an hourly rate/retainer/having to deal with people but I am an anti social creature

It's a combination of two things. Firstly, I love the variety of working on a dozen different client campaigns and helping people achieve their objectives.

The second one took more self-awareness as I have tried to get passionate about 'something else' and build a site up. The truth is when someone hires us they have already often done a decade of hard work on a business they are passionate about. They've made a good business. Helping them double that over 5 years is easy for me/us if the scope to grow is there (ie they're in any kind of sector other than a tiny niche with not much scope to grow). Coming up with something I'm passionate about and going down into the trenches for that initial 10 years and building a great little business, with great suppliers, great staff and so on in some random niche that I think should be super profitable isn't something I've been able to do. That initial bit is the hard bit for me, so I guess most people who work at agencies might be similar to me - good at seeing how to use digital to grow an already great business, not so great at coming up with an idea for a great little business in the first place.

When I did have a business that I was passionate about that wasn't an agency I did, naturally, do all my own SEO, PPC and advertising and it went well but hey all the leads in the world didn't matter when I couldn't place many of them [I was a mortgage brokerage and started it cunningly just 18 months before the credit crunch...]... so that was that and I started taking clients, and the rest is history.

Maybe a better analogy is that it's like asking why the ad agency that does Coca Cola doesn't launch their own beverage brand... it always seems like a good idea but if you don't have the knowledge and passion for the niche you're wanting to make money out of you'll always lose out to you guys who are already in those niches, with great businesses and the knowledge and passion to win. They have ALL of that and they can just go hire a great SEO agency. All you have is being great at SEO... that's not enough to inspire and excite customers in some random niche all by itself.

I do know a few SEOs, however, who don't work with clients at all and just build random niche sites and have a whole team of people writing/linkbuilding and so on for them so it can be done if that's what you enjoy.

 

[Ian J]

Look at SEO from a real life perspective.

Your a business, you build relationships with other businesses (which takes time) which bears fruit in this case links back to your business site which results in you moving up the search engine rankings.

Building relationships with other businesses takes time and a lot of effort.

It isn't always as simple as that. I run a blog on my niche subject which is widely read within the industry yet no-one will link to it as they are scared of losing valuable link juice and/or promoting my site above their own

 

[stevebrownlie]

It isn't always as simple as that. I run a blog on my niche subject which is widely read within the industry yet no-one will link to it as they are scared of losing valuable link juice and/or promoting my site above their own

Getting links from direct competitors is tough. But there are probably lots of places that are tangentially related. Take your factoring stuff, for example, small business sites, business growth/advice sites, maybe even technology sites (assuming there are some interesting new factoring start ups and other things you might choose to write about...). Then there are accountants, book keepers etc all of whom can be pretty desperate for some good content for their blog and not always entirely clued up on what they're actually giving you in terms of value that you can talk to about getting links.

I have worked and do work with clients in niches like gambling and 'men's enhancement drugs' [legal providers ofc...] and since getting links for them from places like doctor's offices and medical blogs, heck even relationship advice and parenting sites, wasn't the hardest thing I've ever done in my life I don't believe in impossible niches anymore, although I'm sure I'll find one eventually!

 

[Hospitality_king]

yet no-one will link to it as they are scared of losing valuable link juice and/or promoting my site above their own

Linking out to a site won't harm the 'linking' site. If I link to you, that's a recommendation. But there must be a decent result from this activity, but now you hhave some great, established sites, but worthless sole trader sites trying to gain access, and the trouble can start.

There can be a few reasons for Non-linking - it can be about ego, which means you'll never get a link back as one site views themselves as superior eg: more content, more links etc.

The want for links is usually about visitor power though -- and that goes for any site type, a site doesn't have to be a direct linking match to refuse link swaps, and many sites view free link giveaways as insulting and won't allow entry, so now you know the truth. Ofcourse the optimisation firms wont like this, but who cares about them, they don't own your website - you do!

We used to really do a load of link swaps in the old days, which felt good , but after a while you find out the results aren't a match up, and so whats the point in being at a disadvantage.

We removed over 100 links during the past year, and it felt great.

 

[Stefler]

Those are scammy. I got a bunch of those when I had a website too. If you're not seeking their services, you probably don't want them.

 

[JamesMason67]

To get back to the £199 a month subject, depending on what you wanted to rank for you can do a lot of good with that if you are trying to rank for most local phrases outwith the 5 biggest cities.

That will get you 4 to 5 hours per month of a decent seo time.

4 or 5 hours will make a good dent on your onpage on the first month which will have a very positive effect on your rankings within lighter competition.

4 or 5 hours outreach link building per month for 3 months or a wee nudge form the SEO's PBN and your on your way.

Its all relative to what you are trying to rank for. £199 is plenty budget for eg "Bricklayer Edinburgh" but you'd be f*rting against thunder with that budget trying to rank "Plumbers London".