Charging for SEO Services

How do you make your fees?

[superpower]

I'm not a professional SEO guy but I'm very well-optimized on several of my sites and people consider me pretty knowledgable about SEO.

I've had a few people ask if I would do SEO for them on a consulting basis. However, I have no idea what to charge or how to charge since all my SEO experience has been for myself.

Do I charge by each keyword optimized? Do I charge a one-time fee or recurrent to maintain the ranking? Obviously there are factors such as how competitive the keywords are.

For example, I have a client inquiring about 10 keywords he wants me to optimize for. These are somewhat obscure terms which are not being targeted very well so I think it will be fairly easy to get them to #1.

I was thinking about charging him $50 per keyword phrase +$20 per month if the term is in the #1 position. That would include building a new page for each phrase (using his current template and his contributed content)

1. What do you think?
2. How do you charge for your services? (Hourly, per keyword phrase, etc.)
3. Do you have a guarantee on ranking?

[DannySmith]

It sounds to me like your knowledge of SEO is such that you could probably make much more money by setting up your own sites than distracting yourself with other peoples. If I had your knowledge I'd be using to feather my own nest. :-)