SEO & SEM Consultancy Work

First-Timer needs help

[3Mice]

Hi Everyone,
I work in the travel industry. I'm the webmaster of our company website and after working with them for a year, I've managed to optimise the site which now brings on average 400 unique visitors a day and about 80 enquiries/day

I also taught myself about search engine marketing and applied what i learnt to our website with impressive results.

Now, 3 companies want to hire me on a freelance basis to create website for them and offer SEO & SEM services

My thinking was to draw up a contract for the webdesign part and after the sites are finished draw another contract to offer SEM & SEO services to run over a period of say 6 months

My reasoning is that it will take a considerable amount of time to tweak and monitor the sites to bring in good traffic which takes a considerable amount of time thats why I want to have two separate contracts.

I want anyone with experience in offering consultancy work especially in SEO & SEM to please advise me if my method is the best and if not what approach I should use.

Regards,
3Mice

[stuntdubl]

You are on a very sound line of thinking 3mice. While there are definitely some areas of web design and seo that overlap, they are certainly distinct functions that have different time and skill requirements.

SEO tends to have a lot of "hurry up and wait" work, where it is nice to view results before moving further. This constant monitoriing and adjusting requires a different pay structure in order to appease both parties.

You may consider doing the contracts "a la cart" as it adds a comfort level for the customer. Make them feel at ease, and remember they will most likely want to make minor changes to content and design as well after the initial "design phase" is completed. Some type of maintenence contract is a good idea to incorporate both ongoine elements of seo and any other changes that they may need.

These posts may assist you a bit:
Format of an SEO Schedule [webmasterworld.com]
Format of an SEO Proposal [webmasterworld.com]

[3Mice]

Thanks man for the urls.
Will definately use the info as a guideline
3mice