SEO Fees and Terms

[Fortune Hunter]

I have been asked by a company to quote on a SEO project, which at first was something I wasn't really inclined to do for a variety of reasons, but have re-considered and will bid on the project. However this decision has spawned a few questions I was hoping someone that has done this would comment on.

In looking at my own SEO efforts I have discovered two key things. First, constant tweaking is required to boost visibility. This doesn't necessarily take a ton of time every day, but the effort is constant and ongoing rather than one big dramatic effort. Second, I have discovered that it has take a considerable amount of time to see these improvements. Over the course of the last 6 months I have moved up, but only by a few percentage points.

Now having said all that I have a few questions...

1. Should my contract be a retainer type arrangement since it will require many months to make improvements?

2. What should my promises be regarding results? It is very easy to claim that they will have x top ten listings etc, but anyone that has done this knows this is not something within our control as SEO consultants. I am comfortable telling someone that they will improve and as a result get more traffic, but not by how much or in a fixed period of time. Am I out of sync with other company solutions if I do this?

3. What types of fees are considered fair in this type of contract?

Any thoughts from others would be very helpful.

Fortune Hunter

[rocknbil]

F.H. I a not an SEO guy (still learning!) but one thing I DO know is that if you need to do something over time to do the job efficiently and the client expects a wham-bam-deal-done performance, it's going to come back and bite you. So yes, you're in for a relationship, put it in your agreement.

The reason I know this is many clients come to me and complain they paid someone $2K to do SEO for them and the're "still not mumber one." In almost all cases, it was something that happened over a short period of time and there was no ongoing work done. I don't know why I bothered, but I saved the original SEO people face by explaining exactly this. :-)

[anallawalla]

This topic comes up often. Here is an old post [webmasterworld.com] where we discussed your second point.

As for fees, there is no easy answer. Just don't guarantee anything except that you will work hard. Safest approach is to charge for time and materials (if any).

[jdancing]

I am glad I only need to SEO my own sites. To SEO other's sites when you are at the whim of google is nothing but a recipe for unhappy customers.

[Fortune Hunter]

Some good thoughts here and I read the old post that was conducted which also was pretty good. My thinking on how to tackle this is tempered a bit by the consultant Alan Weiss. He is famous for his "value based" pricing model, which means he doesn't charge by the hour or for materials for services, but rather a fee based on actual results and the value of those results to the client.

Having said that I was thinking of coming up with some fee based on "value" and simply tell the client I will be using different methodologies over the next 6 months or year and that my promised results will be an improvment for some or all of the key words that we are trying to optimize.

What I won't promise is exactly what place they will appear in the search engines or how many words will be in the top results. I am pretty confident that if I just do the simple stuff we probably all know about I can take a dismal site (in terms of SEO) and improve it.

Any thoughts on this?

Fortune Hunter

[PaulHudson]

I have been avoiding SEO like the plague, but it seems unavoidable anymore. Especially in the last year my clients have been wanting to know about visitors, how many, how to get more, how it works. So I have started to offer a few (realistic) clients that I have a good working relationship with SEO.

Here is the deal, I promise ‘nothing, it is not an exact science but look what I have done for other people I will try to do the same for you over time’. I estimate how long I will need to spend messing about and updating each month and charge £35 per hour + VAT then other cost such as new host and domains, etc. I suppose I could charge more… I don’t know. Maybe someone else can advise on that one. Ok, your going to say it depends how good you are! ;-)

[pbradish]

bumping this.

I have a meeting tomorrow in regards to being an SEO consultant for another company whom I do business with.

I've always done my own SEO and have quite a bit of knowledge but have not consulted for another company before and certainly have never charged for the process.

I'm just curious, how much have you all asked for during your first project? Does anyone take a comission on leads that your SEO 'optimization' has generated?

Just looking for a few different pricing structures/models.

Thanks.

[KeithCash]

Good post.
Yes. Customers are starting to request this more and more.

Some just want a price

[Fortune Hunter]

As the SEO market heats up I don't think any of us will be able to avoid this space. I had a prospect call me a couple of years ago and say he wanted to hire a webmaster. He gave me his site address and I checked it before we met. I can safely say that calling it HORRIBLE would be an insult to the word horrible! The site was one of the worst sites I have ever seen anywhere.

When we met the first (and only) thing he wanted to know was how to push his site up the search engines and get more traffic. I politely, but firmly, told him that in good conscience I could not do this for him unless we first built a new site, which I knew would improve the rankings just by building it right.

I put this here to illustrate the point that SEO is really where everyone's mind seems to be these days even when the first thing they should even be worried about is just getting a decent site.

Fortune Hunter