How much do you charge for SEO service for local business?

Hi

Check out post #16 as we went over a basic approach in it.

All the best


Bronwyn and Keith

Cold calling works great for me. Remember, you need to have the mindset of not SELLING but rather finding businesses who already have a basic understanding of what Local SEO can do for them. These businesses require almost no convincing, simply you calling up and asking them if they want to get more customers. It really is that simple

Up 'til recently the most I charged was around $100/mo due to the customers I've targeted, one-man-bands, electrician, plasterers, landscapers etc, who can't seem to justify spending any more than this.

I'm starting to target businesses with a small staff now though and landed my first $600/mo client on Friday just gone. That was a great day! It's so satisfying to know that money is coming in regularly instead of starting from scratch with each customer. Just a few more customers like this will really make a difference to me.

This company installs high-end home entertainment/sound systems for $15k-$50k, with a profit of $8k+ per project. They have a staff of 4, 2 of whom have been twiddling their thumbs for the past 2-3 weeks due to only getting one new project a week, instead of 1 a week which they'd like.

It's a crazy situation really. One of the guys had been tinkering with the layout of the website for 6 months or so (on the side of his main position) and none of the pages are even indexed! They have a great little business in terms of what they can offer - end-to-end service, decades of experience - just no-one to do a proper job marketing for them (til I came along!). If I can do a good job he's prepared to drop $6k-$7k on a new site too!

I'm convinced there are plenty more small businesses around just like these guys, crying out for us to contact them but for some reason they don't go looking for it. Initially the owner was a bit frosty on the phone because, as I've found talking to many local business owners, they are inundated with people calling up trying to shove seo down their throats instead of trying to get to know them and actually caring about their business. This is in the UK by the way, do you find a similar situation in the US? To paraphrase his words, he said "...but there's a hundred and one guys offering your type of services (ouch!), how do I know you'll be different?".

Anyone just getting started serving local business owners should definitely push the local angle and offer to meet up for a chat, it's such a powerful advantage. I've been able to close 100% of deals to date from a meeting. Just taking an interest in their business is what they want.

I spent 4-5 hours doing a load of research the night before the meeting, printing reports and what-not to show this business owner, and he barely looked at one sheet (not that I was bothered, I just wanted to be prepared). He just wanted to tell me his story, hear that I knew what I was talking about, and get started. The meeting lasted about 30 minutes and I got to meet a couple of his staff, and it was 20 minutes in he said the magic words..."so how much is this going to cost?". Man, I felt like leaning back in the chair, closing my eyes and just savouring the moment!

I see all sorts of figures on here for what people are charging and it seems to come down to two things, being able to position yourself and your services well and targeting the right customers who can afford to pay the rates you want to charge. Pretty straight-forward when you look at it like that but not quite so easy in practice. The business is definitely there for the taking though for anyone committed enough to putting themselves out there.