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What would you charge for this?

by 1fisherman
8 replies
I have a local business that wants me to take over his website and improve his search engine rankings. He has 24 different services that he offers and covers a fairly large metro area and two cities of 100k about an hour away.

His site has poor on-site optimization and the content tries to cover the entire metro area plus the two smaller cities one each service page by inserting various city names in random spots.

My plan is to convert the site to wordpress. Clean up the content and provide a page for each service for the main city and the two smaller cities. So a total of 72 pages. Once those pages are established I would add city/service pages in the metro area and get them ranked.

I thought to charge him $3000 setup and $1000/month. While it is more than I have ever charged anyone, I am thinking that it isn't enough.

What would you charge?

Thanks,
Gregg
#charge
  • Profile picture of the author James English
    Are you writing the 72 pages of content from scratch? Or utilizing content he has already written?
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    • Profile picture of the author TSDMike
      The going rate for SEO content with my company is one billable hour per page, which is basically 4-500 words give or take. The fact that it's actually 24 pages of content repurposed for 2 more sites skews that a little... I would probably invoice an hour for each of the first 24 pages, then probably 6/10ths of an hour for the remaining 48.
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      Web Marketing, SEO & Wordpress Site Development in Grand Rapids, MI
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    • Profile picture of the author 1fisherman
      Originally Posted by James English View Post

      Are you writing the 72 pages of content from scratch? Or utilizing content he has already written?
      I will be using the content he already has, just clean it up and focus on one city.
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    • Profile picture of the author khansaccounts
      Dear James,

      Please suggest rate to if he utilize same content and if he doesn't use the same content for both condition please.
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      Regards,
      Mukhtiar Ali Khan Internet Marketer

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  • Profile picture of the author vndnbrgj
    I would setup 3 different websites.
    He could just have the one website that covers all of the cities, but I would have the main one that includes every city he services. Then, have an additional site for each of the smaller cities. If you know what you are doing, you can dominate more spots with two sites on the smaller cities. The large site targets the large city. Each smaller site targets the smaller cities.
    Now, you said he provides 24 different services... the 80/20 rule should apply here. Find out his highest profit products/services and start with those. Then, continue to add additional products/services every month. I wouldn't have all 24 on each of the smaller sites. I might say we provide x,x,x,x,x,x,x,etc.
    How much to charge? That is all dependent on the services/products provided, how much work is required and what the competition is. It also depends on if I own the sites and they are leased, or I am doing the work on the client's sites. The client's sites cost more.
    It would probably be a minimum of $4,000 upfront.
    Then it would be $1,000 minimum for the main site, and $500 each for the smaller sites, all on a monthly basis. So, a total of $2,000 monthly. I double that for setup. ($4,000) My setup covers the setup plus the first month. Please understand that these are rough numbers, and would be contingent on what I outlined above. However, you were looking for numbers, so here is an idea.
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    • Profile picture of the author 1fisherman
      Originally Posted by vndnbrgj View Post

      I would setup 3 different websites.
      He could just have the one website that covers all of the cities, but I would have the main one that includes every city he services. Then, have an additional site for each of the smaller cities. If you know what you are doing, you can dominate more spots with two sites on the smaller cities. The large site targets the large city. Each smaller site targets the smaller cities.
      Now, you said he provides 24 different services... the 80/20 rule should apply here. Find out his highest profit products/services and start with those. Then, continue to add additional products/services every month. I wouldn't have all 24 on each of the smaller sites. I might say we provide x,x,x,x,x,x,x,etc.
      How much to charge? That is all dependent on the services/products provided, how much work is required and what the competition is. It also depends on if I own the sites and they are leased, or I am doing the work on the client's sites. The client's sites cost more.
      It would probably be a minimum of $4,000 upfront.
      Then it would be $1,000 minimum for the main site, and $500 each for the smaller sites, all on a monthly basis. So, a total of $2,000 monthly. I double that for setup. ($4,000) My setup covers the setup plus the first month. Please understand that these are rough numbers, and would be contingent on what I outlined above. However, you were looking for numbers, so here is an idea.
      Thanks. I had originally suggested 3 separate sites in our initial meeting. But, doing a little research into similar situations the general thought was to go with one big site as opposed to one big and two smaller sites.

      I will rethink it some more.

      Thanks again,
      Gregg
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  • Profile picture of the author wsands
    Even though you are talking about using his current content and just cleaning it up and optimizing it. That's really just about as time consuming as writing the content. You're going to read each page, clean it up, add keywords, make sure it makes sense etc...

    As mentioned by vndnbrgj, I would definitely outline a 4 month plan to get all that done for him starting with the highest priority keywords. This way you will be more likely to charge what the work is worth because you aren't negotiating a larger up front you are negotiating a 4 month payout and completion of a huge project.
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    Hi, I'm wsands and I approve this message.

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  • Profile picture of the author LiveChatSoftware
    The prices you say seem reasonable. However, the bottom line is:

    1) How much time will it take you to do what you want to do..
    2) How much "per hour" are you looking to charge, Or willing to work that hard for..

    Add the values up and theres your price.
    Id certainly ensure you dont do yourself out of money. You dont want to find yourself working 12 hour days, just to get the work done and then getting paid peanuts for it!

    Only do what YOU think its worth. Nothing less! Or you will find yourself in a bad place.
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