What Do You Include in SEO type Proposal?

First off, they aren't a client if they are simply asking for a proposal, they are a client when they pay!

I think it's too late for you to change your positioning with this business, but in the future you should never be sending proposals with a list of tasks that you will be completing. If you do that, you're not landing a client, you're getting yourself a job and allowing them to micromanage you.

I think you're probably better off just in this case, just sending them the overly technical proposal. In the future, you want to position yourself differently to where they won't even ask for a proposal and instead ask you how much it would cost and the different options available.

I had a client that was a nightmare, he wanted to know how many backlinks were being built, how many bookmarks, and a bunch of other crap. I told him however many we do. He was dumbfounded by that answer and then I explained that everything he knows about SEO is based on other companies or other people and if he was happy with his knowledge of SEO he would either be doing it himself or he would continue using those other companies. I told him if he wants results, then choose us, if you want to keep track of how many social bookmarks and profile backlinks someone spams out on your behalf, you can use somebody else.

Not every person is a right fit for your service... but you have to position yourself so you can have better chances of getting the right fit for your services. Some people like to propose tasks that they will do (bad way to do it), others will discuss keywords they will target and others will focus on revenue or conversions along with an SEO proposal.

Sounds to me like you need to polish up on your marketing and lead generation skills.

After all that's in place... you better be able to deliver!

Meta tag issues?

Writing SEO proposals is a bit of an art form and really should be combined with a prior phone call to find what the client wants. I think I learnt that from Frank Kern... find out what they want and give it to em.

You don't want to be too high level so as to confuse them.

And you don't want to be too general to make them think 'what am I paying for?'

A lot of my own SEO involves on-site auditing, content creation, outreach, but also some of the more blackhat stuff like PNBs and link buying, so it's important to make the client have an appreciation of the business risk without overwhelming them.

Yes this truly does require some getting used to!

A few courses worth watching:

- Offline Optimizer by Brenden Clarget
- SEM blueprint by steve clayton
- Ryan Shaw - Offline Consultancy
- Proposal Marketing Formula

Also google:
filetype:.doc intitle:seo proposal
filetype:.pdf intitle: seo proposal (or contract)

And above all, get calling prospects.

Doing proposals is time consuming, so use a tool like toggl.com to track how long it takes you to do each proposal and try to get the amount of time to do a proposal to about 30 mins on average depending on how important the prospect is to you.

Focus your proposal on end results you will provide for your client. The report you provide after the fact will include more detailed results as to what you've done such as which sites you have obtained a link on.