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SEO Pricing?

by mobility
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I met with my chiropractor yesterday, and casually mentioned to him that I didn't see him in Local Search. One thing led to another, and I ended up talking to him for over 30 minutes about online marketing. He wants to hire me for SEO services, and management of a small PPC campaign. I'm very familiar with quoting pricing for PPC management. However, I'm not familiar with quoting prices for SEO services. Here are my 3 questions about SEO pricing.

1. How do you quote pricing for SEO services? The keyword he wants to rank for has 5,400 searches per month on Google, with 2.5 million competing pages (middle-of-the-road, not very difficult, but not super-easy, either).

2. How long are SEO contracts? Don't SEO companies typically offer 6-month or 12-month contracts? I intend to give him a monthly report with the # of backlinks built, and current ranking.

3. Once ranking is achieved, the client needs to continue building backlinks or else ranking will be lost. What is a typical monthly maintenance fee (for ongoing link building)?
#pricing #seo #seo pricing consulting
  • Profile picture of the author GabeKillian
    Hi there,

    Just some things to consider. I am sure he probably has a price in mind first and foremost. Secondly, just as a chiropractor is a "specialty service" so is SEO and web promotion. I would try to see what he can "budget" for and work from there. He may go a lot higher than you expected, and if he goes too low, you could ask for more, but money is money and you can always work the amount he pays you.

    Thirdly, if you are considering making SEO a full time business, you may want to consider asking a slightly lower price in exchange for testimonials and references. I am sure he knows other people in the medical field... and probably other business owners that uses his service.

    I usually price my clients based on what they can afford, the amount of competition and I base the amount of time spent on those factors. Make him happy... and he WILL give you more business. Simply put, an insurance agent should pay much more than a comic book store... you know

    Hope this helps ya out.

    - G
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    • Profile picture of the author mobility
      Hi Gabe. Thanks for the feedback. The chiropractor knows absolutely nothing about online marketing, so I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a price in mind. In all likelihood, we will probably end up trading services. $X amount of SEO/marketing work in exchange for $X amount of chiropractic services.

      Could you give me some idea of pricing, please? What do you normally charge per month? A range of prices is fine. I just need some type of benchmark/guide. Also, what do you charge the client for ongoing link building AFTER ranking is achieved?
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      • Profile picture of the author Emailrevealer
        You can easily charge 1000 a month.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tempe SEO Solutions
        Banned
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        • Profile picture of the author mobility
          Thanks everyone for your feedback. David, nebuer, and emailrevealer - your answers were especially helpful.

          I think $1,000 per month for 5 months would be an absolute steal, considering his industry and the keyword he wants to rank for (it's a national keyword -- he gets patients from other states). I am concerned that I might be underpricing my services, but as Gabe mentioned, it could be worthwhile to do so for the testimonial and referral benefits. I will be talking to some SEO folks offline to see what they advise. Thanks again everyone.
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  • Profile picture of the author nebuer
    Agreed. Don't go below $1000 per month on this. I'm not sure of what you would charge as a start-up fee.
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  • Profile picture of the author yaji
    I have the same question. I talked to several biz before - the difficult part is, SEO is NOT a garantteed thing and you'll keep maintaining the SEO ranking... It's hard for them to see the results immediately. I think $1000 a month may be a little bit too high unless you can generate much more online biz for him - And how he knows some customers are actually referred by your SEO efforts like blogs?
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    • Profile picture of the author theGypsy
      Well, I know peeps some of the larger companies and based my monthly stuff on that. I was charging $600 but have since dropped to $450 per month because I wanted to keep up with the Jonses... Anyway, that's based on Xhrs/Month... Sort out what your companies running rate is and create packages of hrs for a monthly package.

      We also do a variety of reports including;

      Site Audits
      KW/Phrase research and targeting
      Competitive analysis
      On-page/Onsite reports
      Content generation/maintenance plans
      Link profile analysis and recommendations
      Link building programs
      Social Media Marketing programs

      These are often for companies with in-house SEOs or in-house writers and staffers for implementing the recommendations

      That help any?
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  • Profile picture of the author Fender85
    I recently started doing some contract SEO work myself, so I thought I'd share a cool source I found on SEOmoz when I was trying to ballpark what I should charge for my services . . . SEOmoz | SEO Pricing & Costs - What Should You Charge / How Much Should You Pay?
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    Internet Marketer Mindset - Demystifying SEO, PPC, and Social Media
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  • Profile picture of the author johnsamuels
    you can get a rough idea by looking at the adwords bids on the selected keywords, then the average monthly organic search traffic that could be expected for each site on the first page.

    put all those numbers together and there you have a ballpark figure of what the keywords would cost if they wanted to maintain position through adwords, but at the higher traffic rate of SEO.
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