Yesterday I sent at least 80 emails out to local web design companies and such. I sent them out after business hours and this morning I am starting to get replies asking about rates and what not but I don't know what to say. I am good at SEO, certainly not the best, but pretty good. The best thing I have done so far was having top 10 listings in MSN, Yahoo, and Google for the search term "text message". The site was sold and not long after they site was down and never returned so the listings also went away. I don't know lots of 'tricks' or secret techniques, I really just do the basics like links, unique content, article submissions, paid bloggings, press releases, social bookmarking sites like digg and stumbleupon(im very good at this actually ), directory submissions, and a few other grey hat type things. Question is, what do I charge? Should I offer to take the first job for free to prove myself? I know price depends on keywords too, I already stated in the emails I sent that I'm not good enough to go after terms like: reality, loans, casino, porn, mortgage, etc. And input on some ballpark figures to charge would be very helpful. Thanks in advance
I don't have any pricing, i work to the clients budget. If they have $500 i'll give them SEO that's worth every penny and invest it where it counts most to provide maximum gains. I tell them the amount they invest is directly proportional to the results they receive, there's way too many variables in SEO to lump people in to a fixed price package. If they spend $100 they will see results to reflect that.
i would be interested in this info too. what would you pay for an SEO audit of your site? $25 - $45 - $64 - $250 ? how high do you go if you charge by the hour i would say our services should be worth $40 - $50 per hour at least. advanced SEO is not something you can just learn in a few weeks. it takes months and months of research to develop techniques which will give you the edge. @ LY2 have you checked what other SEO consultants charge?
Hourly charge should be around $50 / if you can achieve good results. Do not be afraid to turn people away though as many words are unachievable without (way too) many hours of work. Your clients will be disappointed and your name could be tarnished. Since SEO/SEM is an ongoing process, perhaps the best way to charge would be like a VA. They pay $200/week and get 5 hours of work from you which includes all the boring stuff like stats checking, reporting, keyword research and also some the stuff that matters like link baiting, article writing, submissions, etc. Remember SEO is a long term investment. If your customers want / need more of you than what you can do in 5 hours set your hourly fee ($50/h) thereafter. By doing this you will establish residual income and will keep yourself out having to deal with too many clients which will water down your efforts. By doing this, you can also benchmark your efforts and show results to them over a period of time so they are comfortable with your work & keep paying you.
yep very informative thank you LY2 how did you approach the companies initially? ie what did you put in the email ? do you have a website setup first?
Great question, care to share? PM is fine if you don't want to pass candy out to everyone. I have personally found that a great way to reach brick and mortar businesses is by direct mail using postcards. I know it is much more expensive than email but "business men" are comfortable and used to traditional forms of advertising. I've never done it with strict SEO intentions but as a developer ...
No, I sent emails to local web design companies and also replied to craigslist postings. In the email, I gave screen shots of my example sites stats and then a big list of keywords and what number they were ranked on the search engine. Example of my format: And so on. I have had the best response from the local web dev companies I sent emails to. I just searched for stuff like "south florida web design" and then sent the first 30 or so listings my canned email Then I would search for like "naples web design" and repeat the steps above. Good luck =P
I would say $20 / hour just to see how it's going. Don't overprice in the beginning. Once you have a few examples of what you've done, you will be able to charge much more than this.
I don't really like the per hour thing because of the fact I usually hire people to do the grunt work, so I'm really looking to get deposits and lump sums.