Typical Charges for WhiteHat SEO Link Campaign

Could someone tell me what is the typical price for a - white hat - SEO link campaign - not onpage optimisation, just a link campaign?

I have a small website design company offering affordable websites to small businesses in the Bury St Edmunds area, Suffolk and Norfolk, UK. I include - to the best of my ability - onpage SEO but do not offer a link building service. I have managed to get some clients to the top of Google for local searches using just onpage SEO, but am aware that other websites will need link building campaigns to do well in Google.

For example - and this is just an example - a recent enquiry is for a Management Consultant website - there are about 552,000 websites in Google Uk and 15,200,000 in Google World with "management consultant" in them and the top websites seems to have pr3-5. What would be the price of a link campaign to get them onto p1 of Google?

Note that I am NOT asking for any firm prices, just for a general idea of costs. All I want is to be able to give prospective clients an idea as to what type of costs they would be into if they wanted a link campaign. Remember that clients come to us in the first place because they want affordable website design - therefore they would be unlikely to choose the big expensive SEO firms.

Many thanks for any input people can give.

 

The price of link building varies and can fall in the region of $1 to $15, depending on the quality of links you are getting. Companies could be selling directory/forum/article submission links for as low as $1 (50p approx). But then the quality is low and hence not very effective to get a website to the top for competitive terms.

Getting relevant links on way links from decent PR web pages (not websites) is the best approach. Also the links should be coming from unique IPs to get maximum benefit. Such links could be priced in between $8-$12. Contextual links could cost a bit more, and the price could also vary depending on the placement of links on the the link page.

I would write an article on this topic if I wanted to right now.

I never got to go to Bury St. Edmund when I was in the UK. I am fascinated with the name.

 

Many thanks for your reply Nancy. You said

Does buying links come into the black hat SEO realm?? I've never done that as I've heard that it can get you banned - I don't know if that's correct?

 

Google's idea behind link building is that the links have to be organic - meaning earned without any solicitation. Say you write a quality piece of article and people like it and link to it in their articles/newsletter/blog posts etc. Links such as these are organic and you did not ask for them. But that hardly is the case.

Most companies (if they know what they are doing) would try and build links at a natural pace to ensure that your link profile does not look spammy. This is to avoid detection. You would not be actually buying them but paying for their services. They in turn get those links for your website.

There is another way of doing it but is a bit risky. There are networks where you can trade links for money directly. Links are good but if the network gets busted there is a possibility you get penalized for getting links from them.

Link building firms (most of them) don't get links via these networks. They approach webmasters directly to get them and hence safer.

 

Many thanks for your comments Nancy. That is helpful.

Does anyone have any idea of the typical cost of a white hat link building campagin to get a website to - say pr 3 or 4?

 

I guess what I'm really after is a ball park figure for white hat SEO link building costs to get a website to pr2, pr3, pr4 etc? I'd really like to be able to give clients some idea as to the costs involved if their competition is say pr3 or pr4. Any feedback would be appreciated.