I run a small web design agency offering "affordable" websites to small businesses who mainly target the local market. I optimise sites and advise clients as to SEO and content as standard. Usually, these local sites can get to the top/close to the top of Google just by optimising content and coding; but if their competitors have got some links (eg a pr1 maybe even a pr2) they would likely be below this site without links of their own. I do give clients a free advice sheet on how to build up links should they so choose. That's fine for some, but I'm finding with a few clients, however, that they are just not computer-literate and they are struggling to even add their website to directories, let alone do anything more complex. I have been wondering whether I should - as a service to these selected clients - offer a small, optional SEO linkbuilding campaign (some directories, sb, squidoo, articles, hubs etc) to tip the balance (note as a web designer rather than a SEO I would be honest and not tackle the competitive sites - I am honest up front about SEO and links). I have a few questions: 1 What type of fees would be reasonable to charge to beat a pr1 site or a pr2 site? Do you charge by the position EACH keyword achieves? Eg £x if keyword 1 gets postion 1, £x if keyword 3 gets position 2? Or do you charge for a campaign as a whole? Do you charge up front or just on results? (I was thinking - initially at least - only to charge on results.) 2 Would it look suspicious to Google if a site had no links for the first 4-7 months and then started getting some? (As most sites seem to get a "new website penalty" to begin with, I probably would not suggest my starting this SEO campaign until the site had aged (eg 4-7 months) enough to see where it will end up without links (if clients want to build their own free links during this time that is fine). As said above, some sites can get to the top without links and I do not want to charge unnecessarily.) 3 If I use the same article accounts/social bookmarking accounts etc that I have used to promote my own site, will their website - and mine - get a penalty as the links all come from the same accounts? (The sites are all hosted on the same 1/2 servers with the Google Analytics for all sites under my control.) Many thanks to anyone who can answer some or all questions.
1. If you try to beat some sites do not look at their pr... there are PR1 websites that you will beat harder than PR6 so you need to analyze them to see how much time you need to beat them... just PR means nothing. 2. if website have no links in first few months and then begins to get many links it will be suspicious so begin with easy building... not mass stuff... that will not hurt your rankings if you do mass linking but will maybe have no value 3. you can use the same article accounts and that will not hurt your rankings or lead to penalties
1 What type of fees would be reasonable to charge to beat a pr1 site or a pr2 site? PR doesn't really mean anything, atleast not anymore. there was time when higher PR meant higher ranking but this whole PR thing has been abused so much that pretty much any average joe can get his site a high PR by buying whole bunch of high PR links. google knows that so they dont count the PR much when it comes to getting a site ranked. when it comes to beating your competition, you look at their onpage optimization and backlinks mainly and develop a custom plan to outrank the competition. each situation will be different in this case 2 Would it look suspicious to Google if a site had no links for the first 4-7 months and then started getting some? no it wont. a site can be dormant for a while and start promoting itself so nothing to worry 3 If I use the same article accounts/social bookmarking accounts etc that I have used to promote my own site, will their website - and mine - get a penalty as the links all come from the same accounts? no it will not. it is great that you are pushing SEO to generate additional revenue. i have few clients in this web design industry who attach an SEO quote with their regular design quote and end up selling a small starter SEO package for almost all their new site designs. if you need any help in this area, feel free to shoot me a PM