I am planning to give SEO services for a few companies, usually small to mid-size. Could any of you give me some pointers as regards to fees applied, on what basis, etc, so that I can prepare a tariff for them? Is there any reporting software to measure performance that you can recommend? thanks, sg.
I'd suggest ordering the Search Engine Marketing Kit from SitePoint. Don't worry about the kits being sold out at the moment - more are being printed. In fact, if you order now, you'll be able to get another kit for free (and free shipping to boot). Since you're going to be offering SEO and SEM services, you might want to get the Web Design Business Kit (which has a LOT of information on how to run a successful marketing business despite the title) as the free kit. If I knew of other SEM kits that you could order (that were any good), I'd gladly recommend them to you.
Dan, do you know anything about how such services are priced? Have always done it for free, for friends, etc. so I have no idea. Any pointer, tip will be much appreciated. Cheers, sg.
Not really. I'm a Web developer, not an SEO consultant (though I have been looking into branching out into that line of work altely). Basically what I do though is charge an hourly rate for those things I can tangibly measure (such as maintenance, setup and hosting fees) and then charge based on value for the rest (for example, if I charge $60/hour for 20 hours of work knowing that the client's site is going to rake in $10,000 a week 52 weeks a year in sales revenue, I'd be stupid to charge only $1,200 for the job.) I'd expect that SEO consultations would work much the same way (such as charging an hourly rate for keyword research, and then charging for value on a monthly contract).
I was using Web design as an analogy here. Running both types of businesses would likely be similar - you have to know what to charge depending on the value of the project if you're going to be successful. To take my Web design contract analogy and convert it to an SEM analogy, if I was hired to improve the rankings of a Web site over the course of twelve months, and I was charging $60/hour for the same 20 hours of work each month ($1,200/month), yet I knew my client was bringing in over $15,000 in sales a week as a direct result of my optimization and search marketing efforts (let's say he was bringing in only $1,500 a week before I got started), I'd be stupid for charging so little. Knowing what kind of conversions can be possible based on the amount of traffic that gets directed will directly influence how much you charge, and believe it nor not, both kits I mentioned do an excellent job of that.
First thing you need to do is find out exactly how long it takes you to do everything. How much keyword research can you do in an hour? How many submissions (any type) can you do in an hour. Once you know this information, pricing becomes a lot easier. I had to do the exact same thing for my company, only, I have to factor in half a dozen staff, their workrates etc. Based on that I came up with packages. Based on my costs, it gave me how much I should charge (which is way too low, but we're just starting out). Cheers, Peter