I'm searching for SEO help and have received 5 quotes, and they are all across the board in terms of price. The range is literally $2000 -$50000. I have ostensibly asked for the same service from each site.... needless to say the price differential has discouraged me quite a bit. The question that begs to be asked is "what is SEO pricing based on?" I'm assuming it's a consulting model and people can basically charge whatever they want. Is this correct? Should I be avoiding specific services or price ranges? Thanks
Wow, maybe you should of came to me instead Depends really when I do my pricing, for one-time SEO services I charge hourly or by a flate rate; for reports I only have flat rates. When i do monthly service or consultation I have a solid flat rate. All those quoters will do is buy you text links and\or directory submissions or use link farms; i've seen it time and time again.
If you avoid anything, avoid high prices. A lot of SEO tips you can learn right here at DP enabling you to do the job yourself if you have time. There are a number of well reagrded SEO people as members, ssandecki is one of them and offers a good, low cost SEO appraisal for an intial view of what might need doing onsite.
As Brian said, you can learn almost everything you need to know about SEO right here at DP. Of course practicing those tactics and making them work for you will take longer. When it comes to hiring an SEO company I would be sure to do my research. Ask for references and follow up with those references. Heck, even research those references! I think you hit the nail right on the head when you said people can charge what they want. They charge what they feel their time and skills are worth. Buying SEO services is not like buying a PC - where the more you spend the better it's going to probably be. You could spend 20k on SEO services and get worse results and work then if you spent 10k. It's like finding a web design company - go with someone who has a solid portfolio and solid references.
It's very easy... Ask those who quoted to show you RESULTS of clients they promoted....how can you tell if what they show you is good or bad??? Well...depending on the competition level for each keyword, it would be relativly easy, hard or very hard to get you anywhere in the SERP's If they can promote a certain keyword or keyword combination that has a high competition level then they know what they are doing... Do you know what competition level your keywords has? Do you know if they are the right keywords you need to promote? Are you sure you are talking to the right people? What is the page rank of those who quoted you? Can they promote themseles? Too many questions?...maybe, but if you do not take the time now to get them answerd ...it might cost you. PM me with their info, I will let you know if you are talking to the right people... In case you are wondering....I know what i'm talking about.
Nope..SEO can't charge whatever they want.. they should tell clients, on what's the basis of their payment.. there are things need to consider.. Like, 1.) What you or your company can do to your client's site 2.) What is your target ranking.. like if you reach this ranking, then the payment will be like this.. page 2, payment will be like this, page 3 payment will be like this.. and so on and so on.. 3.) It depends on how professional an seo company is..
hi, basically seo services are based on the the length of the work and overall projects profile. It means that if the site is new than they would charge you more but if the project already have some PR or in Google rankings it would cost you cheap...
Onpage design modifications, backlink cleanup, monthly maintenance of paid links, etc. Much of it is initially time, then maintenance of links. What services did you specifically request or were told you need? Maybe with more info, a SEO Pro like ssandecki or other member here can help you out.
There are many factors in pricing the bids: 1) Keywords Competition 2) Time length ( Month or Hourly ) 3) Process amount IMO, You need to have Hourly SEO Contract, it will be cheaper as well as satisfying from services provider, as you already know in SEO, Natural listings takes time to improve, So better to choose yearly one. Just dont go with hourly project charge it will be costly for you, and you need to maintain each and every second for the person which you have hired for seo services.
SEO charges are varies according to clients requirement, i have found that different clients having different requirement. 1) some clients want tanking for particular keywords ( here charges will be based on keyword competition) 2) some clients interested to increase the traffic for their websites ( here charges will be based on time or traffic) 3) some clients want to increase sell on website ( here charges may be based on sell or time) Now, company will charge as per their standard and previous result. If they are having sound portfolio and best SEO team than charges will be high with compare to small SEO company or SEO freelancer.
That sounds about right. Different freelancers, consultants and firms have thier own expenses (bills to pay), and will thus charge accordingly. Some will even be able to recognize the value of their services to their clients and will charge based on that instead of a flat fee, but I'll get to that in a bit. As I said earlier, a lot of factors. Most of them tend to be around expenses (insurance, rent/mortgage, salary/wages, taxes, utilities, petty cash, and of course PROFIT), though some will recognize the value that their services can bring to a client's bottom line. For example, if you were to come to me for SEO work (I do offer it, but on the side - I'm primarily a Web developer) and I saw that your Web site was currently bringing in $250/day in sales but realized that if I were to get my hands on it I could literally bring in $15,000 a day in sales after 30-60 days (I may be a developer, but I'm also a usability engineer and information architect, plus accessibility consultant and part-time amateur copywriter), you can bet your bottom line that I'd be stupid to charge you $2,500 for the job, especially if it meant overhauling the Web site over the course of a week. Afterall, a good SEO consultant will be working with you and your company to improve its bottom line - they'll literally become a member of your team of experts, rather than some unknown who takes your money, buys some directory links as ssandecki said, and then uses the rest to send the 30 kids they don't really have off to college. And the better someone is, the more they will charge for their services, especailly if they can prove that they deliver results and know what they're really doing. So, at the end of the day, the question you should be asking is what value will your consultant be bringing to you? Ask questions, such as "why does that feature cost $XXX and what can it do for me? How will that feature improve my rankings, convert the traffic I get into sales, and make me more money? If they can't answer those kinds of questions, or start looking at you the way deer stare into headlights, thank them for their time, tell them that you can't work with them, and move on.
Companies has sound portfolio through it's employees only, and the one who dare to do free lancing having excellent knowledge, If some one gets good services as you provide through the same person in company or that person do individual.
SEO pricing based on factors mentioned by other users. I have just started doing SEO and first I did it for my own website -- And I am fully satisfied with what I have done. Quotes you got from SEO service providers are really terrible . You should go and search more.
I asked the similar question before, but go no good information. You all say depends on keyword/competition/model etc.. but whats the price ? suppose want to rank for "ipod" keyword, then how you decide the price? Also how is time calculated for freelancing/seo works ? When does the hour stats and ends ? I have seen that seomoz charges $1k/hour for seo work (not consultation)
If you want to rank well for "ipod" itself, you better have a truckload of money, because a lot of that (if you were to hire me anyway) would be spent on Web copywriters and marketing/promotion (and I don't mean buying directory links or spots in a link farm either - I'm talking actual marketing here). However, if you want to use it in combination with other words that will make up a search term (such as "spare ipod parts" or "ipod nano cases") then it starts to get easier. It really depends on the amount of effort required to get a page optimized for such a search term to rank well in the search engines. And once you understand that most pages rank well DESPITE their optimization efforts rather than because of them, and if your SEO consultant knows how to properly build a Web site, write page content for your visitors while also ensuring that the targeted keywords are used properly and appropriately, and knows how to promote the site online (your site may be the best thing sinced slice bread, but if you don't have a sound marketing strategy, nobody's ever going to find out about it) - or knows someone (or a group of people) who does, then that money is going to be wasted (par for the course with many SEO firms and their clients).
Most of the SEO companies will provide your the prices according the competition on your targeted keywords / phrases. Its all about keywords rankings and good web traffic (web popularity) & according to that - Inquiries and Sales - That's basically what a website owner wants from a SEO Services Company.
I have read all the thread replies. People who have replied are runnig around the words which Im going to tell. Mostly you should focus on what you are doing. If you are going earn revenue on the website you run. Most probably is related to selling "products" or based on a niche that has high paying keyword rate on cpa networks. This brings you to a market share of millions of competitors on the basis of your keyword. The more competitors in the market of your keyword the more work will be done for optimization. Not just writing articles and submitting them to some dirictories or just building some back links for improving your ranking on the search engines. What the consultants face up with is hard and long work. Not only 1-2 day's sometimes takes 1-2 month to totally monetize the website. For instance what I do, what other also do is not just monetizing the website but also checking each other competitors website with their traffic and the reference's of competitor's website. Which consumes lot's of time. Coming to the end of what I tried to explain is that. The consultance who are going to do you work would expect decent money on what they are going to do.
get some references from the person that is making you an offer. any hack can say they can optimize for engines but you have to see proof. If one guy is bidding $2000 and another is bidding $50000 the $50000 person has to be able to show the benefits they provide that justify the large expense. if they can't... they're just bidding for the moon.