I want to know which pricing models the high level SEO companies are using? Pay Per Result? Pay Per Performance? Pay Per Hour? Pay Per Month (a fixed amount) ... goes on I would like to learn which pricing model these medium and high level SEO companies are using and why they are using those models. Thanks.
I am just a small company with about 10 clients. I charge a fixed monthly rate and get a year contract with them. The rate depends on the industry and how competitive the keywords are....
If you value your time, you charge by the hour. Reduced hourly rates for blocks of time can help with cash flow. In other words, if you charge $60/hr then a 40 hour contract might go for $15-1600.
Pay by results is another way, if it's a big client you can charge on increases in organic searches on his top converting keywords. But normally a fixed fees. One should never pay SEO by the hour, people have a tendency to slackoff that way. Other ways could be profit-share on conversions, or trade for stake in the business if they got no money but business has potential. As SEO is an ongoing process. Or you can tell clients what you will do, and charge them by items. Or a retainer fee, say $200 to $500 for a small client to start off, and you deduct from that as you do work for them. Competition and niche value is also important. For example, I have clients whose niche value place their visitors at equalivant of $3+ per visitor, and I have a website where each visitor has a value of a mere $0.018 (yes, less than 2 cents) for the best converting keyword! So rate will be adjusted accordingly, based on ability to pay.
I would suggest pay for a month. We all know that in SEO, results can be seen after a few days or even a month so Pay per Month is the best way for me.
you can split the amount for different services like XX $ per links and XX$ for per on page optimization etc and also offer combo packs for non tech savvy clients
I've noticed it's quite a few larger SEO firms charge a fixed price for a project and then a monthly retainer after. However this is not feasible for a lot of other firms as we don't have the # of clients or the demand to ask for a monthly retainer.
My company used to charge a fixed price initially which covered the first six months, from there it went to a monthly maintenance plan. It really depends on the services that you are providing and how much money and resources you are utilizing up front.