I was wondering how much an "SEO Expert" would charge to take a site that's less than a year old and move one search phrase up into the top 5 (or at least the first page) on google. According to Google Adwords Keyword tool the keyword has low competition and rougly 110,000 monthly searches if that matters. also, Do people just take some money up front and some after the task is complete or would anyone be interested in something like X up front and X% of sales for 6 months after or something like that. Any information would be most helpful.
Unfortunately, for the REALLY small businesses that are just starting out and don't have a significant budget to work with, SEO can be an expensive investment. You may not be able to invest thousands of dollars a month in SEO. Fortunately, there are plenty of self-help SEO tutorials out there, as well as consultants that can answer your questions on an hour by hour basis. Your options may be limited, but you still have them. It's just a matter of finding out how best to invest what you have, so you can get some return and grow your online business benefits. Whether a company/SEO expert offers an upfront fee or pay after the completion of the task could depend on their standard pricing options or by the agreement made between. So I would recommend you go for a better option where you will feel your work and investment is safe. I could help you give a better idea on how to start up this process. PM here for more details.
110.000 searches dont mean much if you do not tell in which niche... Sometimes 110.000 can be easy (like recipes niche) and sometimes hard (lawyers)... In that case, I suggest to my clients to start with long tail keywords related to major one, keyword which can make some results/traffic in a period of 6 months. But whatever it is, dont expect that you will pay less than $15.000 if you want someone who really does SEO and not just cheap mass linkbuilders who will offer monthly packages with thousands of submissions, comments, etc...
Thanks for the advice. I'll shoot you a PM and see what I can come up with. Currently I'm working on link building by finding blogs and forums to post on related to my site. Also doing a few other things. I just know I'm missing a ton of things I could do. Also I know that I can't put in 10 hours per day to submit 300 articles and comment on 100 blogs or whatever to speed up the process a lot.
For such a small business, to hire an SEO expert would be quite too much for expenses. It would have been much better if you do it your self first and just rely on some tutorial just as a start. When you start gain your revenue that would be enough to hire for SEO, then you may hire an expert to further increase you income.
And do you think is smart to do that in that high numbers or to pay someone to do that ? what do you think will happen in 2 years when google realizes that you have 10.000 of backlinks and 9500 from article websites and blog comments ? Of course, do that if you dont care about long future and your business is not something you plan to do for long time.
I was exaggerating a bit but this is why I'm looking for SEO help. I have read from some people that 100+ new links per day is a good thing, others have said its a bad thing. I just don't know. AHHHH. lol I'm looking for long term success in this, not a quick hit of traffic or something.
Such Numbers normally attracts and tend webmasters to incline towards them in spite of countless suggestions,recommendations, affirmations and stats saying its all about the Quality not Quantity
If you are looking for long term success than try to find links which will be permanent. Of course, nothing last forever but some kind of links will last very long and some of them will for sure be deleted. IF you also want fast success you can mix that with some links that will not last long you can also do that but you will need to replace them regularly (maintenance costs)... If your website is new one, then dont rush with links... 30-40 links per month in first few months is pretty ok and after that you can increase that number by time... It also depends on what type of links you build... You can submit 1000 articles immediatelly and google will not punish you as that is regular method but if you do all the same things in mass numbers that will for sure means you are paying for that and you will have troubles maybe, maybe not punished but links will be devalued (waste of time). Here are some tips and what kind of links you can chase for (talking about what I do for my clients): 1. Blog posts By posting your articles on others blogs you will get permanent links. People will rarelly check their blogs for old posts to delete them. Maybe they will remove links or so but great percantage of that links will last long and even get strength if on quality blogs. 2. Article Submission This links will also be permanent but you need to care about some thing. First, dont waste time for submission in thousands of directories as there are not more than 30-40 quality directories online. Another thing is that you should submit different articles and not single one to all the directories. Either write different articles or pay for good quality Spin Ready articles, spin them and submit. If your website is bigger, article submission is good for some deep linking. My personal opinion is that 2-5 spin ready articles submitted in 20-30 places is what is enough, no point to go for more as 50 articles in one directory = site wide links from same domain = not much value. p.s. many will offer thousands of submissions for cheap price but just to know, of 1000 of submission you will gat max 50 indexed by google. Not indexed = does not exist! Quality written Spin Ready articles will cost you $10-$15 per article of 500 words (500 words to assure that you will have enough words for all the directories) 3. blog comments Can be very useful if in your niche and not done massively. Find them by yourself or hire someone but just to know, 99% of people who do that have lists resold 1000 times so your links will be placed on REAL link farms. 4. directory submission It is ok but if you do not have a good list then it is waste of time. When I was trying to find directory submitter for my team I opened job on one freelance website and put requirement "visible by yahoo siteexplorer"... Chose one guy who made 500 submissions and many approved but yahoo sees just 4-5 of the directories. 5. niche links with PR this can be good for faster success but you need to know that not more than 10% will left after 6 months or a year (depending for what you paid) and 95% of people will say "I guarantee replacement if deleted in 12 months" but will not tell you that after 12 months all of them will be deleted. Also, if 90% of people will follow your requirement like "not more than 30 outbound links" but after a month or so you will realize that on 100 of that pages there are 150+ outbound links or so... so, they are good if you plan to replace them from time to time... for example, you can find good PR2 links of this kind for like $15 per link... It all depends... if you want 100 of that kind of links that means $1500 per year for replacing them. 5. microsites You can make them even on free services like yola, weebly, wordpress, blogspot, webs.... There are around 20 quality services right now... The bad thing is that you will need to build some links for them and that they will have not much value in first couple of months but the good thing is that after a year or two they will have some age and will be very nice links source for you. Process is easy. Pay for like 10 Spin Ready articles for that microsites. Create 15-20 of them using random 5-7 of that articles. Then use the same articles to submit to article directories and make links to that microsites. All the microsites will have 10-15 links which will be enough. Not so cheap but will work on long term. There are many other ways but what I prefer is always to get permanent link than to think about them and replace them all the time. As I do SEO there is adventage and disadventage of my SEO style. Disadventage is that when I finish my project clients are happy and will have good positions long time and I will not have good money for maintenance. Good thing is that I do not seek for work as happy clients reccommend me to website owners they know and I always have work
And this is good question. Noone will go like that, to take X% of sales unless knows you good. The problem is that that is your business, you control that, you own that website and who will guarantee that you will not quit that, or will not change rules, or ruin your website with your decisions or so... Of course that can work but in cases where the job is bigger and serious SEO and serious company make CONTRACT. I often do on pay per traffic or pay per positions basis and your problem is what you will do with that traffic. See, as I SEO I can make you no1 for a keyword but you have 3 times bigger prices than competition. That is not my problem but yours. I give suggestions of all the types to my clients, how to improve conversion rate or so but I do not guarantee if they will make sales or not. So, I tell something like: 25% in advance (to know that you pay, for initial linkbudget and my time, and for my invested time) 25% for top20 50% for top10 and bonuses for no5, 3, 2, and no1 And people rarelly do even that and I the reason is simple. SEO need to invest time, need to invest resource, pay with own money for links and to be afraid if he will not get paid. And from time to time that happens to me. Right now clients owe me more than $5000 and I just can wait to get that. But also that has some good sides. Long term clients are happy and have trust and for next website they dont control me. I just say "Send me $3000" and I will do my best for your website. And they dont ask for monthly reports and dont care if of that $3000 I took $500 or $1000 and the rest I used for paying people or resources