38 replies to this topic

[websage]

Hello, I am curious to know if there is any well-accepted practice of pricing SEO services. Specifically I would like to know if you price your services depending on the number of pages or keywords or keyword phrases or some combination of these.

Thanks in advance,

Mitko

[Jill]

I generally have package deals where I price for a certain set number of pages. Like 5 pages for this amount, 10 for this, etc.

With that, I generally can optimize for 2 - 3 keyword phrases per each page, so if they are getting 5 pages of their site optimized, that gives them a shot at 10 - 15 keyword phrases.

Jill

[websage]

Thanks for replying, Jill.

My wife, who is my best-wishing analyzer, supporter and critic :-), claims that if I were trying to sell her SEO services, she would find it more intuitive if I were pricing the service based on keyword phrases. That said, the correlation between number of pages and number of keyword phrases, as you described it, is so strong, that one could sell, let's say, a package of 10-15 keyword phrases, which would then imply 5 pages...

Any opinion on this approach?

Also, I would be curious about pricing SEO maintenance/retainer:

Let's say that same client who purchased SEO for 5 pages, thus 10-15 keyword phrases, wants to have the SEO service extended for 6 more months.

The cost-per-page approach is pretty obvious -- whatever maintenance fee times the number of months.

The cost-per-keyword approach is more complicated. What if the client bought 10-15 keywords and over the course of the initial service it became obvious that 5 of the original keyword phrases are not generating any traffic, but a different set of 5 new keyword phrases from the log files seem to be generating enough traffic to justify further SEO. Then, how does one price these changes? It seems to me the new 5 keyword phrases would require additional 2 pages to be optimized, so it goes beyond the mere maintenance...

Am I confusing myself unnecessarily?

[Jill]

That would be another set of pages the way I price things. You can have another set of (however many) for this price.

J

[websage]

OK, makes sense to charge them for another set of pages.

Is there any ratio between the price of the original SEO work and the retainer fee?

Like, in software development, very often one finds maintenance to be 17% of the price of the software. Often, an upgrade also would be priced in the same range...

Mitko

[Jill]

Well, again, I can only speak from my own experience. I pull my ideas and pricing out of my head and tweak it for what seems to work for me.

But with the extra set of pages I do usually do it for less than the first set of pages. So let's say for example the first five pages were $5000, they may get an additional 5 pages for $3000 or whatever makes sense for you.

Jill

[DanThies]

How about figuring out the amount of work it's going to take, and pricing by the hour?

[Haystack]

My company uses Dan's approach of billing by the hour for our company time. We break that into a 1-time fee followed by an ongoing subscription for reporting, stats analysis, linking, etc.

[dragonlady7]

In the end it comes down to two things:
1) How long it takes you, and
2) How much of a pain in the butt it is.
So you charge an hourly rate based on how much your time is worth, with extra tacked on where the job really stinks. You then take the extra as overhead, and pay the normal fee to someone who doesn't mind doing it. Ta-da!

[markymark]

I charge according to how competitive the field is and how long it will take me to do the job properly. I don't package it up by keywords or whatever - it's basically one price to do it right and if the prospect can't afford that, then we'll either work something out (lower upfront fee, higher monthly fee or whatever) or I'll walk away. I've never been able to work out a satisfactory way of packaging my services - so a typical client ends up with a site optimised for maybe 80-100 keyphrases, sometimes more, rarely less.

[SearchRank]

As for the actual optimization set up process, we charge by the number of keywords of phrases they want to target as well as the number of pages we will optimize for. With dynamic sites, it is different but it all averages out to around $75 - $100 per hour.

Monthly campaign maintenance revolves around the number of keywords or phrases we are tracking positioning for as well as how frequently we perform that maintenance.

[OldWelshGuy]

Well i use the age old formulae of the 'guesstimate' :-) the problem with this system (in my personal experience) is that when i am happy i guesstimate a low price, and when i am stressed i guesstimate a high price, it is about as scientific as poetry in my world.

I apply this guesstimate system to all my work, I hate it when i have to be tied down to a rigid price, it makes me all goosbumpy, (just kidding) I do however always guestimate the cost of a website design, or a SEO job etc the ONLY fixed costs i rigidly apply are hosting fees. I am totally vague, but i will say to a customer well this is going to cost around £1,200 if you provide me with this this this and this, if i have to do this this and this then it is going to add to the cost of the job by xxx per whatever.

I had one guy last week ask me if it would cost him anything if i travelled down to him, (he is about 180 miles away) I said like YES. he said what if i drive to you? i said fine, so he came up here, some people are funny aren't they, he decided that my time was more important that his own time.

[GeordieSEO]

OldWelshGuy - OT Just looked at your website and I love the hand drawn text on the examples results GIF's

[BrianR]

Here's my tuppence worth on pricing:

Most of my clients are small businesses and we often build their first website for them, so the SEO work is included in the website design & copywriting fee.

Where I do SEO work on an existing site, again, most of the sites are small: 5-50 pages. I use Jill's model: my fee is based on the number of pages in the site and is tweaked upwards if the keywords are very competitive.

In my experience, small businesses find a monthly maintenance fee hard to swallow, so I offer quarterly maintenance on a fixed fee basis.

With the above system, sometimes I lose - ie. put in more time than I'd bargained for - but most of the time I make a reasonable profit. It works for me!

BrianR

[Cygnus]

I usually just ask how much they have in their wallet, and then take it when they aren't looking.

It's easier than sending an invoice.

Cygnus, SEO