13 replies to this topic

[Pianist718]

I notice that all SEO companies offer the maintenance fees where they charge you a certain monthly amount.

One company's price was $150/month, others were 300, 500, 1,200 and 2,500 a month.

Now ... there has to be a logical explanation to this. The less they charge, the worse links they are getting for you in an ongoing maintenance?

I spoke to a guy who charges $1,200 a month, ongoing fee. His explanation was ... we need the money to buy you quality one way links from PR6+ sites. AND pay every months for ongoing links.

Now ... does this mean that the SEO companby that only needed $200/month would buy cheap, bad PR1 links or cimply free or 30 dollar directories in the ongoing process?

What is your take on this?

[SearchRank]

Not all recurring maintenance fees have to do with link buying. For clients that want it, we offer ongoing maintenance in the following ways:

1. SEO Maintenance - equates to running of a variety of reports (ranking, saturation, backlinks, traffic, etc.) and then making modifications to keyword strategy, site, marketing strategy, etc. based on what reports tell us. Fees typically based on size of campaign as well as interval of maintenance periods.

2. PPC Management - managing PPC campaign such as AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing etc. We charge 15% of client's budget.

Neither of these includes link building. In fact when we do link building, it is not a random thing like "we need x amount of dollars per month to buy links". Rather the client knows exactly what we are buying or where we are placing them and what these links cost, whether they be recurring (monthly, annually, etc.) or one time. We then either receive discounts from whoever sells links or build in fees for our placement and/or brokering services. The client knows exactly what they are paying for each link.

I think this is important rather than not knowing where their money is being spent.

So don't just assume that every SEO campaign that has recurring maintenance includes link building. With many, it is a separate element.

[Pianist718]

SearchRank ... thanks for the detailed response.

With the ones I spoke with ... I know that what they charge is to cover linking and their time AND few moderations to pages and so on.

Now that I look at what info I got from these different SEO companies, it makes sence a bit. Those that charge $200/month .... I heard few negative things about those companies (people saying that the company uses it's own farm or too much directories).

Those that quoted more than $400/month ... I hear go for better linking.

Am I on to something?

[robmarketshare]

I think you are turning it around now !

[idrive]

When I charge maintenance it is for ranking reports, traffic reports and a summary of what was done to the site as part of ongoing maintenance.

Darlene

[amabaie]

Interesting. To me that is sneaky to charge money to cover paid text links. But that's just me.

When I charge for maintenance, it covers link-building, tracking progress and tweeking both the linking strategy and the onpage work as needed. I rarely recommend buying links, even in directories, and when I do it is up to the client to decide whether to pay extra for it.

Furthermore, whether I charge $300/month or $500/month or more would depend on the website and the market it is competing in, as well as the breadth of the search terms it is competing for.

[GaryBradshaw]

I am not sure I would buy links. That is like buying PPC and not just building the best site you can for visitors and SEO.

It much more of a challenge to me to just write articles that humans love and the spiders love to eat. Not saying I don't write just for spiders to be honest, but the users can not really tell. People like Jill, Scottie and the others can tell in 2 seconds but my users can not

I actually like writing and tweaking and watching the SE's to see what happens. Of course I talk to my computer more than I used to - especially when I see a spam site listed above me!!

[Michael]

What's this about too many directories? Anyone have a bad experience with too many human edited directories?

- Michael

[qwerty]

That depends on what you'd consider a bad experience. I haven't seen any sites penalized for having lots of directory links, but I've seen that lots of directory links didn't send a site any traffic and didn't appear to improve its rankings. I have to figure that a number of them are ignored, or provide only a negligible benefit, so you have to take that into account when you think about the work it takes to get the listing.

[Michael]

Well said Qwerty...just did not want that to pass under the radar and confuse folks.

- Michael

[Pianist718]

So I guess there is no way of really trying to get some analytical logic from knowing the monthly fee.

[Jill]

What do you mean by "analytical logic"?

All a monthly fee can tell you is how much you will be paying.

You would presumably receive other information on exactly what any company was providing you for that monthly fee.

[Bri]

providing monthly ranking reports, traffic reports, link building, ppc maintainance is what i would also see as ongoing. From here it still depends on the size of the project. Just shop around ask for quotes and always ask if they have a customer with whom you may contact. In any business you should be able to find someone who knows their clients are so satisfied that they have no problem giving your their number or e-mailing them to speak to you. I would do the same.

[projectphp]

It depends what you need. If you have a 40 page site, you don't need no maintenance. If you are a fortune 500 company, you need it in spades. Most, obviously, fall somewhere inbetween. Find out what you would get for the money and if you want it.

Personally, I wouldn't want reports unless I was CMOA (covering my own Ahem). If it is your business, will know if it is a success or not, so monthly reports may not be worth very much to you at all. Besides, you can run most reports yourself, and for a few hundred bucks by the tools they will use.

If, however, you work in a company and your boss wants to know what is going on, reports can help you in "the paper war", and keep the higher ups informed and onside.