Scoping Out A Project, How create an SEO proposal for an Ecommerce Site Options

[PVMAA]

Hi Everyone!

We have done SEO projects for several small companies and are pretty confident about proposing for such projects. But we've been invited to do a proposal for an Ecommerce site in partnership with a company that would actually do the shopping cart/database back-end stuff and we don't know where to begin.

This site sells a mishmash of industrial products, about 400 in total. They put their own site up some years ago and have just been adding things willy nilly so the organization is poor and there has been zero optmization. They don't show up in google for anything. They have product descriptions with lots of technical jargon 5 levels deep, and very little other written content at all. Our partner will be tacking all the programming stuff related to the product pages, etc. We will do visual design and SEO and will work alongside them, with the client, to figure out a better way to organize and categorize products, etc.

What we're struggling with is, how to attack this thing. Maybe the problem boils down to, can we start "broadly" and work down to each product, or is it advisable to start by creating user friendly/search engine friendly product descriptions and work up? And then how do we price? The client is asking for a monthly price, but what does that mean?

I was thinking more of a start-with-product-groups thereby addressing somewhat broadly, the entire site's content, then work down to each product within groups but I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion or advice? I thought we'd quote a price per product group and then try to figure out a price either per/product or maybe hours per/month thereafter to work on product descriptions till they're done or something like that.

Thoughts?

And Thanks!!!

[Randy]

What we're struggling with is, how to attack this thing. Maybe the problem boils down to, can we start "broadly" and work down to each product, or is it advisable to start by creating user friendly/search engine friendly product descriptions and work up?

You could do it either way. Whichever works best for you, the IT folks and the client. The main thing is to make sure it all gets done.

Personally I'd do it as you've laid out. Start more broadly on each category and then work down to the specific items. However one could certainly write the product descriptions and such first so that you know where you're going to end up and have a pretty good road map of how to get there.

As far as pricing it out, I'd try to figure out how many hours it's going to take and bill appropriately. In fact I'd probably bid it out that way. xxx hours per month at yyy rate = $nnnn per month. Then give them a Best Guess at how many hours and/or months it's going to take to complete the project. Leave yourself some wiggle room too. In my experience these things never go quite as smoothly as one hopes they will.

[PVMAA]

Thank you Randy - appreciate the input!