Best way to charge my clients...........I think I finally decided

[Mrupp44]

I have struggled with the best way to charge my clients FOREVER it seems and I think I finally have decided on how to proceed! ANY suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

(I have read the seomoz blog posts about the subject, the Art of SEO and Search Engine Optimization Secrets book and tons of blogs, etc).

I got into this business because of what I was able to accomplish with my party rental companies website and what I had studied and read for months and months.

Without knowing any better I tried to get into SEO and online marketing and fell straight into designing websites and subcontractors and hosting and everything EXCEPT seo work! sound familiar? I CAN'T be the only one this happened to

I have regrouped and finally gotten my FIRST pure SEO client. They agreed to pay me $3,000 over 6 months for JUST recommendations with monthly reporting on traffic, # of links, etc.

My plan is to charge clients X amount of dollars broken up over 6 months - $2-5k. (that will include monthly reporting) for a list of recommendations. (on page, link opportunities, design suggestions, kw suggestions, email campaign, on and on).  NO MORE $400-500 FOR A WHOLE WEBSITE - INCLUDING CONTENT CREATION! (I was stupid enough to do this - TWICE!

I like doing it this way so I can focus on giving them maximum value right from the get go and not slowing spoon feeding my knowledge out to them or them getting burned out after 2 months and not wanting to continue because they haven't seen a miracle yet.

I will justify the clients investment by dividing that lump sum by $75 an hour (low for some of you I know) and track the time I spend researching links, their competitors, their on page, etc. and include it in my monthly report.

I plan to give my first client their report in a few weeks and it will be pretty comprehensive but not EVERY thing I can think of but enough to impress. They are welcome to pursue the links I found, make the site changes, etc themselves OR I will be happy to have ALL my recommendations implemented for them for a reasonable, fair amount. If they want me to do it I will explain my staff will be doing the work and it will be $25 +/- an hour vs. $75

Sorry for the long post and thanks for hanging in there if you read this far!

I would love any suggestions or flaws with my plan!

Thanks in advance and have an AWESOME week!

Matthew

[KyleChamp]

This is the way we bill for our time:

(1) Have a face to face or phone meeting with the potential client. You really need to have a long conversation about what the client’s wants / needs and what their expectation is. Without this, you’re most likely not going to achieve what the client's looking for and will cause major problems down the road.

Go over how the company had been doing the past (x) years. Look into their Google analytics if they have it set up so you can get a sense of traffic / conversion rate. Talk to the client about their customers and find out what "drives" the customers to your clients business. This will help with getting some keywords down.

Pro Tip: From my experience, 80% of the business owners are great at just that, overseeing their business but have a false idea of what SEO is and how it works. Make sure if they are telling you to rank for X keyword, you’re not just taking their word for it and instead actually researching what the client’s NEEDS to be targeting. Also talk in the terms of ROI and not "ranking", owners understand this alot better.

(2) From that initial meeting, I will give the client a proposal that goes over (in broad range) what needs to be done along with a "recommended" monthly retainer that is broke up in hours. Once the client is on board with us, we will create a detailed timeline (we use Bacecamp for this) that shows what we are doing to the website onsite and offsite. Yes we do the actual work

Example: If I recommend to a client that we spend 20 hours per month at $60 an hour than their monthly retainer would be $1200. I also let them know that if they want to see faster results, we can add more hours per month but this is the minimum recommendation for this particular client.

[EGOL]

I thought a lot of them didn't DO the actual work as much as they just made recommendations.

This type of service is known as "SEO consulting".  You might be a "teacher" or a "strategist" or a "planner".... depending upon what they need.

Consultants also do a lot of "study and recommend"... in which they have a problem or opportunity that the need to have researched, explained and options developed.

They also might "source" services such as what you have done with the mobile app.

How much to charge?  For your first clients charge what you think your time is worth and if you are delivering value then you can adjust your prices until your phone stops ringing.

[Mrupp44]

If you would share how, in your experience, successful SEO firms charge for their services I would be extremely grateful. TRULY.

I thought a lot of them didn't DO the actual work as much as they just made recommendations.

I would RATHER do the work personally but every time in the past I end up becoming the 'web guy' who ends up doing design stuff, content creation, social media, and oh yeah, some seo. (when seo is what I know a HELL of a lot better than the other stuff).

I had a client ask me today for a bid to make them a mobile app - I know NOTHING about mobile apps but I sure enough sent them a proposal after finding somebody I trust to make it for them.

I realize its MY responsibility to set clear expectations from the get go and that's why I shared the posts I did today. I'm TRYING to do this the right way, for my clients and to build a successful, respected SEO shop and I admit I could use some guidance on how to charge for my time that gives my clients high value for their investment.

Thanks again for your time and response,

Matthew

[EGOL]

This sounds like a "coaching" strategy.

If that is what you are offering then why not just charge by the hour and allow the company to put as much employee time into coaching sessions as they can afford and feel that they are getting value.

If you coach them on title tags today then getting back on the phone two days later to review work and answer questions would be very effective.

The big part of selling this service is educating them on the amount of time required to learn and implement this type of work.  Different companies will be able to dedicated different amounts of time into it and the results that they get will be determined by the amount of time they put in, the uptake speed of the student and how fast they can get work done.  Highly variable among people so they don't want to give this job to the guy who screws everything up.

[AmieMarse]

I think this is a great plan. You are doing a lot by giving a longer strategy with hourly rates. That lets your clients feel like they are getting more for their money.

Hourly rates, especially when you break them down and show detailed information about what you did allows your customers to "see" the work. This is by far the biggest struggle with SEO work.  Your clients don't want to take the time to learn the stuff, but they also don't want to be hosed. Find a way to streamline this part because your time tracking can easily eat away 5-10 minutes of every hour if you aren't careful. They want to see what you've been up to but nobody wants to pay you to write down what you did

Long term businesses always do best when they over deliver so I wouldn't worry about giving away everything...unless of course if you truly have only one comprehensive report's worth of knowledge, lol. In that case you shouldn't really be charging for SEO at all right, so i am sure that isn't true

As long as you are completely up front about the limited scope of work and that anything else will be charged extra you should be good. Don't be embarrassed or glide over it, it's going to be the biggest headache down the road fi a client claims they didn't understand.

I run a content generation firm so I know all about the low ball clients. Don't undersell. Period. You have to decide what your services are worth and prove that to your audience. If they don't want to pay, thank them for touching base and send them along. No harm, no foul. I'm also a huge fan of firing clients that are disrespectful. After a while you get a sense for who is going to be a problem client, and you just cut that off from the start. Having a smaller group of clients that bring you joy is way better than a ton of clients that make you hate your job!

Sorry I went off on a tangent there. Yes! This is a good plan

[BigStereo]

I have been struggling with this myself. I keep falling into the $500 a month "do everything" plan. I am  not sure if a monthly fee is best. Or hourly, or what.

[mad2k]

Holy shit, I will love such a prices in Poland. We have tons of SEO companies and red ocean market.

Congrats

Marek