Best way to charge my clients...........I think I finally decided
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
Holy shit, I will love such a prices in Poland. We have tons of SEO companies and red ocean market.
Congrats
Marek
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Community Discussion - How can we apply the skills we have as marketers in new, creative ways?
Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful week! This week's discussion question comes from Tuesday's (December 😎 blog post by John-Henry Scherck, The Step-by-Step Guide to Turning Link Prospectors into Lead Generators. From the post: "Digital marketing is a pretty introverted industry. This tends to make us a bit hesitant to embrace sales and outbound selling. There’s no beating around the bush: Sales can be difficult, scary, uncomfortable, and awkward — but if you want to grow your client base, it may require getting out of your comfort zone." John-Henry shows us the opportunity for people who are good at link prospecting to apply those skills to lead generation, improving business opportunities by creatively using the skills they already have. SEOs and marketers wear many hats, and have a diverse skill set at their disposal—how else can we apply the skills we already have in creative ways?
Industry News | | MattRoney5 -
What do you think of this?
A company that contacted us for SEO ended up going with another company, because we already had an impact windows client and we make sure to be exclusive to our clients for the terms we target. Over the past 5 years, we ended up over performing for our client and now they have so much referral business that they decided to cancel with us... Kind of a bummer, but we take it as a compliment. Now that we are able to target those keywords again, we are looking into the site that contacted us originally. Before contacting them we looked at their sitemap and this is what we found. IMO they are stealing money from this client. What are your thoughts? should we contact them and let them know the direction this company is taking? [identifying information removed by Moz staff]
Industry News | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Why, my client website sudden gone down its ranking?
Hi Moz, As I am shocked to see sudden drop in my client website himachalpackagetour.com sudden dropped its ranking, here I am sharing single keyword "himachal tour packages" rank = 10th into rank = 250th in Google.co.in ? How it could have happened , I didn't even touch anything with the website. Let me tell How, Why it happened and suggest me to get it back same ranking. Thanks in Advance. Best,
Industry News | | Futura
Teginder0 -
What do people think of Google discouraging guest blogging
Google is recommending that websites nofollow any links from press releases or guest blogging. Do people think this is really the new standard and sites could get penalized for guest blogging with follow links? Is anyone changing their strategy after hearing this announcement? Where does this leave people who work in difficult niches (such as gambling)?
Industry News | | theLotter1 -
So, Google is the best site on the internet.. Right? Or is that just what most people tend to think off-face?
LOL woah, put the guns away. I'm not about to rant, I just have a question and wanted to present it well. Then again, I might have actually found some easy fixes to some of Google's tools that they could make. So here's the thing. I noticed how annoyed I always getting when I have to sign in every time I go to the adwords keyword tool, or analytics. Why do you have to sign in a million times? I think it is a problem that can be fixed because if you go to check your webmaster tools, you go straight into your account, where you can then select which site you want to explore. It knows that I am already signed in to Google Accounts when I go to webmaster tools, but it doesn't recognize that fact when I go to my Analytics account, or to use the Adwords Keyword Tool. Now, every site has things that they need to work on, but not necessarily that need to be 'fixed'. Google being so commonly accepted as the best site on the net, I thought it was funny/interesting at the least to point out the problem. Even funnier is the fact that I could submit it as a problem to see if they could fix it or not, but they do such a good job of making it hard for people to contact them, that A) I don't feel like wasting my time trying B) I don't even really know if it is possible to do that. Also, why is there no official Google Analytics App / Mobile site?? Google has been pushing how important mobile is to us webmasters, but then it doesn't seem to be very high on their priority list for the tools that we use. I mean you can't view graphs on phones / tablets (mine at least), in webmaster tools, OR google analytics. Also, its a pain in the but to click the sign in button on Google Analytics when using my phone / tablet, it disapears really fast for me (needs more research from others to see if everyone has the same problem) Thanks for the interest / answers everybody. Look forward to hearing from you guys. Also, tips and help would be nice if anybody knows a solution to my sign in issue
Industry News | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Where is my time best spent ?
Greetings, I am a new aspiring SEO for a niche market company I helped create. Both the company and website launched in 2007. From 2007 till mid March 2012, the website was amateur hour with no SEO whatsoever. I have spent years building social media profiles. In doing so I have built quite an online presence and created brand awareness. Therefore our domain has some authority and some inbound links. Since I started my first campaign on SEOMoz my organic search traffic has gone from around 0-5 hits to 35-50 hits a day in around 4 weeks. I have been submitting to directories that are targeted toward our niche market. I have contributed to community forum posts as well as talking to blog authors to write about our company and products, none of which seem to have any impact on our page or domain authority. If I am already ranking for 50% of my targeted keywords in one of the most competitive markets there is, with only very few links compared to my competition, would my time be best spent starting to work on inbound marketing strategies/link building (to build my domain and page authority) as opposed to outbound marketing, content building and UX? I know all is necessary, but the company really needs to start making some ROI. (So my position as a SEO doesn't get shelved and I can continue using tools like SEOMoz.) There are still some UX details we need to improve on the site (e.g., there are only product descriptions on half of our products on the new version of the site) but the product pages or categories the search traffic is landing on are all described (mostly) 😕 I guess my question to the community is, if you were in my shoes (the only person in the company who is somewhat savvy to any of this), on what would you focus your time? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Warmest regards, S&M Site contains adult content (NSFW)
Industry News | | Sexandmetal1 -
Questions to help get to know a potential client and see what the possibilities are for there campaign?
OK so I am putting together a list of questions to refer potential clients to. The purpose of these questions is to: 1, Help them understand the difference between "just give us your keywords and we will make you rank" seo and the full range of options that are advocated here on seo moz. .... 2, Get them to see that there are different levels of involvement that are available for different aspects of a campaign and give them ideas and options on how much input they want to have as well as make them see that we can help them with even the stuff they are gonna do themselves or do it for them with there input and permission. Thats where things get a bit confusing I was thinking of having a list of fifty linkbuilding/linkbaiting techniques and check box options beside each one so that they can read a little bit about the particular technique ie forum participation for example and then see how they felt like that related to there industry , wether they would want there staff to do it with some training from us wther they would want us to help them find the right forums and show them how to link back and to which page, or wether they would just want us to handle everything or simply not feel that that was right for there business .. then they would move on to the next thing ie video creation or user generated content and in the end we would have a big list of things to discuss with them and they would have a better understandiing of how much there is to good seo and what might work for them and also how we could help them and how a relationship/ partnership might look I would love some feed back on this is it possible will it help us to build trust with potential clients (which is diffucult for a new biz in this industry) how would you lay it out would it be a usefull resource for other seo companies etc thanks so much seo mozzers this forum is awsome and i know you will steer me in the right direction oh ps this would be something we would keep on our site
Industry News | | duncan2740 -
What is your Biggest SEO selling point to prospective clients?
Typically, our SEO questions are around "how to's" and etc. So, to change it up I will ask a business question: What is your biggest selling point when presenting your SEO services to a new client? In a spirit of transparency, I will tell you mine ahead of time. With PPC, TV, Radio, and Print at some point in time that ad comes to an end. When it ends, that is it. There is no residual from that advertisement - or very minimal at best. With SEO, once you are ranked well and well optimized you continue to get clients for a much longer period of time. With clients who TV and print, this rings especially true and is easily provable. I can't wait to hear yours.
Industry News | | RobertFisher4