Feedback to what to offer to my clients on my SEO website - local to Boise ID
-
Hi,
I'm targeting Boise, Idaho and building an SEO consulting website.
Right now I only offer 3 things because that's what I have experience in:
1. On-site SEO
2. Content Audit
3. Start a company from scratch.
Ecommerce, Service, or Informational
I know #3 involves all SEO, so it will be challenging, but 1-3 is what I've been doing for 10 years.
What feedback do you have as far as 1-3 being my 3 offers, and is $200/hour fair? I work off quotes by estimating my time at $200/hour.
Thanks.
-
I hope you'll receive further feedback from the community, Bob! It's exciting that you're planning your business.
-
Interested in hearing what others have to say,
but very grateful for your response Miriam. When I say start a company, I find myself sitting down with people who want a more passionate job and doing their keyword research and helping them start their (usually store and content both) and tell them what content to write and how to expand.
I'm done doing it for free unless it's close friend or family member. It's a lot of work. Thus the package. Just for the Boise area.
My experience is taking businesses from zero to $5000/month or zero to $30,000/month in sales so you can see that's small business. I've worked under a 7m/year company, but they kept a lot from me. Consider that I have 10 years of experience but I only specialize in a few things really because they are strong enough for a good ROI for my customer.
Anyways, what is a better rate in your opinion (or anyone else reading this)?
-
Hey Bob,
By 'start a company from scratch' do you mean business consulting? Like someone comes to you wanting to open a hair salon and you advise them from the beginning? Or, something else?
The appropriateness of your rates is going to be based on the types of clients you are targeting. $200/hr will likely be too much for Mom & Pops and startups in Boise (though maybe not in Los Angeles!), but if you focus on industries that are typically populated by enterprise level companies, your rate may work. Think hospitals, large franchises, major brands, etc.
Hoping you'll get lots of community feedback on this one!
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
-
2 Websites Targeting Similar Keywords
One of my clients is set on setting up another website targeting some of the keywords/services on the main site. One of the services they offer gets traffic from natural search and also Adwords but doesn't convert well for this service. For other services (which are often utilized at the same time by the customers) the site converts well. My client feels that... "people are not converting on the main site because they click on the page and realise that we are a wider company. From this they probably work out that we don’t actually produce Green Widgets and we just buy them in. Therefore we will be more expensive than a company who does manufacture Green Widgets (although there are only a few in the country who actually make them)." The new site "...will have more of a manufacturer and specialist feel. There will be a small mention of other services. People visiting will think we are specialists and that we make them, whereas at the moment they may feel that they are just being cross sold a product. We have also noticed that we are not being found earlier enough and we are contacted to do other work only to find that another company is providing the Green Widgets." I did something similar back in the day, but here we ran a local website and a national website covering the same products. We tried hard not to duplicate the keywords we targeted minimising this as much as possible. I don't think we cared much about the local site as the national one went crazy busy. In essence, my client wants to do the following: Main Site...
Local SEO | | GrouchyKids
Blue Widgets Bristol
Red Widgets Bristol
Green Widgets Bristol (This would be retained) New Site...
The new site would focus on Green Widgets In time the new site would include content for...
Green Widgets
Green Widgets Bristol (As per the main site)
Green Widgets Cardiff It would also make mention of Blue Widgets and Red Widgets as possible addons. The new site would be at the same address but have its own companies house registration, emails and phone numbers. My feeling is that we should take an above-board, risk-free approach and remove the Green Widgets service from the main site to ensure it doesn't upset Google. In other words go out of our way to minimise targeting of similar/same keywords across the 2 sites. My client strongly disagrees showing evidence of others using similar tactics (we have had the EMD debate as well). I am also concerned about Google Places and how this might be viewed here. Opinions please, also any idea of what if any action Google would take if we push forwards?0 -
Local Site stuck on page 2 for years. Can’t penetrate page 1! Help!
Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I've ever asked a question here so please forgive if I slip up on any etiquette. I manage a website for a small Orlando Florida family law and divorce law firm who are targeting search phrases that include those "Orlando divorce attorney" variants. The site is located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/ If you run a search for "Orlando divorce attorney" along with close variant search terms our law firm website for about the past two years has hovered at the top of the second page of google but has never actually penetrated page 1. When you examine metrics such as page authority, domain authority, trust, and other traditional metrics it tells you that our site should be on page 1 but alas it's not happening. We have, however been featured quite often in the three pack for the local listings for the target search terms. Though valuable, our goal has always been to be featured in the top three of the organic search results. To add to the confusion we have a practice area page located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/ dedicated to divorce and expected that page to rank for these divorce attorney search terms but it will not rank for the search terms and instead our homepage ranks for them every single time regardless of how we swap around the optimization on the page. Never had any manual actions. any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated and I really appreciate your time!
Local SEO | | Seanthewood1230 -
Miriam's 7 Local SEO Predictions for 2019
Greetings to our great Moz Community! It's been a fascinating year in Local Search, and I thought it would be good to jot down a few of my personal predictions for the year ahead. I'd love you to add yours, as well, so that we can all think together about the local businesses we'll be marketing in the new year. Here we go: 1) Major player weaknesses could lead to a changing of the local guard Whether it's Facebook's ethics scandals or Yelp's downward stock trends, loss of public confidence could mean a shift in a local search platform hierarchy that's been pretty well established for some years. These brands' ongoing challenges could spell out opportunity for newcomer brands, or could simply drive more people to Google. Google has had its own problems this year, but nevertheless... 2) Google will continue to dominate and monetize local search For so many users, Google IS the Internet, and that's an advantage no competitor has been able to overcome. In 2019, I expect to see further monetization of local SERPs, including LSA, in-pack local ads, booking buttons, and other forms of lead gen. Local search marketing will become more spendy. For more on creating strategy in this environment, read: Why Local Businesses will Need Websites More Than Ever in 2019. And, for retailers... 3) Real-time Online Local Inventory will become a real "thing" I'll have an article coming out on this in early 2019 on the Moz blog (Update: Now Published: https://moz.com/blog/taking-local-inventory-online), but in a nutshell, we're on course to cross a new threshold in search. You'll finally be able to search for local inventory and get accurate information about who near you stocks what in their stores. Google's See What's In Store feature will be part of this, but so will emerging third party technology. User behavior will change as a result of this, and just like we've all integrated online mapping/local search into our daily lives, we'll soon be familiar with using search to find local inventory. This is really great news for retailers of all sizes! Meanwhile... 4) The line between brands and people will blur further 2018 has been a fascinating study in what appears to be a rising consumer expectation that brands align with customers at a philosophical level. We saw Nike's stock go to a record high due to their deft read of the nation and company alignment with Colin Kaepernick, while other retailers lost millions over culturally-insensitive content. Big rewards and boycotts represent the two extreme ends of this spectrum in which your CEO isn't really a private person anymore, but rather, a member of the larger society with a voice that will be assessed for its empathy to causes, groups and events. This puts brand employees in unfamiliar territory, having some of their fate rise or fall based on the public stances of company leadership, and it puts a new premium on skillful awareness of societal trends. Because of this... 5) Smart local brands will speed up focus on sustainability Political pundits are predicting that the 2020 US election may be referendum on Climate Change. This means that US customers will be inundated with messaging and news surrounding this over the next two years. We're already seeing big brands like Patagonia respond by saying that they're "in the business of saving the planet" and Salesforce co-CEO billionaire Mark Benioff promising that his company will be running on 100% renewable energy by 2022. I predict that a growing body of consumers will increasingly expect and reward sustainable brand practices. 2019 will be a very good year for the local businesses you market to do a green audit of their business model, implement change and then promote their Climate-friendly practices. Think big on this, because... 6) Reputation will be key Everything a local business can do to please and retain customers should sit at the core of the business model. Whatever it is that gets your customers to leave positive reviews, return for repeat business, recommend you via WOM to their friends and family, and view you as a vital component of local commerce will have a serious impact on your reputation, rankings and revenue. Google recently stated that 27% of local searches have an intent of reading reviews about a specific business and our recent State of Local Industry Report here at Moz found that 91% of respondents agree that reviews impact rankings. Reputation, and the awareness of its role, will be very big in 2019. 7) Link building will become more deeply integrated into Local SEO Local Search Ranking Factors 2018 cited links as the 6th most influential local pack factor. This means that smart local SEOs will double down on their organic skills and start pursuing relevant links for their clients with professional, organized strategies and good tools. Any Local SEM package that leaves out link building will be incomplete. All in all, I predict we're in for an exciting, challenging year in which clear vision and a dedication to service will be the keys to local business success. **Now it's your turn! Where do you see us going in 2019 in the local search industry? Please, share your own predictions! **
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis8 -
Local store (B2B) that produces high quality prints for photographers: are we adopting the right strategy?
Hi, I'd like to know your opinion on the following case and gather new ideas on how to optimise our strategy: Starting situation: local store (B2B) in a bigger city in Europe that produces high quality prints mainly for photographers on paper (or other materials like canvas, aluminium, etc. ). They really take care of your images (e.g. Color Management) and produce printouts that look how they really should look like. Target audience: photographers (pros), museum, exhibitions and hotel people that would like to produce high quality prints of their images. Almost never the ambitioned private photographers (until now). **Actual situation: **its really a local business (people around 30 km). competition: big online stores where you can upload your pictures and get your prints sent home (quality: not bad, but not exceptional, no special requests; more for private customers) Already done (with relatively little results): _AdWords: _very "tight" keyword combinations, not broad at all, targeting area around business location. results: small traffic, small costs: not a lot of conversions. _SEO: _for organic search we now achieve very good positions for tight" keyword combinations, not broad ones. results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions LinkedIn-Ads targeting the above target group: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Facebook Remarketing (targeting his newsletter mail-list: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Optimized the landingpage (in my opinion far more to the point than before) PROBLEM: Basically we now get to the right people but traffic is really (too) small. At least we don't waste money at all but we don't gain a lot either... If we broaden the "keywords" the private customers will come in and waste our advertising money. Do you ever had a similar situation? What did you do? Any suggestions? Other target groups? Alternative channels? Thanks for your input. Cheers, Cesare
Local SEO | | Cesare.Marchetti0 -
How does Splitting up social media presence affect SEO?
the situation is that we manage a dealership's web maintenance to improve SEO and SERPS rank do we need to have individual social media accounts, Google business pages, twitter, youtube, foursquare, Instagram, dealer rater, cars.com accounts, etc, for each brand, even if they are at the same physical address?
Local SEO | | EOBSupport0 -
National and Local rankings differences
Hi Guys,
Local SEO | | nikaus
I am in Australia and have a client I am working with that ranks quite well for their main keywords.
The business is based in Sydney but delivers Australia wide. The issue is - their main keyword ranks no.1 nationally.
If I set google to any of the main cities and type
Outdoor Mirrors Perth
Outdoor Mirrors Melbourne
Outdoor Mirrors Sydney
My client comes up no.1 But if I leave the city off the end of the keyword and I'm anywhere but Sydney I do not rank well for Outdoor Mirrors. The address of the business is in Sydney hence the no.1 there, but we said in Places that we deliver australia wide. Does anybody know why we don't rank well without the city added to the keyword and a way to remedy this? Thanks Nik0 -
My First SEO strategy - What's next?
I have recently embarked on an SEO strategy for my website. I've done a lot of reading and researching here on Moz and on search engine land and have got a good idea of how to build a basic SEO strategy. My own expertise is in PPC, so keyword strategy came easy to me. I rebuilt my website and focused on the on page SEO with every single page, this has brought really great results - instantly. For some of my chosen keywords I have gone from not being ranked to being on Google's first page - within a couple of days of my new website going live, for other's I've gone from being outside the top 50 to being ranked in the top 50, so my on page SEO has really strengthened my position and I now understand how important it is as a ranking factor. I've also started to create content on a regular basis with 2 or 3 new blogs being uploaded each week, the blogs are based around my businesses main target market's - PPC, Web design, digital marketing etc. These blogs have a lot of links out to good websites, EG "to learn about adwords check out the adwords fundamentals course on lynda.com" and useful info like that. I also signed up to whitespark for citation idea's so have started adding my site to all relevant directory suggestions that it gives me. So my question is this, after seeing great early results because of my on page SEO, what are my next steps to increase my rankings? And more specifically how do I use Moz to help increase my ranking? During the week, I've started using Open site explorer to find my competitors backlinks, should I now spend my time trawling through these links to find opportunities to add links for my website where I can. Is this a good thing to be doing at this stage? Anything else that I should be doing now to capitalise on my early results please let me know what it is and please tell me how to take full advantage of Moz to gain a better ranking. I appreciate all insight!
Local SEO | | michealbren0 -
SEO for a web based company with no physical presence.
Hi I only have experience working in Local SEO and now Im facing the challenge of 1 clients which is based in Australia and wants to sell in Australia (protein bars) but the company doesn't have a physical presence. What do you think would be a good strategy? Do you think I still need to create NAP citations (if so that would probably benefit the SEO for one city and leave the others with less SEO influence?). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Nico
Local SEO | | niclaus780