Question came up in another thread and Jill Whalen has just covered it, for anyone unfamiliar with JW she's been around a LONG time, is generally well known/regarded within the industry, and her prices reflect this :-)

Charging for SEO Services » HRA - Jill Whalen

Good post. I like the idea of charging per report instead of paying per month. Keeps it simple and clear.

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MGS Web Design - Web Design Kildare, Web Design Ireland

Yes indeed, also the idea of getting paid up-front as well.

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Jill makes some good points there. I personally think that it should be different for each individual project. For example, we charge on a performance basis for some clients and a fixed rate for others. Some just have us on retainer.

What we have found works well is a flat rate fee for a site review with a DETAILED document reporting the potential problems. The customer can use the document to resolve the issues in-house or use us (or someone else) to resolve them for an additional fee.

SEO contract work should be approached carefully as results often tend to take many months. We had a client that was hit by a -950 penalty the month we took their account. It took us two months to resolve the problem. If our contract had have been for 1-3 months, things could ahve got nasty. Thankfully, when it emerged it peaked.

Anyway, my point was simply sit down with your client, understand their needs and go from there. There are many different pricing models and there always will be. Find the common ground.

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Web Design | Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management

Sounds like loads of work, and always slave to the client. Any of the SEOs ever consider just creating their own sites and driving traffic to them?

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My Blog

That accounts for about 45% of our company revenue.

Hahah, sounds good. You must be a busy and rich man :-)

HAHAHAHA! Busy yes, Rich, far far from it.

I'm not sure what you mean on this one. I would think nearly all SEO consultants would have some kind of website to enable them to attract business. If their own site ranks well then the proof is in the pudding I guess.

Dave

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MY BLOG | MY FORUMS | Search Engine Optimisation

I think he means making your own niche sites to profit from rather than be an actual consultant.

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