Anyone want to throw out rates for SEO work?

I usually bundle it into a design package, but I do have three levels.

1. Consultation - I look at a site and say what is wrong for X
2. SEO Work - I SEO a page normally when designing a site for (5 to 10X's X which is Y)
3. SEO Guarantee - I guarantee top 50 position for Z (10x's y)

How are you billing out your SEO work?

Lol, you didn't mention how much you charge

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depends on the type of site and keyword

1 consultation - $250 USD per hour
2 makes no sense at all
3 Noone can guarantee search results - by saying you can you are in effect lying to your customers, and what kind of customer goes with a company that lies to them right off the bat?

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I think he's saying is this:
Say he consults for one hour-then you're looking at $250. If he then follows through on implementation it's 5-10 times the $250 (which would be $1000-$2500) to SEO a page way high!

Besides-WTF is a top 50 position good for? 1st page maybe but not 5th page. We do pay for performance but no "guarantee" per say

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Consultation was $75 USD per hour, but with demand for services outstripping allocated consulting time, those rates are likely to go to the $100-$150 / hour range in the next few months.

Lock me in cheap kiddos!

Seriously though, one gets what one pays for. Morgan can charge $250 / hour because the results justify the expenditure.

Cygnus

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Two projects I'm working on: Car Insurance (spidering test) and Auto Insurance

1000 to seo the front door of a site for a major term is well worth 1000 to most 'businesses'

yep we sure do GURANTEE POSITION, that is top 50, anyone guaranteeing page one is either a fraud or paying someone off

if you can't guarantee top 50 then what are you doing?

there are some doing seo that can't hit top 50, we hit it all the time without trying too hard, however, if we have to guarantee it (even though we say your site should be in it) and the end result is we have to keep redoing a page that was done right, well we want to get paid

if a keyword for a business is light it's the base rate, if it is a hard word it goes up, if it's one of the words everyone wants then we charge a ton

what I was trying to do is see if enough of you have evolved to having a fee structure

ours is X for consults (x is variable depending on word)

actual seo work that should hit top 50 is Y which is 10 times X

now we imply to our clients they 'should' get top 50, but if they want to bust stones and want a 'guarantee' then we will for 10 times Y

first one is often obtained but a business with a hard word should benefit from top 50, the only reason we would be that far back is due to it being one of the real hard words that many are seo'ing for

so it's all relative, since no one answered in a chart type answer, I guess no one is really doing seo with set rates like ours

around 5 people today asked about seo work on their page

we hit them all the same way, yep, you got major seo mistakes it's X for a detailed consultation

It's Y if you want us to fix it

It's Z if you want guaranteed results

Now if there's a better way of charging for SEO only impress me with your rate formula

For years we used SEO to close design deals, it's a throw in for clients

Now we're developing a ton of SEO sites to sell a book and move some sheep around, so if anyone has a handle on the best way to quote rates I'll all ears or eyeballs

What do you do in this gaurantee if Google messes up again like they did this month, knocking out quality sites to the point where they no longer rank for their company name?

That has nothing to do with SEO ability and knowledge...that is reliance on a 3rd party, and reliance upon a 3rd party dictates that no gaurantees are possible.

When clients ask for a gaurantee, I explain the logic and point to where I have been successful in the past. If that isn't good enough, then I take on other clients...no time to educate the masses on basics of logic.

Cygnus

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Two projects I'm working on: Car Insurance (spidering test) and Auto Insurance

you explain there are only a handful of SE's that matter and your work will be in the top of most of them, you don't 'guarantee' specific engines, you guarantee broad success in most, that's what we do, an educated client is good client, they know how to judge what others are saying to them

Broad success as measured how...

The difficulty with gaurantees is that they need to be quantifiable, else they are pointless. I can gaurentee that I'll do work for the client...but that's obvious; will there be broad success? More than likely. However, adding the gaurantee phrase anywhere in a contract is a legal liability; I would advise otherwise. Eventually you'll have a period where a site, despite your best efforts, does not rank in the big three. There are a variety of reasons why this could happen over a 30-90 day period (spidering difficulty, hosting problems, algorithm glitches, improper links, links becoming improper without your knowledge, etc) -- what happens to the gaurantee then. Most SEO firms and SEOs that have been around awhile learned the hard way to never give a gaurantee

It is alot like leaving your car door unlocked...it may be safe, but why take the risk?

Cygnus

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Two projects I'm working on: Car Insurance (spidering test) and Auto Insurance