[lazytycoon]

Ok

I had a little discussion with a fellow member over PM I am not going to mention any names or anything I am just after the general opinion of what you feel your work is worth.

We talked briefly on the subject of SEO for a key word (i wont mention the keyword because its irrelevant, and I was shocked by the amount they were thinking of charging and pointed the following out to them. These are based on average researched by other people.

Keyword = 3,000,000 searches per month

For ranking #1, you'd expect 40-50% of the traffic for that search, so 1,200,000 hits per month.

The average conversion rate for ecommerce sites is 1-3% which lets say in this case was 1%, that would equal 12,000 orders a month.
Now lets just say the average profit from each sale was £5, this would give an average profit of £60,000 per month or £720,000 per year. This is before we even start looking at the other keywords related to this business.

Its a fairly competitive market and we would be looking at at least 12months work, followed by continuous ongoing work to maintain their rank, and to be fair going in half arsed is a complete waste of time and money.

So bearing this in mind, how much would you charge for designing and developing a big ecommerce shop 200ish products lets say, and SEO.

[Gareth Daine]

Hey Andy,

I would probably charge well in excess of £30K.

Obviously, you would have to take in to consideration the total amount of work involved.

Something like this could take up to 2 years or possibly more to complete, the quote above would be for one years work.

Hope this helps.

[Acuity]

£2,400 to design and customise an open source e-commerce cms and basic to intermediate SEO --- i would refer to a friend of mine for advanced SEO if client so wished.

AM I right in saying that the client is a NEW shop and not the shop that is #1 with 3,000,000 monthly searches... If the client is a well established firm as such then my pricing would drastically increase... but for a new start-up with a shop of say 200 products - i would charge £2,400 - and we could get it done in a month sharpish.

If they wanted a completely new e-commerce designed specifically for them - I would refer them - not in our skillset.

[Gareth Daine]

Wow, a month. That is completely unrealistic. How do you plan to achieve this. LMAO.

Acuity, on Apr 7 2009, 14:34, said:

£2,400 to design and develop and basic to intermediate SEO --- i would refer to a friend of mine for advanced SEO if client so wished.

AM I right in saying that the client is a NEW shop and not the shop that is #1 with 3,000,000 monthly searches... If the client is a well established firm as such then my pricing would drastically increase... but for a new start-up with a shop of say 200 products - i would charge £2,400 - and we could get it done in a month sharpish.

[Acuity]

We could design a new site and customise with basic to intermediate SEO, using something like PrestaShop for the shop side in a month... Please take heed of the word 'we'.. Also, you quoted my post, before I edited it and made the distinction between using an existing open source or developing something new.

[Gareth Daine]

I see what you mean but I think you misunderstand the question. He's talking about getting an already built website a number one position for a competitive keyword that has 3 million plus searches a month.

Acuity, on Apr 7 2009, 14:40, said:

We could design a new site and customise with basic to intermediate SEO, using something like PrestaShop for the shop side in a month...

[Acuity]

Ahhh, apologies. Wouldn't touch that with a barge pole - not an SEO expert and am VERY skeptical about paying SEO agencies thousands of pounds to make you number one in google. I know, alot of people who have thrown money at such agencies and seen a measly improvement in relation to their investment

[lazytycoon]

FYI

tony blair charges £6000 per minute or... £360000 per hour

[wildcard*]

andymayhem, on Apr 7 2009, 14:45, said:

FYI

tony blair charges £6000 per minute or... £360000 per hour

You have got to be kidding me!!

[neilp]

No matter how good you are at SEO, it takes months if not years to get ranked in the top ten on google.

Then again i ain't no expert....... And i haven't enough experience to know that......em?........so what am i doing on here posting?

Hang on...? WHERE AM I...???????? ARRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr!

[Jarvooo]

I personally charge each site on its own merits, whether its a new design, how much needs doing to make it compatible/better and such, personally i dont overcharge i dont think infact ive been knocked for the price. Currently i do an offer which involves 3 Months free SEO; only for £400.00 - if people ask for SEO or anything; on each case its judged but usually ranges between £200 - £400 for initial improvements and around £50 - £300 per month afterwards

Everyone is different, i think my price is extremely reasonable though

[caraewilton]

Okay I am not an expert, and I am not sure I perfectly understand even this thread.

Are you saying you charge people for achieving page rank #1 on google?

I am not sure how anybody can guarantee this.

Let's break this up and start by looking at Google. How is page rank determined? In it's simplest form, back in the days it was something similar to a popularity contest. The more pages linking to a page the popular the page, the higher the rank. Okay this all created a market, SEO. To maintain integrity, Google changed the rules. Google started looking at more things like the amount of times a word appears on a page, etc. Today, what exactly is used to calculate page rank is only known by Google, and they are not telling as this would violate the validity of Google searches.

So how can a web site developer guarantee page rank?

Last week I had someone ask me to build them a site and they wanted good ranking on Google. I explained that I could not guarantee this, but would do everything to ensure the best chance. They have gone with someone else that has promised them place on page one of Google by Christmas. It is all a load of rubbish! It can't be guaranteed and further even if page rank #1 is attained there is no guarantee it can be maintained as Google changes the rules at there discretion.

[Jarvooo]

I dont ever guarentee 1st page on google, for alot of clients, its almost impossible to do; i can guarentee however to substantially improve their page ranks and eligibility with search engines, generate traffic of a higher percentage than current, that kind of thing.

False promises wont get anyone anywhere; merely result in a charge back later in the year when that number one place just doesnt happen

[lazytycoon]

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No matter how good you are at SEO, it takes months if not years to get ranked in the top ten on google.

Exactly, at least 12months followed by continuous on going work as stated in OP. ;-P

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Currently i do an offer which involves 3 Months free SEO;

What do you get for this? please dont say H1 and meta...

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Are you saying you charge people for achieving page rank #1 on google?

Non, I charge people on SERPs.

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I am not sure how anybody can guarantee this.

By working hard for a long time.

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Let's break this up and start by looking at Google. How is page rank determined? In it's simplest form, back in the days it was something similar to a popularity contest. The more pages linking to a page the popular the page, the higher the rank. Okay this all created a market, SEO.

Yeah kinda, but the link has weight depending on the weight of the site linking which is determined by the weight of the sites linking to them etc.

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To maintain integrity, Google changed the rules. Google started looking at more things like the amount of times a word appears on a page, etc. Today, what exactly is used to calculate page rank is only known by Google, and they are not telling as this would violate the validity of Google searches.

And to maintain integrity Google stopped giving as much weight to how many times a word was on a page because it was spammed. And the PR formula is here.

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So how can a web site developer guarantee page rank?

By knowing what he is doing... why are you placing so much emphasis on PR?

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Last week I had someone ask me to build them a site and they wanted good ranking on Google. I explained that I could not guarantee this, but would do everything to ensure the best chance.

What was everything? surely if you would do everything you could guarantee this... Did you even do any research to see the strength of the competition? it could have been that just a keyword URL would have ranked them on page 1.

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They have gone with someone else that has promised them place on page one of Google by Christmas. It is all a load of rubbish!

Why is it a load of rubbish? If they went with you they would have a website, nothing else. If they go with the other guy they have an internet marketing plan... Its like a flyer, what good is 10000 flyers if they are sat on my desk? They need to be thrown out there, handed out, posted etc. The funny thing is that he is probably paying 5x more with the other guy and because you havent bothered to learn anything about SEO, about what can and cant be guaranteed your losing out on clients. I urge you and everyone else to stop selling a website, a web site is nothing without any marketing behind it holding it up and getting visitors. you need to educate them and tell them it takes a lot to be heard over all of the white noise.

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no guarantee it can be maintained as Google changes the rules at there discretion.

And thats why we are paid retainers, clients see how much money we have helped them make and keep paying us to keep them there.

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I dont ever guarentee 1st page on google, for alot of clients, its almost impossible to do;

LOL, nothing is impossible, it just takes time and effort. Be honest and cost accordingly, you never know you might win that £100k contract!

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i can guarentee however to substantially improve their page ranks and eligibility with search engines,

Ok PR is a great indicator of site strength but it doesnt have much of an effect on how it ranks. Also, how would you go about achieving a PR9 for my site?

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generate traffic of a higher percentage than current

This should never ever ever ever be the aim, it will result in high bounce rates and low conversion rates. You need highly qualified targeted traffic.

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False promises wont get anyone anywhere; merely result in a charge back later in the year when that number one place just doesnt happen

How would you qualify a false promise? Most SEO guys I know work out how much work is going to have to be done and charge for that work. in most cases the desired effect will be achieved however the top10 sites might hire an SEO at the same time and what they have done wouldnt work. But because the work has been done how could it be charged back?


I dont understand how we started walking down the past of guaranteed SERPs so lets get back on track. I am asking how much do you think you would charge to help build a £1m pa business.

Id charge 10-15%, so £100-150k with a further £5-15k pm once position has been achieved. Please bare in mind though that Id need an office and team to work on this so its not just my wages...

[caraewilton]

Sorry you are missing my point entirely and this is: you can not guarantee this stuff (be it page rank or the number of times people access a page or what ever else you want to call it), so it is unethical to charge for it. It comes down to playing with stats.

As an aside, Wikipedia is not a reliable source! Google change their algorithms for determining where your page appears on a search for a key word or selection of key words from time to time so as to maintain the integrity of search engines. Lots of people make a living out of trying to figure out how to get the top.

Okay on a site I built, that has been up for nine months. On the main key words which is ICT IGCSE I appear number 17, ie page 2. Yesterday I had 141 page loads, 63 where new visitors, which mean the other half were coming back. Now considering in June of last year my site had not even been indexed by Google, so quiet an improvement but still not very good. So, I continue working at the site. I add content to the site weekly, write articles which are relevant to the topic and so on. But I am not presumptuous enough to suggest that I can guarantee that I'll be on page one by the end of the year, and I just don't believe anybody can honestly do so.

[lazytycoon]

Quote

Sorry you are missing my point entirely and this is: you can not guarantee this stuff (be it page rank or the number of times people access a page or what ever else you want to call it), so it is unethical to charge for it. It comes down to playing with stats.

You have very little understanding of this subject, if this stuff was just like fairy dust then why would people pay for it and then continue to pay for it after seeing results? Why do people actively seek me out?

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Google change their algorithms for determining where your page appears on a search for a key word or selection of key words from time to time so as to maintain the integrity of search engines

No they dont, ok yes they do. There are lots of little tweeks they make but most dont make any difference, if your site has been professionally looked after your SEO would have created a diverse link profile and you will be uneffected. Ok sometimes they do make a difference, its the dampening effect and well its high level stuff so I wont bother explaining it.

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Lots of people make a living out of trying to figure out how to get the top.

= Me...

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Yesterday I had 141 page loads, 63 where new visitors, which mean the other half were coming back.

Erm, no it doesn't. It means that you 63 visitors looked at an average of 2.2 pages... would be interesting to know your bounce rate.

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Now considering in June of last year my site had not even been indexed by Google, so quiet an improvement but still not very good

Getting a site indexed by google is crazy simple and your niche isnt competitive at all so your right, being #17 is poor. Infact I could get your site to the top spot within 1 month, or one of my own that I designed today.

Quote

But I am not presumptuous enough to suggest that I can guarantee that I'll be on page one by the end of the year, and I just don't believe anybody can honestly do so.

This is because, and im not being rude, but you know nothing about SEO. If you did yo would know that you can get to page 1 through hard work, its not a miracle or chance that the top 10 sites are the top 10.

[caraewilton]

andymayhem, on Apr 13 2009, 14:32, said:

You have very little understanding of this subject

In that case you could choose to ignore my opinion.
Please note however, I was not using my page stats as an example of excellence, in fact I did say, "it is not good", but one could argue there has been a 100% improvement.
After reading your responses, I remain unconvinced that anyone can guarantee SEO.

[lazytycoon]

i had to reply because you were giving false information.

[caraewilton]

Nothing I have said is false! My opinion that guaranteeing top place on Google is rubbish, is my opinion.

[lazytycoon]

ok if i gave you 1 piece of info which if you followed would see you at the top spot in weeks would you still think its rubbish?

[Alliance Studio]

I'm definately with Andy on this one, if you know what you are doing then you can guarantee to get a client to a certain position on Google for certain keywords. Where that position is depends on how competitive that keyword is.

[caraewilton]

Actually after reviewing this entire thread I have decided I was wrong to post at all as you were asking a specific case and the worth there of. I gave my opinion on the topic in general. For this, I apologize

[Avera]

Wow - what a thread!

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£2,400 to design and customise an open source e-commerce cms and basic to intermediate SEO --- i would refer to a friend of mine for advanced SEO if client so wished.

That's a good price - our smallest client pays us nearly double that per month. Out of that over half goes towards SEO with a "friend" company.

Quote

Wow, a month. That is completely unrealistic. How do you plan to achieve this. LMAO.

No - it's not COMPLETELY unrealistic. - It depends on who's doing the SEO and how many "Authorative" websites they have on hand to gain links from! We have one client that our "freind" SEO company helped release their website on January 6th and by the 24th they were at position 6 for some high profile, very enviable, keywords.

Thing is that SEO is not too difficult - it's just the best SEOs in the UK work for some of the largest companies, or if they don't they work via companies like ours.

[Avera]

Alliance Studio, on Apr 13 2009, 15:34, said:

I'm definately with Andy on this one, if you know what you are doing then you can guarantee to get a client to a certain position on Google for certain keywords. Where that position is depends on how competitive that keyword is.

I would say it may be a little ambitious to say that you can possibly guarantee the actual numeric position - but a good SEO should be able to guarantee something like "page 1" or "page 2" etc etc etc. And an SEO that is capable of this would usually offer you a money back guarantee.

Oh yeah and also - most SEOs can get you to the first page on Google for almost any keyphrase. The good SEO will ensure you stay there.

caraewilton, on Apr 13 2009, 15:35, said:

Actually after reviewing this entire thread I have decided I was wrong to post at all as you were asking a specific case and the worth there of. I gave my opinion on the topic in general. For this, I apologize

I disagree with you - you are expressing your opinion. Just because your facts may have been a little off the mark that does not mean your opinion is worth any less.

[caraewilton]

First of all, I do apologise for messing up this thread as I got involved in a side issue and personal pet peeve.

Please note, I do respect what SEO experts do and further believe it is valuable, although I do remain skeptical on how one measures success. I am skeptical of statistics as a rule. And I do not believe one can guarantee placement.

I do believe that good copy, relevant content, frequent updates, writing relevant articles for other good sites and so on all contribute to better placement.

With reference to my own site, it is a hobby, and I am not that interested in Google placement anyway. I am not trying to sell anything and my livelihood is in no way based on the success of this site.

I do not claim to be an SEO expert either. I am of the opinion that we live in an instant coffee society where everyone expects instant results and I do not believe SEO is instant. Actually you did say it "it takes hard work" and it requires constant maintenance. When I read your initial thread I got the impression you were suggesting instant success, which is what my basic pet peeve in this regard is.

[Avera]

caraewilton, on Apr 13 2009, 16:08, said:

First of all, I do apologise for messing up this thread as I got involved in a side issue and personal pet peeve.

From what I have read - you didn't mess it up - you made some good points.

caraewilton, on Apr 13 2009, 16:08, said:

I do believe that good copy, relevant content, frequent updates, writing relevant articles for other good sites and so on all contribute to better placement.

And you're absolutely right - on-site SEO is equally as important as the off-site and incoming links.

caraewilton, on Apr 13 2009, 16:08, said:

With reference to my own site, it is a hobby, and I am not that interested in Google placement anyway. I am not trying to sell anything and my livelihood is in no way based on the success of this site.

Yes - but your site will be an important source of the information YOU offer, therefore Google will (over time) recognise that and reward it.

---

A general thought:

Too many people believe that they are experts when it comes to SEO. The fact is that no-one can claim to be an SEO "expert" because there are no concrete facts as the 3 big search engines keep their cards too close to their chest and are always one step ahead.

The thing about having a successful website is that you must, as the member above has quite rightly said, concentrate on your on-site content. Making your site interesting will naturally attract bloggers and forum members to link to you.

This in it's self in time will ensure that you are placed in the SE's reletively to how interesting and important your website is.

Artificially gaining links is very lucrative and if done incorrectly can do you more harm than good. That said, not paying for links and convincing people to link to you is just giving them a push... Nothing wrong with that.

[Avera]

Back to the point of this thread...

I have had many a discussion with other members of this forum and some members think what we charge is outragious, on the other hand other members commend that we have got to such a point where the companies we deal with are willing to pay our fees.

It's generally the more high profile companies that we deal with that are willing to pay our fees. The thing is that we have gained years of exerience and we have delivered exactly what the client asked for and on time!

Anyone can say they can do something - we have proved it. ...and that's invaluable.

One of the downsides of working with large companies is that they restrict you from putting samples of work for them in your portfolio as they want the rest of the world to think that they have an in-house website team.

I sometimes think that small companies like ours are lucky to have relationships with these larger companies, but then again - we have worked very hard over the last 11 years to put us in a position such as this.

It is also companies like ours that can be the inspiration for small one-man outfits - just showing that if you work hard (and my goodness have we worked hard), that your one-man operation can turn into something quite enviable.