More on SEO Pricing and Costs
Are You Scared of Paying for SEO?
Increasingly I’m seeing companies who are new to the concept of having their website search engine-optimized, or SEOd, balking at the prices we charge. In most cases the problem is that they’re not convinced that SEO is a worthwhile expense for them. My advice to them invariably is, if you don’t want to pay for this service, then simply don’t. Wait it out and see what happens. Like so many others, you can wait and see if SEO is just going to ‘go away.’
In the meantime, all your most aggressive competitors will seek and find competent SEO people to do work for them. Maybe even me.
I no longer have the time to convince anyone that they need my help. They’ll find out for themselves when the time is right.
Don’t Let the SEO Boat Pass You By!
You know what that means? By the time they realize what’s going on, their competitors will have a huge head start on them. That doesn’t mean the situation will be hopeless: nothing in this life is ever hopeless. But it does mean that they are losing business to the competition unless and until they get some decent SEO work done. Yes, the competition is eating their lunch!
How Much Should SEOs Charge?
But still, exactly how much to charge is a matter of confusion for people buying SEO services, and a matter of significant dilemma for those like me who are selling it. We shouldn’t feel guilty for doing something that takes such an enormous amount of our time, and for which we’ve spent countless hours collecting the knowledge to be able to do well. But we are sometimes made to feel guilty, so it’s worth pointing out why we charge what we do.
Let me stress the point because it’s important: Good SEO is extremely time consuming. There are no short cuts. We might spend a couple of days analyzing a your website and your most successful competion before we’re ready to make changes that will count.
But naturally, that’s not to say that all SEO operatives are of equal ability.
Personally, I’ve sub-contracted for quite a few larger companies than my own, whose in-house staff are nowhere near as competent as I am. I frequently find myself explaining basic SEO concepts (while rolling my eyes). Usually they’re benefiting from my knowledge free of charge at this stage.
I’d like to draw some attention to what Rand Fishkin said on SEOmoz last summer regarding the vast discrepancy in the standards of services provided by SEO:
“Generally speaking, however, if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is (as folks like Internet Advancement continue to prove). SEO is a challenging practice that requires both technical proficiency and a great understanding of marketing on the Internet. The fact that very smart people at very big brands make decisions to pay $500-$1,000 an hour to spend time talking to the best and brightest (and, yes, most notable) from the field of search marketing is one of many great pieces of evidence of the value of SEO.”
It is vital that you check out the SEO company you’re planning to hire. Let them refer you to people they’ve done work for. But once you’ve made your decision, don’t be surprised if they want to charge you up-front. It’s only fair: a website audit, competitive analysis and proposal take a lot of time and contain the author’s intellectual property. They deserve to know that they won’t get ripped off once you have this valuable knowledge in your hands.
In 2006 Rand Fishkin wrote a superb article about pricing an SEO campaign.
For a further point of reference, I’m going to reproduce Rand’s very interesting table:
|
Service |
Low End |
Mid Range |
High End |
|
Site Review + Consulting |
$500 |
$2,500 |
$10,000 |
|
Hands-On Editing of Pages/Code |
$2,000 |
$10,000 |
$50,000 |
|
Manual Link Building Campaign |
$500 |
$5,000 |
$20,000 |
|
1-Day SEO Training Seminar |
$750 |
$4,000 |
$12,000 |
|
Keyword Research Package |
$100 |
$500 |
$2,000 |
|
Viral Content Development + Mktg |
$1,000 |
$7,500 |
$20,000 |
|
Web Design, Development + Mktg |
$5,000 |
$25,000 |
$100K+ |
|
Monthly Retainer for Ongoing SEO |
$2,500 |
$7,500 |
$20,000+ |
Most of the SEOs I know charge in the mid-range, as do I. But people like Rand Fishkin, Michael Martinez, Andy Beal, and Bill Hartzer charge higher prices because they are leaders in the industry. They have a right to charge more for being the best. I picked these out of the thousands of successful and highly-respected SEOs in the industry because these are the ones I personally like best.
Of course it isn’t necessarily so that the most expensive SEO firm will be the best, just as cheap ones are not always awful, but you can depend on the names I’ve just mentioned.
As a parting shot, I’m anticipating some naysayers questioning my choice of Rand Fishkin as a resource for so much information on SEO campaign pricing. Quite simply it’s that no one else has put themselves on the line and come up with resources like he has. Rand can be counted on to tackle subjects related to SEO that everyone else shys away from. He has my utmost respect for that.
Social Networking Sites I Love and Depend On
Guide to Networking with twitter
There’s no shortage of social networking sites online. In fact, if you’re like me you sort of get a sinking feeling every time you see that another one has been launched. It’s getting overwhelming. And worse, most of them are a total waste of time; a short flash-in-the-pan that fades away to nothing.
I actually thought twitter was going to be like that. Boy was I in for a surprise. I never thought this tiny, simple micro-blogging application would soon be the one I use more than any other. In fact, twitter has a way of growing on you, and now I see it as my most useful networking tool: I can easily choose who I network with. I have even been getting backlinks from twitter, and a small amount of traffic (hey, traffic is never to be sneezed at, especially if it’s targeted).
It would be churlish of me to try and create a twitter resource without making reference to others who have done a far better job than I might have done:
Let’s start with this ‘how to’ guide from New Media Bytes. It tells you all you need to know to get twittering in the shortest amount of time. I should mention that it was intended for journalists, but bloggers and just about anyone else will find it very useful too.
Second up we have Lee Odden over at Top Rank Blog with a pretty comprehensive twitter guide.
This list of SEO twitterers is the work of MarketingPilgrim, and you’re going to love it if you’re at all interested in SEO.
That should be more than enough to get you started on twitter. Now tell me you don’t love it?
Stumbleupon: How to Get Tons of Traffic in One Easy Lesson
Stumbleupon quickly became my all-time favorite once I reinstalled it last year. I say reinstalled because I dabbled with it some years ago when it was new on the web, but couldn’t see a purpose for it at the time. Wrong again. When I began using it this time, I noticed a curious thing just a few days after I installed it: a huge spike in my web traffic. I couldn’t understand it–about a thousand visitors from nowhere. When I investigated, every single one of them had come from Stumbleupon. I was excited about this discovery–so much free traffic at absolutely no cost–it deserved to be investigated.
Oh, just one word of caution here: I actually had to change my hosting provider once I started using Stumbleupon because they closed me down a couple of times saying I had used up all my bandwidth. Don’t burn traffic by not being prepared for it when it comes with plenty of usable bandwidth.
You can be sure this nugget of information piqued my interest: The more active you are on Stumbleupon, the more traffic you get. So you can even control how much traffic you get. But you can’t just go in there and spam members. If you do you run the risk of getting buried, or worse. Be sure you’re doing it right: read these highly informative articles about using Stumbleupon before you even download the Stumbleupon toolbar. This one is for Firefox, but you’ll find the IE version there too.
Here’s an explanation of how to use Stumblupon like a Pro that should put you in a great place to start stumbling right away.
Tamar Weinberg wrote this Stumbleupon How-to guide for 10e2 a year ago, but it’s well worth a trip over to read it.
Andy Wibbels wrote this article about how to find great websites using Stumbleupon, and this is useful information too.
OK, so now you know why you should be using twitter and Stumbleupon. Don’t forget to follow me (I’ll reciprocate) on twitter, and be my friend on Stumbleupon. See you there. 
Is Google Laughing At Us?
Repeatedly we’re reading predictions that Google is going to be replaced as THE search engine pretty soon. Naturally, the runner-up search engines would have a hand in Google’s demise if they could. But I see it as indicative of Google’s true strength that despite the best efforts of their enemies, Google seems to be riding the waves so far.
Why would Google laugh at all the dire predictions that this behemoth is going to hit the runway? Well from their perspective things have probably never looked better. Let’s take a look at the facts.
- They rule the roost as far as search is concerned, and at the moment no other search engine looks even close to catching up with them (I get around ten times as much traffic from Google as I do from Yahoo or Windows Live and it’s probably a similar story for most websites out there).
- They are expanding in every direction and into different segments of the online market.
- They are the authority as far as achieving a high profile business online is concerned.
But, they’re losing something that’s vital to any business large or small, and that is customer satisfaction, particularly among customers who are more web-savvy. What are Google’s customers (including myself) starting to worry about or question?
- More than once it has been suggested that the Google apparatus is dangerously large and their databases retain information that could be used against us.
- They are beginning to sound arrogant when complaints are leveled against them: it’s as if they know they’re #1 so it doesn’t matter if a few complain.
It would be interesting to hear other points of view on this topic. Please comment.
No-Cost Blog Tools You’ll Love
Just recently we’ve seen a number of new applications appear on the web to help online business, and in particular bloggers.
In my last couple of posts you heard about how important it is to track your web stats, and a few carefully considered suggestions from me. I promised to let you know about a new tracking program I just discovered called GoingUp. Well, the verdict’s in: I LOVE IT! Trust me, you should try this one. I’m using the free version which tells me just about everything I want to know about where my traffic is coming from, how much, and what they look at when they arrive at my blog. Heck, this free program even has heat maps, which as you know can be vital to successful online marketing.
Now the next tool is going to please you if you’ve ever wanted to post some information in PDF form on your blog or website. This absolutely beautiful little gadget from Issuu not only does the job efficiently, it makes your web page look so impressive. You can see it in action here in my copywriting secrets post on my other blog. I’m sure you’ll want to start using Issuu yourself right away, and when you’ve seen for yourself how great it is, please go and vote for it in the SXSW awards.
Many bloggers are getting a bit jaded about commenting because so many blog owners don’t realize that they’re depriving commenters from that all-important link goody by not changing WordPress’s default no-follow arrangement. If you’d like to encourage your visitors to leave comments (you should-they’re the life-blood of a blog), then check out the several so-called link-love plugins offered for WordPress users. I use Lucia’s Linky Love do-follow plugin. Don’t forget to adjust the plugin settings to give link goodness after a certain number of visits–3 seems to be optimal.
Well, I think that should be enough to be going on with for now. Please remember to comment (yes, you’ll get link goodness), and I’d also really appreciate a stumble. Thanks.
The Best Web Tracking Tools: Increase Traffic Flow and Conversions
If You’re Not Monitoring Traffic, You’re Falling Behind
Staying abreast of the growth of your blog or website online can be easier than you think, and it needn’t cost you anything. I’ve noticed that lately there has been a sharp rise in the number of companies offering free tracking so that you can keep an eye on what’s going on online.
But do be careful: there have been many calls for standards within the web tracking industry, and just because a company charges a great deal for their tracking software, doesn’t mean you’re going to get your money’s worth. It is definitely a case of Buyer Beware. What better way to find out which programs you should be using than seeing what professionals use?
The kind of tracking you’ll want to be doing for your blog or website depends on what you want to achieve. If you’re actively trying to sell something, then your tracking needs to be a great deal more precise than if you just want to increase your readership rates for example.
The basics of tracking are
· How much traffic?
· Where’s it coming from?
· What is it looking for?
· Was it satisfied on your pages?
· Can you identify trends that will allow you to increase a particular flow of traffic?
The more products or services you want to sell, the more complicated your tracking will become, particularly if you’re trying to attract a widely disparate demographic for each product.
I was going to create a separate list for the free and paid tracking applications, but some really good software is free, some not-so-good software is paid, and a lot of these applications offer a free and a paid version, so here goes:
A Rundown of What’s Out There
Google Analytics is a great free web tracking application. You just sign up and get the snippet of code to embed in your web page. You can even program goals for each page of your website with Google, and although there are paid programs with far more programmable options, this is a good start if you are totally new to tracking your stats. Just because it’s free, don’t underestimate Google Analytics: many professional search marketers use it (I admit often in conjunction with other programs). It’s basic, but it’s good and reliable. A common failing with many stats programs is that they go down, develop glitches and generally underperform so that you end up with huge holes in your stats records, which can be disastrous if you’re trying to make strategy decisions based on your stats.
IndexTools was recommended to me by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, so it has to be good. This application is obviously capable of coping with the stats for a huge and extremely busy site like SEOmoz, so it would be more than fine for the rest of us.
FireClick Again, Rand was the source for this one, but he told me that there was a lot of positive buzz about it in the industry. Again, a good sign.
Mint is the program of choice for DoshDosh. She told me she has tried many different applications and always returns to this and Google Analytics.
Awstats is just one of the applications I use, because it comes with my hosting package. You can read all about its advantages and disadvantages on Wikipedia.
CrazyEgg has been around for a while. This application is one of a new generation of stats applications that will show you just where your visitor looked on the page with the aid of a ‘heat map.’ If you study the information carefully it will show you where on your web page you need to put your most important information and your click-thru mechanism. It can help you decide where to put ads and give you ideas for improving page layout. I’ve been using CrazyEgg since 2006.
GoingUp is another great application I’ve just discovered. It’s quite simple, but it’s also simple to use, which is good if you don’t have much experience. There’s a free and a paid version. I’ll let you know more about that once I’ve had a chance to try it out.
Another company, called OneStat, claims to have over 75,000 subscribers. An application with that many followers has to have something going for it, so it’s worth looking at.
Be aware that heat maps are the way to go for anyone who is serious about online success. Many of the biggest and most successful online companies, who incidentally are incredibly secretive about the tools they use for their success, make a point of utilizing heat maps to tweak their web pages for optimum effectiveness. This technology is quite possibly THE most significant advance in tracking technology. While CrazyEgg leads the field in heat map tracking software, ClickDensity is another one to consider, and their software does have some slightly different features.
This is by no means an exhaustive list: it’s meant to get you started, or perhaps to draw your attention to some programs you might not have heard of. I can do another piece about this if enough of you write in with information on the applications you use.
What to do With Your Results
Learning what your visitors are doing can be nothing short of a revelation. However, before you make any drastic changes to your website or blog, be sure that you’ve monitored enough visitors. A couple of thousand should do it. And when you do make changes, introduce them one at a time so that you can then monitor the results before you go on to the next change. ClickDensity in fact has a good article about making changes on your site according to your heat map findings.
The Secret’s Out: What Tracking Can do for You
Want to know what’s the single most important thing you can do to increase your conversion and grow your business? No, I’m not about to sell you on some insane program. This is vital stuff that you can and should be doing for low-cost or free.
Again and again search marketers tell their clients that they really, really need to track everything they do. Sadly a lot of the time this sage advice falls on deaf ears. If you’re new to the business the whys and wherefores of tracking everything you do online can be missed, to be sure.
But this subject is worth grappling with and I can’t think of a better example than Facebook, which is now worth a whopping $15 billion according to the (very reasonable) calculations of Danny Dover over at SEOmoz.org
Just for the sake of comparison, MySpace changed hands in 2005 for a mere $580 million, yet it has been around for much longer than Facebook, which is only five years old, and the MySpace user base was over 100 million as of 2006.
Now why should Facebook be worth so much more than any of the other social networking sites?
It’s all down to tracking. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tracked everything his members do and stored that information.
So what?
Well just think for a moment how much more effective it would be if you wanted to place an ad on Facebook, and you could choose the age and gender of your target market. Not only that, but you could match your product to their interests (just to mention a few simple parameters of search). Just think how much you could increase your conversion rate by knowing these details and being able to target in this way.
Well, that’s the secret. That’s why advertising on Facebook is likely to be so much more effective than advertising on any of the other social marketing sites.
Now, almost certainly this information is going to have you rushing out to arrange for tracking of your site. Good idea. But before you do it take the time to shop around. If your web hosting doesn’t provide you with a range of comprehensive tracking tools (mine does: the button to HostGator is to your right over there), then go and sign up immediately with Google Analytics. Its free, you can track as many sites as you want, and you can even set some goals for yourself over there.
Stay tuned for a post on the best tracking tools out there in the next day or two.
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