SEO Experts - What Do You Do?

[AlisonPitman]

To all you SEO experts out there - can you explain to me why you charge a monthly fee?
What do you do every month to a website ? Once a website is optimized, its optimized isn't it? I would be immensly grateful if you could tell me what services are generally included in a monthly fee?

Thank you in advance!
Alison

[AlisonPitman]

Links from where to where? How do you know if they have any value? What if you have them already?

[uprint]

Well as the Google algo changes then so does the requirements for the site to remain or increase it's position in the serps. An SEO professional will be well versed in the changes and what is required to keep their clients' sites ranking highly for their chosen keywords.

It's not a case of acheiving a high ranking and taking the foot off the pedal, it's a continuous exercise of tweaking copy, site structure, link building and anything else to stay ahead of the competition who will be doing their best to rank higher.

Another factor is the changing keywords that may require work, as you launch new products and services these will require SEO and link building. A decent SEO professional will provide reporting and feedback on what they're doing - and it should be clear in your results as to whether it's worthwhile continuing.

Steve

[NikkiPilkington]

I charge a monthly fee that covers reporting, ongoing work (link building, tips and recommendations, etc) and ensure that, should the listings drop for whatever reason, then work is done to regain them.

If it were just a one off job, then someone would optimise their site, get to number one for a keyphrase, and no-one would ever be able to move them.

A one off fee is a boost in the arm, a monthly fee is regular immunisation.

[AdwordsPro]

Originally Posted by AlisonPitman

To all you SEO experts out there - can you explain to me why you charge a monthly fee?
What do you do every month to a website ? Once a website is optimized, its optimized isn't it? I would be immensly grateful if you could tell me what services are generally included in a monthly fee?

Thank you in advance!
Alison

Hi Alison,

It's a good question and you are right to ask it in what is largely an unregulated industry.

I charge monthly to spread the cost to my customers - simple as that. Some months I'm ahead, but certainly in the early days I'm not. There's also an element of paying for instant support - you don't use an IT support contract most of the time but it's comforting to know it will respond when it needs to.

If you need internet marketing services, but you don't want to (or can't) do it yourself, and can't afford to pay someone a salary to do it (few can) - what other choice is there but to pay for part of someone's time every month to do it for you?

Hope that helps!

Rob Hadingham
Adwords Professional & SEO Craftsman

Advice & tips: Adwords Expert on FreeIndex
Follow me: AdwordsPro on Twitter
Adwords Professional Directory at ecademy
Adwords Professional Status at Google

[chillfire]

I charge a monthly amount to cover pretty much all of what has been said above.
do it to give some ownership of the project to me, its really easy for anyone to come in and say they are an SEO god, fake some reports, use loads of seo terms to wow a customer - cowboys - and get a big fee to run all manner of reports and deliver an online strategy for a website, take the cash and then run for the hills, never to be available on their phone, emails bounce etc etc.

So by meeting (and invoicing) my customers every month, I take on a role within their company, not just the guy who turned up with a 60 page document (or powerpoint presentation) about what's needed to get the site to no1 on every search engine and got paid £20k for it.

Hey if I dont do my job and the data doesn't add up well, so far it hasn't, but they could say good bye without having spent loads of cash on a copy and paste job.

I realise cowboy bit sounds harsh, but the report I saw that was done for one of my customers (I built there website after this joker had done his report) was a word doc, and in the properties of this said document was the authors name (not his) , the authors company (not his) and the title of the document and guess what it wasn't the company he was getting paid by...

There is much to be said for Find + Replace....

rant over.
//craig

[dineenjohn]

Its worth paying for the right SEO advice. Don't try to do it on the cheap. Choose someone who has proven their expertise in getting sites in your vertical to rank.

Unfortunately SEO is not a do it once and forget about it process. It needs constant work.

I would recommend that you buy in the expertise but get them to coach you /or a member of your team on what changes they're making. If you are concerned about SEO its obviously important to your business.

[matt.chatterley]

Originally Posted by NikkiPilkington

I charge a monthly fee that covers reporting, ongoing work (link building, tips and recommendations, etc) and ensure that, should the listings drop for whatever reason, then work is done to regain them.

If it were just a one off job, then someone would optimise their site, get to number one for a keyphrase, and no-one would ever be able to move them.

A one off fee is a boost in the arm, a monthly fee is regular immunisation.

Good answer (as usual)

We're the same - we charge a montly fee for reporting plus any ongoing time which the customer has asked to be spent on their site - this could be ongoing competitive analysis, split testing or even link-building (tend not to do the latter in most cases, mind you).

It varies from client to client as well, literally depending on how much time per month (or per quarter) they want us to spend on them - which boils down to what we are doing and how complicated it is.

We do tend to do a fair bit of 'one-off' onsite optimisation - tidy up, improve, check results, that's it - then revisit after a longer period of time (e.g once the site dips back down), but that wouldn't be my personal preference!

[johnvdenley]

Alison,

I'm not even claiming to be an SEO expert, but after just a brief look at your website and had an interesting journey!

The first keywords on listed in the head section of your page are "british female voiceover" but if you type that into google then you are not obviously on the first page of the replies. Google suggests "did you mean: 'british female voice over'" and if you do type that in, then there you are listed 8th on the natural search results.

However I was then about to suggest that you created youtube & twitter accounts and a facebook page and have them all link into your website. I noticed a youtube video listed on the first page and clicked on that, only to find out that it was actually you! Then I clicked on the first listing on the first search I did, about to suggest that you copy whatever they are doing... and who knew, its you again!... Hmmm certainly feels all a little disjointed.

My first suggestion is to look at updating the website, getting a personal face on your site (see Sabrina and Janina's sites - get it done professionally though) and have a consistent look and feel and connection between all your touchpoints.....

<note to any SEO experts reading this - yes I know that keywords in the head section are NOT even vaguely part of proper SEO work, but they do give an indication as to what Alison (or at least the person who created the website [which needs a fresh update BTW]) THOUGHT were the words they were expecting someone to search for>

[Corporate photographer London]

Hi Alison

I was in a similar position as you a couple of months back and had some very interesting discussions with recommended seo experts, but could not afford the monthly costs. So I decided to knuckle down and do it myself. I would be happy to give you any tips you require, the first I would suggest is to create a profile at LinkedIn. Focus on the exact keywords you want to be found under in google and then try and associate your website with those keywords on as many external sites that you can. Dont go down the route of submitting to any paid link submission sites. I focused on the term 'corporate photographer London' and if you google these keywords you will see me at no 2- soon to be number 1!

[wood1e]

I think you have already got the asnwers you may be looking for, in terms of what a monthly fee should provide.

If you are thinking of doing your own SEO. I would take some time and read all about it. There are many places on the net with information about what is good and what is not.

You can obviously ask here when you are unsure of something.

But doing it yourself, is not just about what keywords you think you need to rank for. These could be the obvious ones, but bring in about 1 visitor a month and convert zero!! That is a little extreme, but you have to be careful not to bet everything on one or two obvious keywords.

I would make sure you website is coded as cleanly as possible

Research your niche, look at where you competitors are ranked, how they got there, what number of visitors a high ranking can achieve for that keyword.

Look at what keywords are more viable than others. There is loads of software that can help you with this.

Make sure the keywords that pay are within the content of your website...and that they are grammatical included and not just dumped into your page.

Your page titles reflect the keywords you want to rank higher in and that those keywords are the ones that are within the content of that page

Make sure you have a Google webmaster Account/Google Analytics (requires some coding to be pasted into your webpages)

This will help tell Google what you are doing and what you want to be found under and then using Analytics lets you see where people are coming from, how long they stayed on the website..etc etc.

You could find that getting a high ranking for 'Tenby Corn Farmers' is easy one because you are using a geo centric element to your keyword ie your home town/town and two because there are no corn farmers in your region and therefore not a very competitive niche.

Or there could be loads of 'Corn Farmers' but none with websites and therefore making the niche competitive in the real world and un-competitive in the virtual world.

That is where the monthly fees come in, making sure when the real competitors get into the virtual world you can keep up or better keep ahead.

There is possibly a lot more that I could write, but it would turn into 'War and Peace' and would quite possible make your eyes lids very heavy and shut!!

But I hope this helps even just a little bit!!

[paulfeakins]

Hi Alison,

These are all excellent answers. You probably know this already but there are 2 main things that Google uses to rank a website:

1. How relevant it is to a user's search i.e. how often the keywords the user has searched for appear on the website and where they appear.

2. How many other websites link to your website and what quality are they. Obviously, the more the better!

There are hundreds of other factors but those are the two big ones and I've written an article (Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing - Antropy Consulting) with plenty more detail, hopefully written in plain English without jargon!

Paul.

[SuperKarim]

I do consulting for one firm, partially out of favor to a friend, however I have a network of my own sites that I run, I routinely turn down clients because I'm well occupied with my own sites and make enough money from them to keep me more than happy. I don't understand why a good SEO person would work for someone else.

[NikkiPilkington]

Originally Posted by SuperKarim

I don't understand why a good SEO person would work for someone else.

What an absolutely ridiculous thing to say! I work for others (as well has having my own sites) because I like to work with other businesses, I like the rewards (financial and emotional) and because otherwise i'd be bored out of my tiny brain.

Do you ask the baker why he makes bread for others? The marketing person why he has clients?

Sometimes I really do despair...

[SuperKarim]

Originally Posted by NikkiPilkington

What an absolutely ridiculous thing to say! I work for others (as well has having my own sites) because I like to work with other businesses, I like the rewards (financial and emotional) and because otherwise i'd be bored out of my tiny brain.

Do you ask the baker why he makes bread for others? The marketing person why he has clients?

Sometimes I really do despair...

Well that argument is a bit silly, a baker bakes bread to others, period. Although a self employed baker will tend to be of higher pedigree than a baker employed inside supermarkets in most cases. And certainly is the case with butchers, I've been sold the wrong cut of meat by several supermarket butchers in the past.

Anyway, I don't understand why a SEO person will need to work for others, if you're bored with what you do, then create another website for a different niche.

[KevJaques]

It's all dough in the end innit although the saying going around atm is if you use money, you lose money

Do you ask the baker why he makes bread for others?

No I don't because I have kind of figured out that he cannot eat it all himself and who was it who said that man cannot live on bread alone?

I don't understand why a good SEO person would work for someone else.

I often wonder about this too. The rewards from Adsense and other forms of advertising on a properly optimised website are very high. If I could guarantee high rankings for all websites then there is no way I would be working for anyone else. I would be too busy creating websites for myself that would make me very rich.

The reason that most SEO people tie businesses into a monthly charge is because it offers them an ongoing income as opposed to a one off fee. They also know that few of their clients really understand what is going on so they can get away with it. The truth for most small businesses is that if their website is properly optimised in the first instance no monthly charge is required. All it takes is a few inbound links, interesting content and an occasional review.

I never make any guarantees about SEO. In fact I go out of my way to tell all of my clients that successful SEO cannot be guaranteed. Having said that, I have several clients who get all the business they need from their websites and they do not pay for any other form of advertising.

I do not charge any of them a monthly fee but if SEO is important to them I do keep an eye on their progress and make suggestions to them about things they may want to change as and when required.

[Vibe Tech Media]

Originally Posted by BDW

No I don't because I have kind of figured out that he cannot eat it all himself and who was it who said that man cannot live on bread alone?

I often wonder about this too. The rewards from Adsense and other forms of advertising on a properly optimised website are very high. If I could guarantee high rankings for all websites then there is no way I would be working for anyone else. I would be too busy creating websites for myself that would make me very rich.

The reason that most SEO people tie businesses into a monthly charge is because it offers them an ongoing income as opposed to a one off fee. They also know that few of their clients really understand what is going on so they can get away with it. The truth for most small businesses is that if their website is properly optimised in the first instance no monthly charge is required. All it takes is a few inbound links, interesting content and an occasional review.

I never make any guarantees about SEO. In fact I go out of my way to tell all of my clients that successful SEO cannot be guaranteed. Having said that, I have several clients who get all the business they need from their websites and they do not pay for any other form of advertising.

I do not charge any of them a monthly fee but if SEO is important to them I do keep an eye on their progress and make suggestions to them about things they may want to change as and when required.

I think I agree with you here. I've tested a few SEO services both UK based and out side of the UK. If I'm honest, they do what I do, then charge me £40+ an hour to report on what I could have already done.

I appreciate that this is a generalisation and that the sites I've used them on are not Google.com or the ebay.com's of this world, but rankings are rankings. I've ranked sites personally, using my time, for a fraction of the price a "professional" would have cost.

That being said I'm still determined to find an SEO expert. I don't care if they charge £50 or even £100 an hour, as long as they do a good job. If they can get my site ranking with 100 hours works, when it would have taken be 1,000 hours work...then it is worth while

[andicrook]

Originally Posted by SuperKarim

Anyway, I don't understand why a SEO person will need to work for others,.

You can apply the same argument to many industries.

Originally Posted by SuperKarim

if you're bored with what you do, then create another website for a different niche

Its about getting out and meeting people, as well as, been involved with interesting companies from the inside... more fun that sitting at a computer all day.

[andicrook]

Originally Posted by Grant

That being said I'm still determined to find an SEO expert. I don't care if they charge £50 or even £100 an hour, as long as they do a good job. If they can get my site ranking with 100 hours works, when it would have taken be 1,000 hours work...then it is worth while

However, an SEO expert cant do all the work for you, I am mainly referring to content and at the end of the day a company still needs a great product, service or be good at what they do.

If your GP says you need to loose weight, they can only advise how best to go about it or may be prescribe something to help, you have to do the exercise.