What should a SEO company charge to a client if the number of keywords and URL are too many?

[hilleug61]

Our company have got a proposal for a SEO, the client want us to help their website rank higher in the search engine! I am not sure whether we should proceed with it, because it has too many URLs and keywords (almost 100 URLs and 250+ keywords). Just in case we make up our mind for the SEO then what should we charge them like?

 

[Community]

I wouldn't say that's too many, typically you should be tracking similar amounts with most campaigns to diversify in my opinion.

Pricing ultimately comes down to a few things :

• Your experience and ability
• The value of your time to get results "comfortably"
• The time scales anticipated by the client, i.e client expectations.
• The campaign metric targets, i.e only keyphrases improvements ? Or improved traffic and conversion targets ?
• Keyphrases competitiveness
• Sustainability of the campaign.
• Your primary strategies to accomplish the goals.
• Client budget

The fact you've highlighted it could be a problem in this thread would give the impression that it maybe it could be too much for you to take on or your strategy is more idealistic for smaller projects.

No one could realistically put a price on it for you without doing their own research into the company and phrases in question. We have clients on the books we target 100 total phrases ( 5 primary targets ) for only £500 per month because of the niche the targets set and it is a sole keyphrase campaign with no traffic or conversion targets ( more of a vanity campaign with mixture of money phrases ).

But we also have clients paying £2000 per month for 10 primary target phrases which we switch up every few months when targets are acheived, conversion improvements and traffic improvement targets.

Every client is different and most of the time, need campaigns and pricing tailored to them.

 

[hilleug61]

I wouldn't say that's too many, typically you should be tracking similar amounts with most campaigns to diversify in my opinion.

Pricing ultimately comes down to a few things :

• Your experience and ability
• The value of your time to get results "comfortably"
• The time scales anticipated by the client, i.e client expectations.
• The campaign metric targets, i.e only keyphrases improvements ? Or improved traffic and conversion targets ?
• Keyphrases competitiveness
• Sustainability of the campaign.
• Your primary strategies to accomplish the goals.
• Client budget

The fact you've highlighted it could be a problem in this thread would give the impression that it maybe it could be too much for you to take on or your strategy is more idealistic for smaller projects.

No one could realistically put a price on it for you without doing their own research into the company and phrases in question. We have clients on the books we target 100 total phrases ( 5 primary targets ) for only £500 per month because of the niche the targets set and it is a sole keyphrase campaign with no traffic or conversion targets ( more of a vanity campaign with mixture of money phrases ).

But we also have clients paying £2000 per month for 10 primary target phrases, conversion improvements and traffic improvement targets.

Every client is different and most of the time, need campaigns and pricing tailored to them.

Thank you Admin! I will get back to you no this.

 

[kaz]

I have been into the similar position few times, and I figured the easy way out which may not be 100% accurate, but it does give you a ball-park pricing given that you do the numbers correctly.

Here is the summary:
1. Analyze keywords/competitors in dept
2. Briefly create on/off page strategy
3. List assets involvement with potential hrs. e.g web designer: 5 hr/m, Content writer: 10 hr/m
4. Sum up assets monthly hours needed to achieve monthly set targets
5. Multiply that number with hourly rate

This is simplest way of finding a ball-park pricing. You can refine it further to get to price you'd like to quote.

 

[hilleug61]

Thanks Kaz! Great!
But on the other hand I also believe that 100+ URLs will almost drain us. And we shall not be able to do anything else If we say 'YES' to this project.
Let us see what happens! We have kept them on hold!

 

[Community]

With out disclosing too much, it maybe helpful for other service providers if you share what the client is expectations are vs budget ? What's their budget for these proposed 100+ phrases ?

 

[kaz]

It reminds me of the similar case with over 100 non-mobile friendly pages with thin content and poor coding. I listed all the glitches, and charged separately for on-page fixes, if this is your concern charge him separately. My client understood what I meant by having a flawless website by sharing articles, his competitors on-page analysis, and google on-page best practices. Lucky me, he understood and we had it sorted for him. It took us a month to sort it out, but this deal worked for us.

100 URLs with 250 keywords isn't a bad proportion. I am quite certain that some of the low search volume keywords will get indexed with just adding meta tags.

Unless its an e-commerce shop, out of 100 keywords most likely 15-20 keywords are traffic driven keywords, and rest you can rely on rather long tail, and question based.

As admin pointed out, can't really share viable input unless have a concrete information.

 

[hilleug61]

The site is basically an 'online medical store' (pharmaceutical-eCommerce site) which provides medicines for various range of problems. They have anti-depressant, muscle relaxant, pain killers, and medicines for ADHD , Insomnia, Erectile Dysfunction, etc. They don't manufacture the tablets, however this site is like that of Amazon (eCommerce), i.e. providing home delivery of medicines.

We are reluctant because that guy want us to do offpage SEO for this site. We are ready to do the Onpage SEO though! As fixing the page issue is not that hard, but the offpage takes a lot of time especially for so many pages out there!

Each particular URL is dedicated to a particular medicine. For e.g 'Tramadol (200 mg)' will have a separate page; similarly for 'Tramadol (500 mg)'

 

[Community]

Tough and heavily spammed niche from the outset, but what's their budget ? After all off page SEO is the bread and butter of any campaign.

 

[hilleug61]

They are willing us to pay - £ (GBP) 1800 per month.

 

[Community]

They are willing us to pay - £ (GBP) 1800 per month.

Tough niche, Not a terrible budget for a typical site...but not great for this niche and phrase variants in my opinion. Personally I can see why you are being a little careful on how to proceed. £1800 budget can be eaten up in time alone fairly fast let alone being able to retain quality, sustainable offsite material and outreach.

I think in this situation it would certainly be down to the relationship you have with the client, whether the client has expectations and targets that are sensible for their budget, or if the client is well off the mark and you know you will end up losing your arse trying to please them.

Sometimes although something is tempting and you maybe up for a challenge, it can be best to walk away.

 

[kaz]

In my opinion £1800 is not a good budget though it is tempting. SEO companies (dental-focus, and milkshakedental) charge £1600 (basic) for regional dental services for a single location only. If your client is willing to increase his budget to £3000 only then it worth a shot. You will be up against "super drugs", and "boots", and other industry giants. Beating these will take your balls to sweat.

 

[hilleug61]

Exactly guys! These are the subtle thoughts that are keeping us at bay!

 

[kaz]

it is better to be safe than sorry!!..

 

[aruby294]

Very true that, it is better to be safe than sorry.

 

[hiseespeark]

If the niche has low competition then obviously it will not take much effort but it has high competition then you can suggest client divide all the urls into phases and on this bases, you can design your proposal.

 

[Happy Koala]

I would say you need to manage their expectations, if they have a small £1800 budget they should not expect overnight results. SEO takes time and this is your job to convey to them. As much as we want to shout from the rooftops that we can get them to the top of Google - we should be realistic with the people we deal with.

 

[Happy Koala]

i would say narrow down the keywords and build from there.

SEO needs a focussed strategy and there is only so much you can focus on at a time, so if you have more keywords than you can handle simply stagger them out over time so they become more managable.

 

[bracknelson]

Our company have got a proposal for a SEO, the client want us to help their website rank higher in the search engine! I am not sure whether we should proceed with it, because it has too many URLs and keywords (almost 100 URLs and 250+ keywords). Just in case we make up our mind for the SEO then what should we charge them like?

what SEO services you give? Do you provide local SEO too?