How select a pricing model for your SEO services

You decided to go into the SEO business and wondered what method to use for billing.

When I started my SEO business this was the exact question I had. My initial reaction was to create a package price structure. To gain a better understanding, I looked at how other SEO businesses had their package price structured. After studying the various pricing structures I decided against this methodology because of the numerous amounts of variables one may encounter such as redoing link structure, do the URLs have to be re-done, and how many pages does the website consist of, etc?

Next I noticed another method called profit sharing. What I learned is with profit sharing you charge a small initial fee and then get paid based on the company’s website sales. One could argue whether our goal is to increase sales or to increase visits to the website, but this model leaves you open to many factors beyond your control. There could be a few issues such as confidentiality of finances (trust) and if your customer has a good product or service. Call me paranoid but there seems to be a potential for too many headaches with this method.

Working on retainer does offer the benefits of a guarantee of monthly income. I personally would only use this method after the bulk of the SEO work is done. If your client agrees for you to do monthly maintenance this is a method to consider. I would recommend that you have an agreement stating what is included in the retainer.

Hourly is obviously the best way if you want to be paid by actual time that it takes to complete a project. If you have a knack for calculating how long a project actually takes than this could be one of the best billing structures to use.

Another billing structure that I looked and like is the flat rate structure. One of the reasons i like this is that the client actually knows how much is being spent. Yes there are a few draw backs suck as under estimating how long a project takes. Another potential issue is if the client wants to add more pages to their site after they sign the deal and expect these to be included in the price. You can avoid this by stating that additional pages after signing may not be included and will be subject to additional fees.

Personally, I have decided to settle on the flat rate model that is scalable. The way i accomplished this was to make a spread sheet that includes all the elements of doing search engine optimization. I multiply how long each task would take, multiply the number of times per page. I then total all the tasks and multiply it by number of pages time the hourly rate to get an estimate. It is always a good idea to assign a little extra time just in case you under estimated. After the initial project has been completed, having a retainer model is always a definite consideration.

My thoughts in this article are in no way 100% wrong or right, but mainly ideas on implementing a pricing structure for your SEO business. These methods may be in complete disagreement with you. That is OK. I would enjoy your comments on this topic.

Harold Hemberger

Harold Hemberger is the owner of Website SEO Services. You can visit www.website-seo-services.com or email Harold@website-seo-services.com