Investing in SEO: Clients vs SEOs

The SEO's Blood, Sweat and Tears

Being in the business of search engine marketing I sometimes get overwhelmed with the sheer number of hours necessary to fully market a site online. Actually, I can't even say there is such a thing as "fully" marketing a site online as there are truly an endless number of marketing options. There are so many things that can be done while also maintaining a budget both for the client and for the time involved.

Ninety percent of the online marketing services we provide are based on time. There are a few expenditures (directory submissions, etc) but most of the cost associated with our SEO services is hourly time going into each project: writing, analyzing, tweaking, optimizing, communicating, reporting, etc. Largely, I think it's hard for any client to fully understand all of this, especially those looking for something "less expensive."

When it comes to purchasing an SEO package, it all comes down to how much are you willing to pay per hour, and how many hours do you want to invest in your website's promotion efforts? While many SEOs charge a package price, how much goes into that package is determined by how many hours of their time the SEO is willing to invest, and for how much. When you consider the SEO package as a matter of hours, $1000/month will buy you anywhere from 5-30 hours of work each month. Those willing to put in 30 hours for $1000 either have very low overhead or are not skilled enough to charge more per hour. Those putting in 5 hours per $1000 either have high overhead or are exceptionally skilled, or both.

But still, 5 hours, or even 10 hours per month spent on an optimization campaign isn't a whole lot once you break down everything that goes into it. Here is a simple breakdown of what I would consider the average high-quality SEO campaign:

Keyword Research: Can take up to 10 hours initially, or more for extensive research, and perhaps another 30 minutes each month for additional research.
Page Optimization: 3-6 hours (per page) for text and code development/optimization.
Usability/Conversion Analysis & Reporting: 2-12 hours/month depending on depth of testing and reporting analysis.
Link Building/Research: 10-40 hours per month depending on the size of the site.
Miscellaneous Campaign Management: 2-10 hours per month depending on size of site.

Depending on how the SEO charges, the bulk of this can be an upfront payment for a predetermined number of pages with little ongoing maintenance, or it can be spread out into monthly payments and include ongoing research, optimization and link development. I grouped a lot of little things together above for brevity, but spending 20 hours a month (averaged over 12-months) isn't all that hard to achieve.

Assuming the average (quality) SEO firm charges $150/hour, you're looking at $3000/month or $36,000 for a year. That's no small chunk of change for the average small business. Not every SEO firm (including us) charges fees that high, but rarely is one person able to perform every aspect of an SEO campaign without hiring staff or sub-contracting out, and good specialized sub-contractors will charge anywhere from $35-$150 or more per hour. For the SEO to make any money they have to charge at least that much, if not more.

Undoubtedly, not every SEO will agree with all of my numbers above, but even looking at it conservatively, $10,000/year doesn't garner the client a lot of time put into their SEO campaign. As I said before, it all comes down to time. Every SEO must figure out how best to invest their allotted hours. Will more be spent on text development than link building? Does usability/conversion analysis take a higher priority over anything else?

For us SEOs, sometimes the hard part is convincing clients to invest in our time (package costs), but in reality we should be convincing them to invest in their website. It's not how much money the client is paying for SEO, it's how much time their money will allow the SEO to invest in their website.

The Spend-Cautious Client

I'm as cost conscious as the next guy, but there comes a point when pinching pennies is counter productive... especially in business. When I look at various on- and off-line marketing campaigns, I don't look at the cost so much as I look at the overall return. Sure, a big price tag makes me think long and hard before investing, but what I want to know is, will I get my return on that investment?

The bigger the price tag the harder it is to jump into an unknown investment. This is just as true with SEO as with any form of marketing, but perhaps even more true with SEO because the return is not instant. SEO requires a long-term investment and the money you pour into it today will not be returned for several months. This is even truer for new businesses just getting online.

The Internet has attracted many new business owners who thought (some rightfully and some not) that they could simply build a website and start making money in their spare time. Many people have become successful and probably a great deal more have not.

Any business, on- or off-line, requires investment. Investment of both time and money.

If you have neither time nor money, there will be no success.
If you have time and not money, success can come, but you may run out of time before it happens.
If you have money but not time, success may come, but it will be fleeting without proper preparation and planning.
If you have both time and money, success may come, but like any business, a proper business plan is required.

Obviously, the best position is to have both time and money. And if you want to optimize your site for search engines, you need both and you must be prepared to spend both as well. Look at your options, but don't consider pricing only. Price (high or low) is NOT an indicator of a more successful campaign.

Costly marketing will still fail, if the business plan is not solid. Cheap marketing will usually only produce cheap results.

It's not how much it costs, it's the ROI (return on investment) that you get for your money. Look at the long-term goals. If you really want to succeed with optimization be prepared to invest, and like any good investment, allow it to fully mature. Only then will your search marketing campaign prove successful.

Read this article and more at the E-Marketing Performance Blog. Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a search optimization marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook. (eza)

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Billable Rights of SEOs and Their Clients

The SEO has a right to receive payment from the client for entire amount contracted. A contract is a contract is a contract. Don't try to weasel out of it.

The SEO has a right not to have to justify to the client payment due in terms of actual time spent on account unless payment is based on an hourly fee. Package priced contract fees are due regardless of time spent provided work outlined in the contract is performed.

The SEO has a right not to put the client's account on "hold" when requested. A contract is still a contract regardless of your financial situation, business restructuring, etc.

The SEO has a right to charge the client for services that fall outside the scope of the contract. If additional work is requested, expect to pay for it.

The SEO has a right to collect payment from the client on-time. Seriously, it's your job to make sure payments are submitted and received no later than the payment due date.
The SEO has a right to charge the client a late payment fee.

The SEO has a right to suspend the client's account if payment is not received in a timely manner. If you're not paying, don't expect work to continue until you're paid up.

The SEO has a right to undo all work performed for the client due to non-payment. If the SEO fulfills the contract but you're not paying, you're stealing time and money from the SEO you hired.

The SEO has a right to seek legal remedies for force payment from the client for services rendered. Still not paying? The courts will work it out.

The SEO has a right to cancel services and refund the client's money at any time. Don't be a problem client and you won't have to worry about getting fired by your SEO.

Billable Rights of the SEO Client

The client has a right to expect the SEO to fulfill contract in full. If you don't have time to work on the account, refund my money so I can hire someone who does.

The client has a right to know what will be done to his site by the SEO. Don't give me any nonsense about "proprietary strategies. You're messing with my site, I want to know what you're doing.

The client has a right to know the SEO tactics to be implemented externally. I'm paying you so tell me what you're doing for me.
The client has a right not to have their site penalized or thrown out of the search engines due to SEO tactics.

The client has a right to question SEO results and value of the work performed. If I don't see results I'll be asking you why. Maybe I just need you to show me how to see the results.
The client has a right to consult other SEO experts about the value of the work performed.

The client has a right to buy out of the SEO contract at any time. If I don't want your services anymore, let me pay for the full contract so I can move on.

The client has a right to maintain ownership of all work performed by the SEO. I'm not paying per click, so anything you do with my money is mine to keep.

The client has a right to expect SEO work performed to increase traffic and sales/conversions. If I'm not seeing more sales then I'm not getting my money's worth.

The client has a right to not have site hijacked, mutilated or destroyed by SEO. I expect quality work for my money.

Stoney deGeyter leads a spectacular team of seasoned marketing experts at Pole Position Marketing. Stoney started PPM in 1998 by finding the brightest minds in the industry and nurturing within them an intense desire to become leaders in their respective fields. With this team of professionals, he has built a wildly successful website marketing company that succeeds through both personal and professional integrity.

You can read Stoney?s blog posts at the E-Marketing Performance blog and more of his work on several well-known SEO and marketing news sources including Search Engine Guide and Web Pro News. Stoney has authored two website marketing books: E-Marketing Performance: Effective strategies for building, optimizing, and marketing your website online and Keyword Research and Selection: The definitive guide to gathering, sorting and organizing your keywords into a high-performance SEO campaign.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Bad SEO's? What About Bad SEO Clients?

You hear all the time about bad SEOs. Bad SEOs are offering worthless services, failing to deliver on their internet marketing promises, polluting the search engine results--well, a lot of bad things. But how much ever gets said about bad SEOs' spiritual counterparts: bad SEO clients?

As an SEO, I can see things from the other side of the table. You see, despite trying hard to make it clear I'm a good, ethical, results-oriented, smarter marketing, white-hat SEO, I have gotten no end of inquiries from bad prospective SEO clients. Sure, no one who gets cheated is ever entirely to blame, and some cheated businesses are entirely blameless. But the bad SEOs would have too small a market to stay in business if it weren't for almost-as-bad clients.

Shades of Bad SEO Clients

First, let me make clear what I mean by "bad" SEOs. Bad SEOs are bad because they either do unethical things to get e-marketing results, or because they consistently fail to deliver results. A good SEO delivers results and does it without trampling over other people's rights (like submitting automated comments to their websites or trying to get good sites de-indexed).

A bad SEO client, in turn, is someone who will only be satisfied (albeit temporarily) with a bad SEO. Because they refuse to consider ethical web consultants or smarter marketing strategies, they are creating markets for the e-marketing charlatans and black-hats. There are two basic types of bad SEO clients: crooks and fool--oops, I mean, ethically challenged and judgmentally-challenged.

Ethically-Challenged SEO Clients

I haven't gotten so many inquiries asking for out-and-out unethical services. Still, I've been asked about blog-sp@mming software and other shady internet marketing tactics a couple times. A colleague shared this gem with me: "Have you thought about just scanning a book from the library and using it for web content? Or is that too high-risk?" (Seriously, someone asked him this.)

Of course, judging from the amount of comment sp@m and SEO-motivated hacking on the web, there is plenty of demand for this stuff.

Judgmentally-Challenged SEO Clients

A much larger group of bad SEO clients are simply those who insist on putting themselves in the way of fraud. Yes, that's right: I'm blaming the victim. Someone who goes looking for a $5 gold watch can't cry too long if the watch turns out to be fake or hot. With SEO, there are a few more nuances, but it's the same essential idea.

The overwhelming majority of these judgmentally challenged souls are private individuals whose only business is the business-in-a-kit variety. Yet they are also sometimes representatives of actual successful companies. The real businesspeople tend to be quicker to let their misconceptions go (after all, they can afford the real SEO alternatives), but not always. Let's look at some representative types of this group, straight out of my own inbox (note: these are inquiries from prospects, not actual clients).


Something-for-(Little More than)-Nothing Clients

Really, I tend to think these people should be in the ethically challenged group, but maybe that's just the remnant of my work ethic making me be mean There are actually two kinds of these clients:


The ambitious but cheap client: "I'd like to get to the top of Google for the keyword, 'mortgage' so I can turn over $100,000/month in revenue. I can spend up to $1,000."
The Adsense-is-my-business-plan client: you wouldn't believe the numbers of inquiries I get from people who only plan to make money off Adsense or other on-site advertising--they don't even have a plan for getting repeat traffic, nor do they have content to synergize with the SEO effort. By buying promotional services, they would essentially be buying advertising in order to make money off advertising--you see where that could be a problem?


Another way of looking at it: why wouldn't I just create a site myself and keep all the profit from my efforts? In fact, most SEOs do have their own project sites, which are often monetized by Adsense. The money we could otherwise get from Adsense is one very low baseline for pricing our services. Legitimate SEO clients are typically selling goods or services at a profit rate that works out to ten or more times what they could get from Adsense.

In addition to the greedy, I also see a few other kinds of less common, but still problematic prospective SEO clients:

SEO-Starry-Eyed Clients: "Search engine traffic is definitely the best way for me to get pet-sitting clients in my tiny Himalayan village."

The Little-Knowledge-Is-a-Dangerous-Thing Client: "Don't tell me about keyword research, content, anchor text, or natural linking strategy, just get me the PageRank (or links, keyword density, or whatever the fad is)."

Gullible-and-Not-Letting-Go Client: "I know of at least two services that will submit my site to thousands of search engines for $29.95. If you can't do that, I'll take my business elsewhere."

I-Will-Never-Trust-SEO-But-I'll-Consider-It-Anyway Client: "No one can guarantee a good search engine ranking so this is all pointless--I'll just go with that $29.95 search engine submission package someone just emailed me about. At least it's cheap."

In short, if you are going to find good SEO web consultants, you need: 1) realistic expectations; 2) a realistic budget; 3) solid information. Don't expect something for nothing, do a little reading, and it's much less likely you'll fall victim to bad SEOs.

About the author: Lee Rummage is a good SEO and internet marketer. Check out his internet marketing website at: http://www.onlinewebconsultants.com

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

SEO and the Client's Expectations!

The job of a Search Engine Optimizer, popularly referred to as an SEO helps the visitors to acquire the required information from the visited website. So, an SEO plays a major role as far as research and development are concerned. Both, the clients availing of the services of an SEO as well as the visitors to the website, many a times, prove to be too demanding for the Search Engine Optimizer. Well no pains, no gains. An SEO's job seems to be based on this pattern rather too strictly.

The SEO's Job vs. Sales

The SEO's role is quite important not only for researching a particular subject or idea, but more so when it comes to sales. The Optimizer in the majority of the cases provides his services to help the visitors to the website research about the products of the company.

The products may vary from biscuits or other eatables to cosmetics to electronic devices including almost any saleable product, object, idea etc., that exists upon the earth. An SEO understands well that basically his job aims at optimizing the sales for the company. He would not like to displease the company or those who visit the company's site. So, most of the SEOs prefer a little sentence at the bottom of the page to the effect that the visitor's search results may vary from site to site. After all, an SEO, like any other professional prefers to play safe!

Expectations from an SEO vs. A Few Realities

As the company's demands from an SEO are sometimes even unrealistic, he has to be extra smart (that of course, is different from being over smart). When it comes to selling a new product, the Search Engine Optimizer is not just asked to optimize the sales, in such specific cases, he has to initialize the sales for the new product first, more so if the business house happens to be a small one or a newly opened one.

If an SEO's services are hired by a small or newly opened business, the Optimizer is expected to optimize the sales of the products (if they are new, then even to initialize the sales) so that the business comes closer to the big rivals and then gradually goes ahead of them. Now, anyone can understand the kind of expectations regarding the sales from an SEO. When the expectations are not met with (that may be the case sometimes), the resulting picture may be a sad one.

As if that is not enough, even the sales department of the company loves to transfer the major share of its responsibility to the shoulders of the SEO, once his services are hired. The department's attitude, most of the times, sends the message across to the SEO, in no implicit terms that it is his responsibility to optimize the sales of the popular products, initialize and optimize the sales for new products and reinitialize the sales even for those that had previously failed in the market.

In other words, it is the SEO rather than the sales department who is expected to optimize and maintain the market. The Optimizer is left only with two options: either fulfill all the expectations or if he fails to do so even once, then provide an absolutely convincing explanation to the company that has hired his services.

SEO: Catering to the Clients' Expectations

Though the contract letter as provided to the SEO clearly reads the terms and conditions related to the responsibilities and even ranking, traffic, ROI, and conversions etc., it is the result of the work that counts in the long run rather than the job profile as discussed in the contract letter.

An SEO's Perception of His Job: Risk Factors

Thus a potentially existing, but not a very explicit (and hence not very frequently realized) risk factor is that most of the SEOs focus on executing the operations as specified in the contract letter rather than laying stress on the results. The result: the sales for the company for which an SEO's services are hired are far from being optimized. In some cases, the SEO fails to maintain even the previously existing sales. It can even tell upon his professional relationships with the sales department of the company. Eventually, he may be sacked and replaced by another SEO, in most cases, a tried and tested one by one or more reputed or established companies. So focusing upon the result is the key factor for any SEO. He must focus on the TARGET.

Services Provided by An SEO: How Do the Clients Evaluate Them?

A large number of the companies hiring the services of an SEO are extremely conscious of their web ranking. Naturally, they want the ranking to shoot up faster when they hire an SEO. A sensible client would allow at least a reasonably period of time to the SEO as even a highly intelligent and professionally smart Search Engine Optimizer would require at least a little bit of time to increase the number of the visitors to the website of his client.

Even if the search engine is optimized making it several times more effective than it originally was, the improvement will catch the notice of the net surfers within a little time only. Given the time (a reasonable one, of course, and not an unusually longer span), the web ranking of the client's site can be expected to shoot up the popularity charts.

Moreover, the requirements of the visitors to the website of the clients vary from time to time. Thus the SEO is expected to be on his toes all the time. Further, the phrases searched by the visitors most of the time would never be an all time favorite with the net surfers. They may change with the changing requirements of the surfers. Thus the client would obviously expect the SEO not only to make the web ranking go higher, but even to maintain it. Not a very easy job, indeed.

How Does Web Ranking Effect A Company's Sales and An SEO's Performance?

Though a smart SEO can employ a number of ways to make the web ranking shoot up, the point is that whether the people who visit the web site actually get converted into the customers buying the products of the company or not. So even if the SEO manages to attract a large number of visitors to the site of the company, what actually counts is whether they are the targeted visitors or not. The SEO must never forget that as far as the results of his work are concerned, the web ranking is to be used as a means to enhance the sales for the company. After all, it is for this purpose that the client has hired his services.

In some cases, a client's website may already be enjoying an excellent web ranking, but a poor conversion rate. In such case, the SEO is expected even to a greater extent to focus upon the conversion rate. A greater chunk of the traffic visiting the site is to be converted into actual buyers of the products of the company. This is what the SEO is expected to achieve.

The Job of an SEO: A Few Tips

The SEO may suggest the clients to alter a few links in the SERPs i.e., the search engine result pages. It can make it easier for the visitors to the site to find what they are looking for? When a visitor himself/herself refers the site to other surfers, it counts. Because making the web ranking move up, it definitely increases the conversion rate.

Finally, the SEO must take care that the desired, if not higher, conversion rate is achieved within a specific time. Though there should be synergy between the client and the SEO and the required time should be allowed for achieving an excellent web ranking as well as conversion rate, the SEO must not forget that he cannot delay in producing results beyond a certain time period. He is fully responsible to make the client progress in the business as fast or even faster than expected by the client.

Finally, the SEO should be focusing on improving upon the sales for the company. After all, this is what that actually counts for the client. It is the result, the result and the RESULT ONLY that will matter in the long run, as already discussed in this article.

Bibhash Sharma is an expert writer for a variety of subject matters, including internet, web design and development, computer technology, internet marketing etc. Please visit http://www.obiyanits.com to browse his present activities.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.