Toronto SEO Firm
Search Engine Optimization Marketing Services

Seth Godin had a really nice post about hourly work vs. linchpin work (flat fee) and I found it very applicable to SEO.  I forever see the same questions floating around the SEO message boards, “how much should I charge” – usually it comes from someone who is just starting out but sometimes the replies are quite interesting.  I  love the example Seth gives:

I had a college professor who did engineering consulting. A brand new office tower in Boston had a serious problem–there was a brown stain coming through the drywall, (all of the drywall) no matter how much stain killer they used. In a forty story building, if you have to rip out all the drywall, this is a multi-million dollar disaster. They had exhausted all possibilities and were a day away from tearing out everything and taking a loss. They hired Henry in a last-ditch effort to solve the problem. He looked at the walls and said, “I think I can work out a solution, but it will cost you $45,000 if I succeed.” They instantly signed on, because if he succeeded, the project would be saved.

Henry asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the name of a common hardware store chemical and handed it to them. “Here, this will work.” And then he billed them $45,000. That’s quite an hourly wage. It’s also quite a bargain.

In my opinion this is the same valuation a good SEO might garner.  Read the entire post here.

BUT DON’T FORGET TO READ THE ENLIGHTENING SMALL PRINT!

“This is a monthly submission and linking service.  Remember it is important to submit your web site into the search engines on a regular basis or you may get dropped entirely from many major search engine databases. Once a month is the optimal service to having your site appear in over 1000+ of the most important search engines and internet listing directories! Just fill out the submission software 100% SECURE online order form!”

I don’t know about you but I get 85%-90% of my search traffic from Google and the other 9.99% from Yahoo and Bing

I have recently exchanged a dozen or so emails with a potential client and the crux of our conversation has been her asking what she needs to do SEO-wise to help her brand new site rank high so she can bring in new clients (she is a real estate agent) and I am trying to tell her in ‘as nice a way’ as possible that her website is horrible and no matter how much SEO we did and no matter how high she ranked her chances of getting conversions were extremely low.

Finally I decided to lay-it-on-the-line because I could no longer think of any ‘nice’ ways to convince her that a site redesign was really imperative – so I broke out the truth stick!

“I just spent 2 months designing this site”

To put it bluntly I guess that is why you are a real estate agent and not a web designer, but fret not because I could not do much better. We should all stick to what we are good at and pay the pros to do what we don’t understand. When I have plumbing problems I call a plumber. I could go to Home Depot and talk with them for 2 hours and then buy all the parts and try and fix it myself but more than likely I will make it worse. So instead of spending lots of my own time and money on something I don’t know how to do I call my plumber and pay him $65 an hour to fix my problems quickly and correctly. It really is the same with SEO (or web design), you can spend 100′s of hours learning SEO strategies of your own and then go out and give it your best try but you might just get your site banned from the search engines and then all the time would have been wasted.

Did I go too far, will she be angry or shocked into facing the truth. I don’t feel I crossed the line, just came close to it. What do you think?

I have been wondering how SEO’s that don’t speak or write English are able to do a proper job optimizing for it?  I know you can pretty much learn most SEO skills in any language but since much of SEO is reading, writing and optimizing for the English language I just don’t see it being worthwhile regardless of how cheap the service is.  Here is an example of an obvious non-native English speaking SEO advertising on DigitalPoint:

Im offer offsite optimization service for only $120

What includes on the package?
-Article writing + submission
-press release writing + submission
-directory submission
-rss submission
-forum post backlinks
-blog commenting

I have posted a reply asking who will be writing all this content, and I seriously doubt he has a native English speaker/writer on staff.  This same service might be two or three times as expensive from an English speaking/writing SEO but the value your website recieves from it will be tenfold or more.  I just don’t see the value in hiring an SEO that does not speak/write the langauge your site is developed in.

So I have been looking around to buy some good quality advertising spots to promote this blog and here is an example of what someone was trying to sell me.

“high quality SEO blog”

and his private message to me:

“This is a very exclusive deal and only you and one or two more person will be getting it. The blog is total quality and I am sure you too are aware that its impossible to find good seo ads.  The ad from the blog may also give you natural traffic”

and now for the pay-off pitch, here is an exerpt from the first blog post I read on this ‘high’ quality SEO blog:

This is my first post in last 10 days and I felt to write it to tell current subscribers and readers why I am writing so less on the blog.

“The reason is, this blog was started as a blog which can share my SEO knowledge with others as well as to establish nBridges Media as SEO Brand. Now I did got decent success in both but the growth was very slow and because I wasn’t make any money from this blog, it don’t make any sense to spend hours writing content for it. I can ofcourse spend more effort into the site now and make it a premium SEO blog as I have already done the hard work but I feels somehow it don’t align with what I am doing currently and planning to do next in coming 6 months.”

All I can say to this is WoW!

Here we go again…besides the fact that 5000 directory submissions will probably get you banned it seems there is no shortage of folks offering this SEO (Stupid Egghead Option) on DP and we are supposed to believe they are working for $0.50 an hour.  I understand that there are some countries around the world where the average hourly salary is quite low but I seriously doubt you are getting many folks using computers for the $0.50 an hour range.

and they are offering this with up to 5 titles, etc…the length of each manual submission is probably close to a minute a site but when I called them out in the post I said the following:

“Your prices seem quite low but I am curious, if a manual submission takes at least 30 seconds and you do 5,000 of them it will take over 41 hours of work, and you charge $38, so I am to believe you pay your workers less than $1 an hour and there is still money for profit? Please explain and I might give your service a try.”

The reply I got is great, not sure what it means but I know it is GREAT!

“yes, you are right. I am offering dedicated link builders to work on your projects. so they can work efficiently and take care to Google spam penalty. I have sent you PM. Plz check and waiting for your reply.”

I think I will be passing on this service but I can promise you that many fellow DP’ers will be using it.

I receive quite a few inquiries asking if I can match or beat some very low (and I mean looooowwww) prices of some overseas folks that offer SEO (and I use the term loosely here) services.  I often explain that most of these companies are just making free directory submissions or spamming blog comments and nobody can do quality SEO for those prices, even in India.

I recently came across a post on DigitalPoint forums that really gets this point across – the thread is titled: Why peopel donut trust indian submisin services ? if the title does not give you enough info then you can check-it-out yourself here.

Here is another screen capture (click to enlarge) of some of the local competition, while I won’t comment on their pricing I can say that their website is very 90′s – and super light on information but they do rank well for some competitive terms so maybe they are worth every cent?

One thing I know for sure is that with all the changes expected in search engine ranking, SEO and SEM will be even more important.  The goood ole’ days of tricking the search engines with black and grey hat spam will soon be gone.  Both Google and Yahoo have both applied for patents which will look much more closely at the quality and structure of websites in determining their rank value.

I am always keeping an eye out for what my competition charges (click to enlarge the image) and here is the price page for an SEO in New York.  I won’t comment on whether his prices are too high because I don’t know a lot about the quality of his work. One thing I do know is good SEO/SEM is very valuable and can pad the bottom line of a company more often and at a better value than almost any type of advertising and promotional campaigns

Our SEO/SEM monthly packages are on sale now for 50% off (this offer may end without notice) and start at an affordable $300, take a look at our pricing page for more details.  Click here for a free, no obligation custom quote