Comments on: Why SEO Pricing Scares People Off

By: Troy

Troy — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:47:14 +0000

Hi Pete.

This posting is very interesting to me too. Our company doesn’t really target large companies because of the time their decision making process takes. And the satisfaction is much higher for us with small to medium businesses.

It is always one of those edge of the cliff moments when you mention prices. It is when you find out if they are serious or not. Our pricing is not high and we consistently have good results and have great references, but the mention of price is always in SEO the defining moment of the sales process and the best trial close.

One way we are trying to swerve this is with performance based pricing. Our clients now have the option to pay a small initial fee followed by payments when their keyphrases come into the top ten. You can see an example on our website.

I would be interested to know what people, and you Pete thought about this model.

Well done to everyone out there who sells SEO. We all know that it can be suuch a value adding service but getting to the decision maker and convincing them is not easy. I have seen many people fail in a few different SEO companies now, so a pat on the back to everyone who makes it work.

By: Amit

Amit — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:19:01 +0000

Hi Pete, thanks for a wonderful discussion on the seo pricing topic. Actually there are various methods for optimizing any particular site. You wrote above “Why would I pay someone when I can do a lot of that myself?” is true to some extent but not for fully optimization, as lot of research work is required which is not easy for the site owners.

By: Pete

Pete — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:33:53 +0000

Adrian - No probs - I found the pic on Flickr (which is where I get most of the pics I use on the blog).

By: Adrian

Adrian — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:02:12 +0000

Sorry for my off topic comment. I love the picture you used for this post. I wonder where you found it. It’s a Kinder Surprise toy. I’m an avid Kinder collector and I have these ghosts. Here’s a link to see what I’m talking about: http://www.chokoegg.com/?p=86

By: Ben Wilks

Ben Wilks — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 03:40:15 +0000

Tony, I am not so sure that wasting seo’s time with SPAN is really a good idea. It’s really seems to me that you secretly wish you were an seo with too many clients to even consider a lead such as yours. Personally I think your time might be better spent building something positive for yourself.

If you like genuine seo (which it sounds you do) than proudly state that - spread a positive message that seo need not be tricks and salesmen in word docs, but a genuine professional practice. If you call out all the snake oil, you will only associate yourself with that in peoples minds.

Also content is and always will be Queen to Links

By: Marty

Marty — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:48:37 +0000

Interesting perspective. I’m sure I’ll be tempted to share this with prospective clients. We found this post @ SEL recap today and look forward to exploring the blog and future posts. Cheers.

By: Pete

Pete — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:02:56 +0000

Thanks Tony - here’s a link to your post: http://aplawrence.com/foo-web/seo-firms.html

Good reading for anyone interested.

Cheers

By: Tony Lawrence

Tony Lawrence — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:29:07 +0000

Not to mention that so many of them are really incompetent.. I did some research on this a few years back and wrote it up.

I don’t like leaving links in comments where the webmaster doesn’t know me and doesn’t know that I’m not a jerk just trying to spam the comments, so just do a Google Search for “Is There Value in SEO Firms?”
my page with that title will be the first or second result..

Webmaster: if you decide that isn’t spam (it isn’t) and want to put a link here, it might add to the conversation.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:38:38 +0000

Thanks Sean… you’re totally right about there being a lot of snake-oil peddlers in the SEO industry.

Half the time it annoys me because of how difficult they make it for legitimate businesses like ours to justify how and what we do… but then I realise we’re probably going to get all their clients in the long-run anyway since they can’t deliver consistent ongoing results.

So it will all work-out well in the end.

By: Sean Bannister

Sean Bannister — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:27:41 +0000

The other problem is there are so many people in the industry who have very little understanding of SEO and charge their clients for useless services such as submitting a site to 5,000 search engines, or mass submitting to link directories using automated software. It makes it much harder for someone who knows what they are doing to justify their price.

Great blog by the way, I found you guys via ProBlogger and was interested to find more SEO’s near Brisbane.