help please:- seo service offered to a friend ,is it a fair price ?

[justwondering]

Hi , a friend/familymember of mine has been offered a SEO service , the person offering the service , built my friends site , i think its functional , but not great.

the same web designer has offered him the service as detailed below , he said it will cost him 125.00 a month , is this a fair price ? if not , what price should my friend expect to say to the other person he's willing to offer , i know a lot of you guys can no doudt do this kind of thing for free etc , but he has to pay for the other mans time.....

so what would be a fair price for the service offered below

and how long would it take that person each month to do what they are offering ?

opinions please.

first month :- Initially it covers things like:

xml site generated
site verified with google
google analytics account set up and tested
meta tags sorted on homepage
meta tages sorted on internal pages
headline tags optimised
key word phrases idenitfied for links & articles
submitted to 125 directories
1st article to submitted
10 incoming links generated
reports generated for current position
page title tags
new article section added to the website

then ongoing each month:

monthly reports generated
key word phrases for links & articles checked
125 directories submitted to
article generated and sumitted
submitted to 125 directories
10 incoming links generated
added to google business listings

 

[peter_w]

Seems fairly reasonable for £125 to be honest. You're friend isn't going to be knocking on the door for any competitive phrases with that kind of strategy but it'll give him a decent foundation to build upon.

 

[justwondering]

I might not of said its 125.00 per month....do you still think this a fair price.

once he has done his inital work , then he will do the following each month :-

monthly reports generated
key word phrases for links & articles checked
125 directories submitted to
article generated and sumitted
submitted to 125 directories
10 incoming links generated
added to google business listings

 

[peter_w]

No, you definitely said it's £125 per month.

And all of what I said still stands. Most decent companies would charge more than £125 just to report on activity/rankings.

 

[justwondering]

i'm surprised to some degree , the list of things offered did not seem to difficult for my friend to do himself , would there be a lot of work involved in doing the list below each month ..

monthly reports generated , i assumed this would be automatically generated
key word phrases for links & articles checked , hes writing 1 article a month
125 directories submitted to , would a auto submitter not be just as good
article generated and sumitted , just 1 article .
submitted to 125 directories , is this the article submitted to 125 directories
10 incoming links generated , would this be posting on 10 sites with a link
added to google business listings , i guess this only needs doing once.

how long would you say that should take the person to do ?

 

[AssetDomains]

The monthly price seems a bit steep for me you could probably get it done on digitalpoint for less than half of that.
I'd tell him to be careful with the directory submission aswell not sure there are that many quality directories out there

 

[peter_w]

You clearly have your mind made up that your "friend" should be doing this himself, so I suggest you tell him as such. If he's capable of doing it himself why is this even a question?

 

[justwondering]

You clearly have your mind made up that your "friend" should be doing this himself, so I suggest you tell him as such. If he's capable of doing it himself why is this even a question?

Hi Peter , sorry if i'm coming across in the wrong manner , i would just like my friend to have good value for money , me as a novice , thought that the ongoing monthly tasks seemed a tad poor , thank you for your opinion , i was just a little shocked , i guess i had made up in my mind , it seemed like poor value , but with me not been a expert in these matters , i knew i would get some fair opinions so i could think it over furthur.

 

[Edwin]

SEO done right can easily cost x,xxx or xx,xxx a month if you're a top-tier company competing on VERY lucrative, high value keyphrases. And that's still potentially cheaper than getting the traffic via other routes, e.g. PPC or advertising!

At the same time it should cost almost nothing to rank for some minor, obscure niche that only a handful of people care about - especially if you have the exact match domain name.

SEO should be 99% about on-page and off-page optimisation and 1% about submission, maximum. It's an oft-repeated myth that there's a need to constantly "submit" to directories and search engines, but in fact it's rare that this will genuinely help.

Craft some world-class content, optimise the title and meta description tags on each page (make them UNIQUE and one topic per page) as well as the H1 tag, intro text etc. That, plus some clever navigation text and a sensible site architecture, plus a handful of ON TOPIC incoming links (preferrably to main sub-top pages not just to the homepage i.e. a variety of RELEVANT links pointing to main sections of the site) should be plenty to be getting on with.

And none of the above requires "submission", except maybe approaching a few carefully selected link partner sites with a custom email requesting a link.

Bottom line: a GOOD SEO service would be a huge bargain at the price you're talking about. A poor SEO service is a waste of money at ANY price, and could even permanently harm the site's rankings and end up getting it banned from Google.

Oh, and your friend may find this little guide I wrote helpful...
http://www.memorabledomains.co.uk/localseo.pdf

 

[arenee]

whether that's 125 dollars or 125 pounds i think that's too high. i do some of the same work for others and it does not take that long to justify that as a monthly cost. really he should get some other bids or try doing it him or herself.

 

[Ashton]

Hi justwondering, it might help telling us the keywords your friend is targeting?

If hes not competing with the big boys then it should be relatively easy to get to the top and stay there.

 

[GreyWing]

Plus £120 a month is a good start for investing around 1k for a keyword loaded domain name.

Will earn cash back imo.

 

[Blossom]

It's too expensive, and there's too much focus on directories.

An SEO campaign needs to be constantly crafted and adjusted in line with market changes and competitor changes. You can't just slap a 'one size fits all' routine on it and expect it to work if you're in a competitive area.

monthly reports generated - click a button in Google Analytics, takes a few seconds
key word phrases for links & articles checked - shouldn't be listed as if it's a separate thing to submitting them
125 directories submitted to - useless unless very carefully researched by analysing your competitors' top links
article generated and sumitted - 'generated' rather than 'written' here worries me. Again, limited use anyway.
submitted to 125 directories - Already said that
10 incoming links generated - Where? On forums/blogs? Will they be dofollow? A 15 min job.
added to google business listings - Only done once, limited value.

Waste of time. Worth about £20, if that.

 

[justwondering]

Thank you for your replys , i shall pass the info onto my friend and let him know.

More opinions welcomed

 

[martynb]

Personally I don't think you have addressed the post for a proper answer, what's the state of his current website is it e-commerce or brochure? Does it have 5 pages or 5,000 pages?

I can't really give a honest answer without more detail and without knowing the website I personally don't think anybody can.

Granted anybody can place keywords into title tags but picking the right ones takes time for research? Is this being done and some of the stuff is possibly pointless i.e. submitted to 125 directories.

I personally think doing this correctly excluding the 125 directories would be a days work.

 

[justwondering]

basically its a 5 page site , its not eccomerce as such , but it does have a iframe which has its own built in payment system that links to one page for the customer to choose there design based on one product , most of the business is currently coming from google ads and repeat business , i agree with the initial fee of 125 for the initial work, but the on going cost of 125 per month seems steep to me.

 

[Ashton]

Could you tell us the competition then? What rank are you for your target keywords etc?

Feel free to pm me the url and I will analyse it and say whether he's taking your friend for a ride or if he's the real deal (I will look at the current on site SEO etc)

 

[Maccke]

Depends on which quality he can offer with regards to link building. If it's relevant links with a lot of 'power' I would consider it cheap. If not, it might not be such a good deal at all..

 

[FagEnd]

It's a very good price for SEO services, "if it is any good"

Most of what you have mentioned though can all be done very easily using wordpress and plugins... except the backlinks of course, that takes hard work to get one way backlinks

 

[justwondering]

whats the best way to gain a one way backlinks ?