Johannes Beus
After yesterday, where I talked about which SEO-services should be bought, which can be assisted by the customer and which are useless, we can now talk about the money.
Pricing models
The SEO-service-provider assists and helps the customer and would therefore justifiably like to get paid. The following now shows a few pricing models which are frequently used as they are or slightly modified, the pro- and contra for each as well as a coarse price-range in which they fall.
- Hourly/Daily-rate the classical and most simplistic pricing model. The SEO offers up a certain time of his expert knowledge and gets paid for it. What is usually seen as a drawback is the fact that the payment is in no way tied to the success of the work or the recommendations that the SEO delivered. Though this is also something that can be seen as an advantage since this way the assignment can be calculated. Daily prices usually run around 500 to 3000 Euro a day.
- Flat-rates this is where there is one lump-sum for the service. This model is often used when the time that is needed can be assessed well like for keywordresearch or competition-analysis, though there are also complete projects that are done with flat-rates from time to time. The advantage for the customer is that the received achievement as well as the price are known up front. Flat-rates for keywordresearch are around 200 to 1500 Euro, competition-analysis runs around the same, linkbuilding (real linkbuilding not an entry into (article)-directories and trades with viagra-sites) are generally between 500 and 5000 Euro.
- Profit-sharing the SEO gets part of the profit that originated from his work, often combined with a relatively small advance payment or monthly lump-sum. Basically this is a good idea since the compensation is directly proportional to the success of the SEOs work. However, this pricing model has lost some of its credit in the past since the SEO has no authority over some factors that affect the success and the honesty of customers leaves a lot to be desired from time to time.
- Ranking/Traffic-dependent for the ranking-dependent payment the SEO will be paid premiums for keywords or keyword-collections when they reach a designated rank, for example they would be paid for the second SERP and then increasing until position one is reached. For the traffic-dependent billing, they will not pay for reached positions but for the resulting traffic. This model is fitting for customers who know exactly which keywords work for them and convert possibly because they already have AdWords-experience. Problems could arise through differing methods of counting the traffic or when there are jumps in the rating. The price is usually oriented on the click-prices which would have to be paid for comparable AdWords-advertisements and is usually about 1/3 below them.
Can I get it cheaper?
Sure, there is always room to the bottom and you can be sure that you will find someone who will do it for less but what will they offer? SEO is not ISO-normed and the success of the SEO-project is substantially dependent on the person looking after it. Generally SEO is no different than anything else, if something sounds too good to be true, it most likely is not true. The number of persons and companies that work out of the goodness of their hearts is rather manageable especially in the SEO-segment. Let me recommend John Ruskin's quote, that
Gerald already noted back in 2005 on the same topic.
What is the price of searchengineoptimization? - part I
What is the price of searchengineoptimization? - part II
What is the price of searchengineoptimization? - part III
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