Determining the Value of Your SEO Service

Every once in a while--and probably more often than we should--we find ourselves reviewing our SEO pricing models. Pricing SEO has always been a real sticking point for me because there is no one-size-fits-all pricing metric. As I began our most recent review of our pricing something really starting to become quite obvious; search engine optimization is requiring more and more research and analysis than it ever did before.

After doing SEO for several years (since 1998) I recently put all of our regular SEO duties into a spreadsheet and noting the amount of time spent on each activity on a one-time basis, monthly basis, and a per-page basis (both one-time and monthly). This format allows me to quite easily see the man-hours and costs involved in each distinct duty that we perform over the course of an SEO campaign. It also allows me to see the changes that occur in our SEO processes.

A year ago, the bulk of our optimization occurred in the set-up phase, with the monthly optimization consisting of a few hours of link building, rankings monitoring and on-page tweaking. Now, the set-up is just a mere fraction of the hours that go into each optimization campaign. The continual analysis performed on each account every month does not exceed that of the set-up, but add a couple months worth of optimization together and it does. Expand that to a six or twelve month campaign and the man hours of research and analysis performed far exceeds the initial set-up process. And believe me, we do a considerable amount of research up front!

Differing Pricing Models Between SEO Companies

SEO providers come in all shapes and sizes. We often have potential clients come to me price shopping. They are not comparing our services with our competitors, but they are comparing our pricing with our competitors. In that battle we lose almost every time, and the reason for that is because there is always an