Thank you for your detailed explanation about the danger of buying links, I really appreciate it. I thought to myself that buying links doesn’t sound like a great idea, but I’m no expert!
So, what would you suggest? Is there a package we can offer my client instead, where we focus on gaining them real, quality backlinks? They’re a big company, so budget is very flexible.
Also, I’ve got a client with 14 websites so far, we’ve worked with them for years and they’ve asked about SEO and the following:
- Full SEO Audit and SEO Overhaul
- Keyword Research
- Google Search Console and SEO Tool Setup
- Local SEO
- 20 Keywords
- Content Optimisation
- Technical SEO (Robots, XML, Sitemap)
- Monthly Report
I think they have just got that from an SEO package on Google, but roughly how much would you charge to do this for 14 sites? They’re a restaurant group, so adding new locations and websites every couple of months.
I definitely do the overhauls, local SEO, search console, keyword research, usually up to 12 keywords that I report on (but could do as many as 20*), technical SEO and monthly reports.
I make recommendations for content but don’t make those changes directly.
* = if when they say 20 keywords they mean “we want to be optimised for 20” then I recommend reading this article – because that’s not really how things work anymore:
https://petermahoney.net/how-many-keywords-do-you-include-in-seo-reports/
And in terms of pricing for multiple ongoing sites, how’s this sound (this is the absolutely the lowest I can go, it’s my top tier agency rate). Usually this rate is reserved for people who come to me through my website too, because PPH charges me 20% on all sales which makes it hard to offer this rate here.
But here it is:
SEO overhaul is always £100+VAT
Monthly SEO campaign is usually £100+VAT per site
So essentially, we have a series of units of work that cost £100+VAT each.
With this rate I’d charge the first ongoing unit per month at £100+VAT, then each subsequent one at 25% off: £75+VAT.
So if you have me do two initial overhauls and we’ve got three ongoing clients on the books in a given month, you’d pay:
100 x 2 (for the initial overhauls)
100 x 1 (for the first ongoing client)
75 x2 (for the other two ongoing clients)
= £450+VAT
basically, the first ongoing job in a month is full price, then the rest have the 25% discount.
I’ve probably over-explained that. Let me know what you think!
Cheers,
Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO & AI Search (GEO) Expert