Are these SEO Costs appropriate?

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networkn

Networkn
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#275628 1-Sep-2020 15:39

I haven't been involved in this area for a while, but a customer just asked me if the following quote for SEO was appropriate or not:

It's a fairly simple website, no e-commerce on the site. It's probably around 15 pages.

SEO Keyword Research

Comprehensive keyword research to understand search demand for all services
Mapping keywords for services to most relevant pages on the website
Research also feeds into website copy, blogging and content plan
Title tags & Meta descriptions

Cost: $1,050 + G.S.T.

Is that in the ballpark? Looks quite a lot?

timmmay

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#2554896 1-Sep-2020 15:41

At a moderate rate of say $125 an hour that's about a days work, which seems reasonable to me. A really good specialist SEO person can I guess get $200/hr.

CokemonZ

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#2554900 1-Sep-2020 15:45

Yes, well within range - I've done a similar exercise and as long as the SEO specialist is good and you are prepared to do some (a lot of) work afterwards well worth it.

freitasm

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#2554904 1-Sep-2020 15:49

Be prepared for disappointment too. By default the first page on Google will have ten positions - and how many people will be trying to be on that front page at the same time for some very common word?

A lot of times "SEO" is just snake oil because there's no guarantee of results really.

I had a case were a company signed a retainer and started sending reports with pearls like "The page /event/[event name]" appears on searches but it doesn't exist on the site anymore. If the product has changed make sure to have a replacement product for it" - well, it's an events calendar. Some events are gone past so they are removed from the site. Obviously whoever was the outsourced overseas contractor had no idea what an "event" is, and that told me a lot about the quality of that company's SEO services.

kobiak

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#2554906 1-Sep-2020 15:58

I'd say it's cheap unless the quote from some freelancer willing to win new client for ongoing work in the future.

helping others at evgenyk.nz

timmmay

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#2554937 1-Sep-2020 16:20

It is difficult to get onto the front page of Google in a competitive market. Some (a lot) of SEO is getting the basics right - page titles, headings, good content, internal linking, updates, mobile optimisation, and raking usually takes a lot of good quality incoming links. I've done a bit of basic SEO work in the past, and I find most business don't even have the basics done like page titles, location clearly in the title and on the page, etc.

chewster

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#2554942 1-Sep-2020 16:25

If they're good then yeah pretty normal.

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