In the world of sales and marketing, there are many methods for pricing products and services, each of which can be the best choice for your business in certain circumstances. Most of these methods cannot be used in the field of SEO because practically a factor called "success rate" disturbs all the equations.
External linking (white and black) will be the most important tool available to him because it will create a tangible impact in a short period of time.
It is good to remember that it is more difficult to maintain a position than to reach the 1st rank of Google. Reaching high ranks for your site means losing position and visits for competitors, and this causes them to pursue their activities more seriously than before.
Perhaps the most attractive and of course the most complicated pricing method is to pay attention to the actual sales and growth of the business.
For example, in an online store, you can use analytical tools such as Google Analytics to obtain accurate statistics of purchases made through Google input. As a result, at the very beginning of the project, a correct estimate of the current sales amount is prepared and future goals are determined by focusing on SEO.
In this model, getting a ranking in one or more terms is not imposed on the SEO specialist, and on the other hand, increasing visits through highly searched but low-value terms does not make the employer's costs ineffective.
When the SEO specialist has such an approach, he becomes a partner of that business and shares in its success and failure.
This method will also bring limitations and problems. In an online store where the purchase process is done completely online and there is no other marketing channel, it is possible to get an accurate estimate of the amount of sales (due to SEO).
For example, for a school that has done its registration process in person and its main goal of SEO is to increase public awareness of the brand or to increase the number of phone calls, it is not possible to properly check the effect of SEO on the registration rate.
On the other hand, it is possible that in addition to SEO, the employer is also active in other areas such as email marketing, social networks, banner ads, etc., which are very difficult to separate from SEO.
Usually, at the beginning of the cooperation, everything seems clear and measurable, but the more the impact of SEO on the sale of a site increases, the employer's commitment to the contract decreases, and in many cases, with the passage of time, the SEO specialist does not contribute to greater successes. As a result, it tries to lower the SEO expert's salary by announcing lower sales or expenses for the collection.
In general, it can be said that paying attention to the amount of sales to determine the price of an SEO project requires the maturity of both parties and high trust between the employer and the expert, otherwise it will not last long.
Clear, measurable and without controversy! When the costs are determined based on the services performed, there is practically no way for the project to fail or to impose additional costs on the contractor and the employer.
In this method, the site's status and main competitors are first examined in detail and the activities required to improve the SEO status are presented in the form of a proposal.
SEO services can be divided into three main categories, which are:
Technical SEO: All the changes and corrections that are made in the structure of pages and their coding so that Google robots have a better understanding of the content and purpose of your site. Optimizing the site in terms of speed, improving display on mobile, standard markup and correct use of HTML tags can be considered some of the most important activities in this department
Content marketing: Any activity of text writing, image and video production, tagging and categorization or even comment marketing can be included in the content marketing category. This process starts with formulating a detailed content strategy and is implemented in the form of producing articles and writing product content.
Link building: We call our activities outside our own site with the aim of improving SEO so-called Off Page. Manual link building, activity in social networks, buying backlinks and buying ad reports are some of the most common techniques in this sector.
Now that the correct separation of required activities has been done; It is possible to reach the implementation schedule and determine a reasonable cost for each. For example, our activities in technical SEO will end one day or the assignment will be clear in the first one or two months, so there is no need to receive additional fees in the following months of the project.
With this pricing model, the employer knows exactly what service he will receive every month and how much he will pay for it. But the main problem is estimating the success rate!
In this situation, you should pay attention to the phased reports and the monthly growth of the site. In the proposal that is prepared at the very beginning, an estimate of the possible growth rate is provided, but the SEO specialist does not give the employer a guarantee to reach it. In fact, the main guarantee is determined by the quality of service provision and monthly reports.
At the beginning of each month, a list of services and costs corresponding to each is announced, and at the end of the month, a report on their impact on SEO and site optimization is presented. If the employer is convinced that the specialist's activities have improved SEO and business growth, he will have no reason to stop cooperation, and whenever this process is not in his favor, he can decide on non-cooperation.
As a result, the most important factor for the success of this method is the effectiveness of the activities and the presentation of analytical and defensible reports. This process ensures that the SEO expert always uses new ideas and tools for the growth of your business and never suffers from daily routine or reduction of priority compared to his other projects.
Yes, several other pricing models can be proposed or a combination of all the mentioned models can be used, but we must pay attention to what stage of SEO we are in and how much trust there is between the employer and the executive. In other words, each of these pricing methods can be efficient at a stage of cooperation between the employer and the SEO expert.
The success of the SEO project depends on the trust and cooperation between the employer and the executive, and to achieve this mutual trust, we must draw a fair path along with the growth of the business.
At the beginning of a project, we suggest the most transparent pricing model, i.e. determining the cost of the SEO project based on the services provided. This process can be done in a period of 3 to 6 months depending on the type of business and field of activity.
Most of the activities at this stage will be technical SEO and content marketing because cost determination and performance evaluation are quite clear in them.
After achieving defensible achievements, getting to know the SEO specialist about your field of work and of course satisfying the employer with the services provided, the pricing and cooperation model can be optimized. Our suggestion at this stage is to aim at increasing the number of visits to Google with specific and defensible metrics.
For this process, according to the successes of the previous stage and the level of competition, a period of 3 to 9 months can be considered. Content marketing activities will continue, but link building is a helpful tool to achieve bigger goals.
If you have reached this stage, it means that significant successes have been achieved in the previous two sections, and now the employer is not only satisfied with the services received, but also trusts the SEO specialist. From here on, you can target keywords and the potential rank you can achieve.
On the one hand, the employer's trust and on the other hand, the SEO specialist's knowledge of his business makes the estimates made reasonable and available. Even in many projects, the guarantee provided to the employer is not a refund, but a kind of bonus or more payment for achieving the project's goals.
Content marketing will never stop, but the type of implementation and its goals will change. To achieve bigger goals, external link building will play an important role, and at this stage, which usually takes 3 to 6 months, it is one of the most important SEO tools.
So far, the cooperation path has been planned with the goal of project success and customer satisfaction and trust, but everything does not end with attracting users through Google and gaining rank in search results.
Your business has reached income generation today and can benefit more from this high volume of visitors by investing more and making changes in design, literature, product pricing and of course the user's movement path on the site.
Due to the cooperation made in the past several months, the SEO specialist trusts the employer and enters the stage of participation and focus on sales from the format of providing services with the aim of ranking and visits. In fact, it contributes to the success and failure of the project.
Usually, projects that reach this level of cooperation will continue for a long time and it is impossible to imagine an end point for it. The SEO specialist focuses on improving and maintaining the ranking and, along with that, with the knowledge he has found about your audience and product, he also starts providing expert advice to improve the business.
Maybe this path seems a little ideal or even far from reality, yes you are right; Few projects have the chance to reach this level of cooperation, but we assure you that it is possible.
Zhik agancy is proud to have brought 6 successful projects to this stage of cooperation until 1998 and is currently implementing several other large and small projects in the previous 3 stages.
final word What you read in this article is the result of our research and experience during years of professional activity and communication with large businesses, startups and private companies, but it does not mean that there is no other pricing method for SEO projects or if there is It cannot be successful
.Human relations, honesty, commitment, and responsibility cannot be priced. If, as an SEO specialist, we can prove these positive features to the employer along with our knowledge and expertise, the price of the SEO project will no longer be his concern.
In your opinion, which of these pricing models can be the right choice for SEO projects? What methods have you had a positive or negative experience with? What other models can be added to this list? Share your opinions with us on this page so that we can reach a reliable and effective solution using your valuable experiences.