How much do freelance SEO specialists charge?

cocobubbles · 10-07-2013 12:52AM #1

Hi all,

I'm looking for someone to take care of my business through SEO and SMO, I have spoken to a few freelancers but have no idea what the going rate is and I don't want to get over-charged. How much is a reasonable price to pay for setup of social media pages and maintaining them per month/year?

Thanks!

Atomico · 10-07-2013 05:37PM

cocobubbles wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm looking for someone to take care of my business through SEO and SMO, I have spoken to a few freelancers but have no idea what the going rate is and I don't want to get over-charged. How much is a reasonable price to pay for setup of social media pages and maintaining them per month/year?

Thanks!

Hi OP,

There are no standard rates as such, it is an unregulated area and so it will really depend on who you engage with. There will be differences in terms of level of experience, knowledge, expertise, etc. For example, a student might charge you €10/hour. A digital agency in Dublin city centre might charge you €110/hour. So you will get a wide variety of quotes and proposals.

It will also depend on your site / business in terms of how much effort will be required. A business in a competitive industry or sector would require much more time than one that is low-medium competition.

I work in this area myself, so if you have any questions or would like me to check out your website just drop me a PM.

bdo · 11-07-2013 12:48AM

cocobubbles wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm looking for someone to take care of my business through SEO and SMO, I have spoken to a few freelancers but have no idea what the going rate is and I don't want to get over-charged. How much is a reasonable price to pay for setup of social media pages and maintaining them per month/year?

Thanks!

By talking with freelancers and getting rates, you will work out who actually wants to work with a you and a company of your size. Some of those who don't want your business will quote ridiculous rates and you'll get to see that pretty quickly.

ejohnl · 11-07-2013 08:29AM

cocobubbles wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm looking for someone to take care of my business through SEO and SMO, I have spoken to a few freelancers but have no idea what the going rate is and I don't want to get over-charged. How much is a reasonable price to pay for setup of social media pages and maintaining them per month/year?

Thanks!

I agree. When you hire freelancers, their rates would depend according to how big the project is. Sometimes they would ask for a one-time payment but it’s better if you charge them in a daily basis (per hour). So which freelance company(ies) have you tried already? Did you try Staff.com (a site that focuses in hiring full time positions) or Fiverr.com (more on ‘gigs’ starting at $5)?

tricky D · 11-07-2013 02:12PM

ejohnl wrote: »

Fiverr.com (more on ‘gigs’ starting at $5)?

Warning: most of the SEO services offered are very poor value, even for a fiver. The majority are simply link/blog/article spam services which no longer work.

ejohnl · 12-07-2013 12:48AM

Well, if there was a proper way of recruiting freelancers before hiring them then it would be a great advantage to businesses/clients.

Probably ask them for their portfolios, how they’ve done SEO to their clients. Something like that.
If it was of poor value then look for another one.

JJ10 · 16-07-2013 10:44AM

Yeah I'd have to agree with this. Very dangerous doing this. Could provide short term gain with the potential to bomb your site when search engines find these links.

Possibly try and find a smaller agency that have a good reputation, freelancers are not always the best option. Also why not try looking outside of Dublin? Plenty of companies around Waterford, Limerick etc that can help and not break the bank.

tricky D wrote: »

Warning: most of the SEO services offered are very poor value, even for a fiver. The majority are simply link/blog/article spam services which no longer work.

Trojan · 17-07-2013 11:05AM

You might find this useful.

As others have said, be very, very wary of hiring low balling SEO providers - it may cost you hugely in the medium-long-term.

dxter · 20-07-2013 06:42PM

Trojan wrote: »

You might find this useful.

As others have said, be very, very wary of hiring low balling SEO providers - it may cost you hugely in the medium-long-term.

I guess, you get what you pay for. If you pay $5 on fiver you will probably not be happy in the long run.

vincychan · 22-07-2013 05:59PM

cocobubbles wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm looking for someone to take care of my business through SEO and SMO, I have spoken to a few freelancers but have no idea what the going rate is and I don't want to get over-charged. How much is a reasonable price to pay for setup of social media pages and maintaining them per month/year?

Thanks!

Based on my experiences, most of the digital marketers charge on monthly basis. So, make sure you have the agreement correct, as the SEO packages are completely based on keywords and positions, make sure you sign up with someone who charge not more than $1000 per month(15 keywords and this is what I paid). Make sure the agreement talk about the complete money back, if the project is not delivered as promised, I mean the keyword positions.

JJ10 · 23-07-2013 10:37AM

vincychan wrote: »

Based on my experiences, most of the digital marketers charge on monthly basis. So, make sure you have the agreement correct, as the SEO packages are completely based on keywords and positions, make sure you sign up with someone who charge not more than $1000 per month(15 keywords and this is what I paid). Make sure the agreement talk about the complete money back, if the project is not delivered as promised, I mean the keyword positions.

Agencies and digital marketers will set targets on traffic and conversions/leads. Agreeing keyword positions and promising that they will get those rankings or give a complete refund sounds a bit dodgy. Buying an "seo package" is also something I would advise against. If you are promised "x" amount of links each month you can be sure there is something wrong here. Usually indicates some guideline breaking activities. Great for short term but no so much for the longer term.

PaulPinnacle · 23-07-2013 12:29PM

as the SEO packages are completely based on keywords - Red flag
and positions - Red flag
make sure you sign up with someone who charge not more than $1000 per month(15 keywords and this is what I paid) - Huge huge red flag

JJ10 nailed it when he said anything "package" related in this industry is something to avoid. Whether that's in terms of XXX links per month, XXX keywords in top XXX positions or XXX number of fans; they're all far better off avoided even in cases where they come with full money back guarantees (and I'm not even considering the heartache you'd have trying to actually enforce that end of it).

More often than not this type of nonsense isn't search engine optimisation, it's monetised webspam. It's rife with short term pop up boiler room providers who make a huge amount of money in a short period with hyped up promises and overselling a shocking service, who have disappeared into the wind by the time they've left their 'clients' sites sitting in the gutter and deindexed. It's the digital marketing version of the old pump and dump.

As it's a technical area where the majority of people that require help in the area know only a small amount about it, it becomes very easy for cowboys to pass off spam and asshattery as being very similar to the true service providers and fool unsuspecting clients into paying for a 'package' that is somewhere between useless and downright dangerous (short term gains, long term kill the site kind of thing). To put it into perspective, it was only a couple of years ago that Google penalised some of their own pages for webspam (for a short time) after hiring a company to produce a promotional video for Chrome who then hired a 3rd party to promote the video that breached a number of Google's own webmaster guidelines. If it can happen to them, what hope does a normal small business owner have.

If and when you pay for help in this area, you want someone that will guide you and ensure you're making the right decisions. You want an agency, a freelancer or an in house specialist that has the best interests of your business at heart. When you're doing a set keyword package like this, the exact opposite is true. The provider has a vested interest in not telling you that a keyword you've selected (assuming it's an easy one to rank for) won't convert and that while it might bring a small flow of traffic that in reality it's of little/no value to you.

Trojan · 23-07-2013 07:34PM

^^ Paul is bang on the money here, couldn't put it better.

dxter · 24-07-2013 10:01AM

PaulPinnacle wrote: »

...

If and when you pay for help in this area, you want someone that will guide you and ensure you're making the right decisions. You want an agency, a freelancer or an in house specialist that has the best interests of your business at heart. When you're doing a set keyword package like this, the exact opposite is true. The provider has a vested interest in not telling you that a keyword you've selected (assuming it's an easy one to rank for) won't convert and that while it might bring a small flow of traffic that in reality it's of little/no value to you.

This is so true. It is never about the number of links, likes, emails, keywords or even short term traffic. It is about long term results and quality. Thank you for stating this so eloquently.

How much do freelance SEO specialists charge?

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