Are you a professional SEO?

[moospot]

Do you optimize pages for a living? Just wondering how many people are in the biz here at SitePoint.

[Golgotha]

I optimize my companies pages, and then some

[Winged Spider]

That's my new full time job! After we've setup a multi-site with CSS designs controlling everything, all I spend my time on now is optimizing pages.

[aspen]

Have I gotten paid to do it?

Yes.

Do I advertise myself as a SEO professional? No. Though I'm thinking about starting... all the freelance work I do is mostly people coming to me without me doing a thing other than answering posts here and writing articles. For the most part I prefer to work on my own sites and only take on clients to spice things up a little.

[rebelbagwan]

Yes but I don't advertise, not even a profile page, don't need to(get results for people and they will throw money and referalls at you)I like the sleuth like quality of this work.

I get my clients to a pagerank 5/6 before asking them to alter a single piece of code ( and then ask for changes to be made)

[Archbob]

No, my SEO marketing includes writing lots of e-mail asking for return links and its done fairly well for me.

[micmol]

Dear All

How can you tell a "professional SEO" taking someones word these days on the net is a very dangerous thing. Alot of rubbish is written in this area. How do you seperate good from bad.

Regards

Micmol

[aspen]

Originally posted by micmol
Dear All

How can you tell a "professional SEO" taking someones word these days on the net is a very dangerous thing. Alot of rubbish is written in this area. How do you seperate good from bad.

Regards

Micmol

Be an informed shopper, and most importantly get proof before paying.

[templates911]

Unless you can talk with one of the past clients and stuff dont take there word for it.

[johnn]

Anyone getting rich like Ms. Whalen yet?

[aspen]

Originally posted by johnn
Anyone getting rich like Ms. Whalen yet?

Which brings up another topic... overcharging. SEO shouldn't be expensive.

[micmol]

Aspen - John

Please excuse my ignorance ... but who is Ms Whalen .. is it an in joke?

Regards

Micmol

[aspen]

Jill Whalen runs highrankings.com

Here is some text from her site:

Search engine optimization fees start at $5,000. Exact costs will be determined by the amount of rewriting/editing that is necessary, and the number of keyphrases/pages to be optimized. Our SEO charges are one-time fees, with half payment due at contract signing, and half due when we're ready to submit to the search engines.

Which IMO is extortion.

[Archbob]

I haven't seen a SEO that charges $5000

[freakysid]

I have quoted for two SEO jobs (haven't picked up either) for client of a client of mine. To a degree, I am trying to move more towards being a "Mr Fix-It" for web designers who don't understand or can't handle some the more technical sides of web development, SEO, e-commerce, etc.

The quotes were for very simple SEO and SE submission.

• Analysis of competition in the industry.
• Identify Kewords & analyse their search term popularity.
• Analyse keyword density in the copy of the site.
• Optimise HTML for spidering.
• Submit site to main directories, search engines and targeted lesser directories.
• Carry out a reciprocal link program to swap links with related websites.
• Follow up directory listings (such as DMOZ) which can take months.

For your small run of the mill business website, does the above sound about right? Am I missing anything vital?

Having said all that, I haven't even done any SEO on my neathosting site yet!

[Polymath]

Yes.

[Japhi]

Originally posted by aspen
Jill Whalen runs highrankings.com

Here is some text from her site:



Which IMO is extortion.

Any company that has a $5000 budget to spend on SEO is not being extorted. Good on her if she can make $5000 dollars or more a job, I have no sympathy for clients that overpay. It is their responsibility to shop around, if they feel that five grand is a fair price, then it is.

There are price breaks in any industry. Some people feel they have to pay good money to get a good service. Jill obviously gives off the appearance of a SEO professional and people feel comfortable paying her asking price. Why that bothers you so much I have no idea. Well, maybe one idea...

[aspen]

If you were a plumber and the plumber down the street charged 10x as much as you that wouldn't bother you? I don't think you should charge as much as you think you can get. She's taking advantage of people who either do not know enough about the Internet to shop around, or who do not know how much the service they are paying for is worth.

I see that kind of dishonest behavior as no different from people bilking elderly out of their life savings. A honest businessman does not charge what he thinks he can get away with.

[johnn]

Wow! Look at her clients' list - many large corporations, one giant company such as Procter & Gamble, seems like she knows the secret getting the big ones.

[Polymath]

Trouble is, if a company is shopping for SEO and they see a guy offering to do the job for $500, that may be tempting.
Then they see a guy doing the same job for $5000 and think, what does he do that the other doesn't. Quite likely they don't do much different.
So the company that is doing the shopping looks a bit closer and see the first guy is priced lower because he's doing a lot of local business, and your local carpenter, say, can't pay $5000 but $500 may be easy for him.
Then they look at the second guy and see he's doing exactly the same job (for the sake of argument) but for big companies who can easily pay $5000 without blinking.
And when a local businessman advertises he does it in a local newspaper for, I don't know, $100. And when a bigger business advertises in a national newspaper, they pay through the nose for it.
So to a local businessman, $5000 dollars is a hell of a lot of money.
But to a big business e.g. Procter and Gamble, they are probably laughing their heads off because it is so cheap. They literally couldn't care less that they are paying more, because they are still probably seeing the best value for money for 'advertising' that they have ever seen in their whole lives.
Value for money is always in the eye of the beholder. I personally would never buy a house in London, but hundreds of thousands do. And you wouldn't pay the same money for exactly the same house in the middle of nowhere, as you get in London. But in London they charge what the market will stand.
Now substitute 'house in London' for 'SEO for a corporation' and you have the situation in an nutshell.

[johnn]

Like Jackman said, he charges what clients can affort to pay him

[aspen]

I understand people who want to make as much as possible like that - but I don't think its fair or ethical - and depending how you bill it may even be mail fraud. For instance if you said you charge $50 an hour and work 10 hours but think that your client would pay for 20, so you charge him for 20. Thats fraud, its a felony. Increasing your hourly rate wouldn't be though.

Amazon.com tried to do that. They wanted to change their prices based on what they thought each individual customer would pay. There was a huge public uproar and they quickly canned the idea.

Obviously businesses who pay the high fees are partially to blame. They need to learn that more expensive isn't always better.

[moonman]

SEO is part of my job, quite frankly I don't like doing it, I prefer the building sites part of my job, but it brings the money in!

[pony]

Originally posted by aspen
{B}Obviously businesses who pay the high fees are partially to blame. They need to learn that more expensive isn't always better. [/B]

There is often another issue at work in large corporations that stops them learning that lesson. A leader of a particular team may seek to justify a more expensive option because it increases the size of their budget and makes them feel and supposedly look more important. And as Polymath points out the more expensive option is still cost effective, if to a lesser degree, so their bosses generally aren't too bothered.

[Wrangler]

It shows how important a professional appearance can be She may not be better than somebody than somebody who charge a couple hundred dollars for the same thing but she has developed a appreance that says she is trustworthy and professional whereas the "cheaper person" uses a free hotmail email account and their website looks like a dog designed it It's the same in every industry, for example some horses sell for $20,000 and then another horse just as good if not better sells for $2000, it's just a matter of presentation and getting to the right buyers.