Tell m something you never thought of. Try this on for size: just because an SEO charges more than I do, doesn’t mean he knows more than I know. My pricing is modest. That’s partly because my goal is to help small businesses and sole proprietors but it’s also because I come from a working class background and my instinct is to charge for my time and not charge for the potential value of my services. And yet I have high priced attorneys in the program and manufacturers and the top rankings I bring them makes my fees seem almost absurb. But everything has good and bad.
On-Page SEO
Most folks clients have their website built by a designer. Designers are wonderful people and you depend upon them to give you an appealing, call-to-action website. But at the same time, they want to be one-stop shops and so their pricing often includes SEO designed to boost your rankings. The problem is that they spend 99% of their time designing and almost no time doing real SEO. And it probably shows in your rankings. When necessary I optimize the site’s home page ($289) and I also recommend you optimize any page directly linked to from your home page. Those are the pages on your site with the best chance to catch rankings. My fee for lower level pages is $50 per page.
Off-Page SEO
But I spend most of my time doing off-page (or off-site) SEO. It’s off-page SEO that determines how highly you rank. Ranking well is all about sending signals to Google that you are being talked about. Each time someone links to you, Google knows you are being talked about. Each time someone reviews you, Google knows you are being talked about. Each time a map or a directory adds your listing, you are being talked about. I have a number of off-page SEO services but my basic links program involves an annual charge of $299 a year. But most clients spend about $1,000 a year on links. Each site is different. We will talk about your site once I’ve done the analysis.