| LED Digest 1987: SEO Pricing |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. June 28, 2005 Issue #1987 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== SEO Pricing ==-- ~ Robert Bedard ==== CONTINUING ================= --== False Economy ==-- ~ Mike Banks Valentine ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Frontpage Links ==-- ~ Mark Medlicott ~ Mike Seaton ======= NEW ====================================== From: Robert Bedard Subject: SEO Service Pricing I have been designing websites since Netscape could not render tables. I have always included SEO as part of my design services. I have several sites that come up number one in Google natural search for their optimized terms. Because I am a one-man shop, I charge an average price for my time that I feel is fair to most of my clients, that represents some top-level engineering time, and some low-end implementation of HTML. I just got asked by a new client (a friend, incidentally) to do a project of purely SEO on an existing site. The existing site is not search-engine friendly, with nearly 100 keywords on (only) the home page, and broken navigational links due to Javascript navigation, the same title on every page in the site ... far from properly optimized. Most of their keyword-rich content is hidden by the broken navigational links. Their business is regional, with a realistic radius of about 30 miles for clientele. Their business is fairly competitive, and they do not currently get good search engine placement for many terms that they should. I have evaluated 200 days of server log files using Perl scripts to pull out all of the referer records, and develop a list of 200 keywords, and analyzed their webpages looking for the number and location of their keywords within their site. Because of the degree of automation involved, and because this is a friend, I quoted them a price of between $500-1,000 for SEO of approximately 22 pages, down three levels deep of subordinate pages; as fas as I am concerned, I am giving away this service. (It is a friend.) The large range in estimate is because their site has been maintained by several people, and has not been done according to "best practices"; without evaluating every page I need to touch, I cannot be more specific, and the client is insistent on a low cost solution, so I do not have time to touch every page before doing the work. The client is fine with $500, but balks at $1,000. I think this project is probably worth considerably more than $1,000. My question is this: am I grossly underselling myself, and is this client a fool for not taking advantage of me? Their site was professionally designed by a graphic designer, and is very handsome, but seriously crippled for Search Engines. I would guess that they probably paid a few thousand dollars for their current website. This seems to me to be another great example of false economy. This is a professional office with five professionals on staff, they probably gross millions of revenue every year. They paid a lot for a professionally-designed broken website, but now do not want to pay me what I feel is an exceedlingly good price to correct the mistakes of their previous developer. I would really appreciate some feedback on this: how crazy is my pricing structure, and how crazy is this client? Am I a fool for selling this service for so cheap, or for thinking that I can get paid for over ten years of experience? Robert Bedard ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Mike Banks Valentine Subject: False economy > ... many small business don't always have the $1000 > to pay the web designer and are only trying to be honest > and not stiff you on a bill they can't pay. - R. Neilson, LED 1985 Those who can't afford small business websites are very different from those who don't think they need them and simply won't justify the expense. Those who pay for glossy brochures routinely and $1000 monthly yellow page ads - ARE able to afford beautiful and functional websites and are not the same people as those struggling to keep their doors open. Those printing glossy fliers and supporting the yellow pages publishers at over $10,000 yearly - do have false economy and probably just don't (really) want web sites. Those who are struggling to pay the utility bills on their small shops and buy templated web sites from Sams Club at $5 monthly (yes they do - www.samsbiz.com) are very different people. It's the ones struggling to pay their tiny bills in order to remain independent and hope for better futures that are coming to WebSite101 to read basic internet business tutorials at the rate of 150,000 monthly. They are the ones purchasing $5 templates from TemplateMonster and learning basic HTML to build their own sites, then hosting with GoDaddy on that $3.95 plan after purchasing $7.95 domains for one year terms. The little guy sometimes contacts web designers looking for help, only to find they simply cannot afford it. They will have to do it themselves and simply have no choice. That is nothing against the designers, just simple facts. Here's hoping many of those small struggling entrepreneurs will succeed and grow to the point that they can easily afford custom sites. Mike Banks Valentine http://website101.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Mark Medlicott Subject: Frontpage links > Does using the Frontpage themes, which creates the hyperlinks, > result in hyperlinks that search engines can't spider or can't see? - Andy Fuhr, LED 1985 I don't think you have been penalised by Google for using Frontpage themes, but more likely have been caught in the "sandbox". How old is your website? Did you recently change domain name? These may seem obvious questions, but two of my most recent websites have experienced the same problem (and neither use frontpage), with Google indexing the main page and no others. From a quick look, Yahoo and MSN have indexed all your pages, as they have done with mine, so it appears as though you will need to sit out the aging period. Also, Google is still apparently finishing the Bourbon update, and may be using resources for that, and plan to revisit and index complete websites as they free up their own resources. This is just an opinion, not based on fact, but on posts I have seen by the Googleguy. The answer, don't panic. I am sure other LED'ers will be able to explain even more thoroughly. Regards Mark Medlicott Medlicott Design www.medlicottdesign.orcon.net.nz ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mike Seaton, Subject: Frontpage links Hi Andy, I have developed a site http://www.internationalboatsales.com/ using FrontPage as a basis and have managed to get not only the home page indexed but also 2 levels down i.e. the "Browse Adverts" page listing all the adverts and then the individual advert pages themselves. Having had a look at your coding I think your problem is the Javascript that Front Page has put in between the <a> and </a> tags on your theme-generated buttons. . As a generalisation, you should work on the assumption that a search engine spider will ignore any coding that contains Javascript - this looks like the reason Google is ignoring these links. My advice would be to replace your theme-generated buttons with conventional hyperlinks e.g your first link would become <a xhref="Sundial_Beach_Resort_Amenities.htm">Amenities</a> This can be easily done by going into Front Page's HTML mode and manually changing the coding. If you want to add a hover facility to highlight the link text (e.g.in blue) when the mouse is over it, simply put <style><!--a:hover{color:BLUE}--></style> in between the <head> and </head> tags to achieve this. Hope this helps. Mike Seaton http://www.netsoftgb.com/ - Everything for the aspiring millionaire! ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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