| LED Digest 1990: The Fundamentals of SEO |
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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 .............................................. July 5, 2005 Issue #1990 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== SEO Pricing ==-- ~ Robert Bedard "...the same fundamental design principles that worked...nine or ten years ago, still work today." ~ Beth Earle "The small SEO company I work for generally refuses to give price breaks of any sort." ~ Catherine Barwell "I don't know anyone who gets $500 to $800 per page for web design." ~ Dan Thies "Another big piece is thoroughly explaining what you do...and why it's important." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Battling Chargebacks ==-- ~ Todd Sumrall ~ Robert Bass ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Robert Bedard Subject: SEO pricing I very much appreciate the various comments on SEO pricing. I realize it is common practice, but I do not charge on a per-page basis. It is my belief that a lot of poor-quality pages that exist today, exist because of per-page pricing. Every client is different, every site is different, and has its own history of inept, but well-meaning individuals "maintaining" it. So, whether it is for an initial design or a refit, the client's best interest cannot really be served with a one-size-fits-all type of pricing structure. Some clients are interested in economy, they do not even want to "pay" for a project proposal, they just want you to do the work for as little as possible; these are the small business owners being discussed under the "False Ecomony" thread. Others, like Corporate accounts, want you to respond to RFQs or RFPs, and spend days writing reports, often structured in very specific ways. Obviously, those types of clients have very different needs, and I need to capture adequate revenue for working with each type of client. If I qoute on a worst-case per page basis, I can see that it will generally work out in my favor, but I would rather provide better value to my clients, and run a tighter ship. I still make an obcene amount of money for my time. I qoute clients on a per project basis, and my quote is based on a best-guess with a quick look for some of the usual gotcha's. It usually works pretty well for me, and for the client. Of course, it is more work than a per-page quote, but I usually end up giving clients better benefit / cost. Occasionally, I set myself up, but do not remember ever losing more than a half a day on something that I missed. I am also very hesitant to provide metrics about SEO, not because I am not confident in my ability, but because the context is always changing, and I think it borders on charlatanism. You have no guarantees that a competitor (or more than one) is not paying another developer to do essentially the same optimization for their site as you are doing for your client. Let's face it; this isn't rocket science: the same fundamental design principles that worked for obtaining rank in AltaVista nine or ten years ago, still work for Google today. (I know that statement is probably going to get a few people contentious, but it is essentially true.) And once your optimization is doing its job, and your client bumps their competition out of number one rank, don't you think the competition will be on the phone to their developer, asking to do another optimization? Most of this client's competition have keywords only on their homepages; there is still a lot of room for continually-ascending spirals of competitive SEO work ... my objective is to get my client into top ten ranking at Google, I usually get them into top five, often number one. Will Bontrager's remarks were particularly amusing (not meant as a slight), because I sympathize with them very much. Have made much the same observation myself about people tending to push the envelope if you let them get started, and another that people associate value with money, and that if you give something away, it is frequently not valued. I tend to be reactionary, and do not do well when being pressured, so rarely cave-in to unreasonable client demands. Will, this guy is a friend, and I told him if his partner (and he was the one that was balking at the price) did not want to pay for my time, that I would give him all the work I had done up to that point, and he could use that to "steer" whomever they did hire in the right direction. I would do the job for free, but I really cannot afford the time; I am over-extended ... and it is a dangerous precedent: many of my clients are friends and acquaintances ... My friend is well aware of what value this represents, it is the partner that he delegated the project management to that was concerned about getting senior partner approval before approving the project to continue ... I suspected that this was posturing, but it was not. I misread this partners intent. I suggested that they put this out to bid, (I suspect they may have already done so), if they thought my pricing was out-of-line. My friend assured me that he knows what a deal he is getting. He had little difficulty convincing his partners of the same. I will be paid for my time on this project, and they have two more, larger projects that they want me to do for them this year, and those will be handled more formally, as there are larger amounts of time and money involved. Thanks again for your comments, I appreciate the perspectives, Robert Bedard ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: SEO pricing > ... 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, LED 1987 Hi, guys. The small SEO company I work for generally refuses to give price breaks of any sort. Although if the cost is an impediment for a prospect who seems seriously interested in SEO and who honestly seems to understand the value we provide, we'll offer different payment terms (it's normally half upfront, and then a quarter after 30 days and the last quarter after another 30 days), allowing them to spread their payments over six or 12 months. Overall, it's a strategy that we don't use too often but does work well when we do use it. But ... if the prospect keeps pushing back on the price or keeps saying, "Now *what* do we get for that money?" we usually tell them another firm might be a better fit. Beth Earle ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Catherine Parvensky Barwell Subject: SEO pricing This is in response to Shari Thurow's post in LED #1989. > I realize that this might startle some people, but Web pages > can cost between $500 to $800 (or more) per page. I don't know anyone who gets $500 to $800 per page for web design. I have a hard enough time getting clients to pay $100 to $150 per page and I do all that design, coding, flash, copywrite, etc. > When I was outsourced to one midwestern (U.S.) agency, > this was the price they quoted per page, with Flash pages > being $800 per page. Please, send work my way. I'm obviously much cheaper and I do great work :-) As for SEO pricing, however, I concur that $500 to $1000 on this project is way too low, even for only 20 keywords. I do SEO work, but my sister and business partner kept pushing on me to let this other company optimize one of our sites. Reluctantly, just to get her off my back, I agreed to pay $200 (and then $60 per month) to optimize our site. In the end, they optimized only the first page. Barely changed anything I had on the page to optimize it. They re-organized some of my keywords and added a googlebot meta tag. Then they added a tracker system which disabled my shopping cart. I had to go back and fix what they had destroyed, and of course they refuse to give me a refund. My point? You get what you pay for and even then, not always. If you do the type of in-depth quality work that it appears you do, and with good results, you can demand a higher fee. Catherine Barwell, President Integrated Learning Technology, Inc. www.integrated-learning.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Dan Thies Subject: False economy Robert, you are definitely selling yourself short. I charge $1095 for a 10 week site workshop where the client / student does all the work (except keyword research) themselves, and $500 for a site review with diagnostics and recommendations, and we could easily charge more. The time required just to optimize and test title tags and headings on that many pages is substantial, and you still have to deal with the copywriting, internal linking, structural issues, linking / promotion strategy, etc. I don't know how you can possibly do a good job for so little. Students in our business development class often face the same problem. You can improve your chances substantially by demonstrating a real understanding of their business and showing how your proposed solution will address real business issues. Another big piece is thoroughly explaining what you do, how you do it, and why it's important. Dan Thies SEO Research Labs http://www.seoresearchlabs.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Todd Sumrall Subject: Chargebacks > Other than third party processors or 'hard money' > merchant providers, what strategies can a small > business employ to get back on track and stay > fraud-protected? - John Washington, LED 1989 Hello John, There is not much that can be done until you convince your processor that put you on the MasterCard "MATCH" list, also known as the Terminated Merchant File (TMF), to remove you from that list. They are the only ones who can take you off that list which every other provider will check before approving an account, and often check at regular periods to make sure they didn't approve somebody before they showed up on the list. While being on the TMF list does not say; Thou Shall Not Have A Merchant Account, reality is, nobody wants to touch a TMF because #1 the processing bank will lose the $10k or so of association insurance against fraud. The member bank of MasterCard and Visa has some insurance provided they followed proper procedure. Taking on a TMF merchant is against procedure. I one time had a merchant processing several million a month. Because they sold so much so fast, they had problems. Big problems. 8% chargeback ratio and MasterCard threatened the member bank with a $300k per day fine for every day over whatever date was set that bank maintained the account. They were not a bad merchant. They simply didn't have the infrastructure to support the sales, not enough customer service reps, not enough servers, (downloaded software often crashed their servers), not fast enough to reply to emails. Truth is, they were caught off guard when the very first month of sales they did over one million dollars worth. 4 months later they were doing 4 million a month in sales with 8% chargebacks. But they found another processor about 30 days later. That 30 day period of time they were out of business gave them time to buy servers, hire customer service and put in place the things they needed to start with. The bank that gave the boot had $10 million of their dollars in a 6 month reserve because of the chargebacks and placed them on the TMF list. 6 months later that bank refunded every penny because they did not take a loss, and I got paid a little too that was owed me. The merchant ended up paying 10% discount with another 14% 6 month rolling reserve, but because they were able to show what caused the problem, and what corrective action was taken to fix the problem, another member bank with their ISO gave them a chance. My ISO and I liked the merchant quite well. The bank was not happy about the $300k threat MasterCard was giving. We lost a good account over this very issue. It happens. Fix your problem and show the processor that put you on the list why there was a problem in the first place, and what caused the problem, and how your fix will FIX the problem and they may take you off the list. Who knows, they may even take you back. If the answer is still NO, approach another processor with a detailed presentation and they may give you a chance. Just remember, TMF is very hard for the processing industry to forgive. It is the one check and balance that keeps entire financial institutions from going belly up because for fraud, most of the time. There are bank corpses laying around though. Visit http://PaymentProfessional.com There is an article titled "MasterCard Match List (Terminated Merchant File - TMF)" How to get on it and how to get off it. Makes for good reading. Sincerely, Todd Sumrall Total Merchant Services Inc. http://totalprocessing.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Robert Bass Subject: Chargebacks Johnathan: I am surprised that you do not seem to know about the new regulation from Visa/MC and AMEX. That being that on your checkout page you provide a spot for your customer to state that he has read all of your terms regarding returns, replacements and refunds and must so state before the order can be processed. We were notified that this is now voluntary but will be mandatory soon if it has not been implemented already. I do not remember the exact date of required compliance because as soon as we got the notice we did it, I had been itching to do that anyway for years. The regulation further states that those who fail to comply stand to lose their merchant accounts and they will (eventually) check everyone to be sure. I have had this in place all of 2005, chargebacks for this year now = 0 to date. We made our terms of sale very strict, especially regarding returns, so now we don't get any. On checkout page we ask if they read the terms, answering is mandatory i.e. no answer and order cannot proceed. AND if they say "no", we send an email requiring them to say "yes" or we will not process the order. Had only one so far of that nature and they quickly and apologetically complied. Also state that in placing the order they agree to abide by terms which you will need in the case of chargebacks, it amounts to a legal electronic signature and therefore a legal contract. If you are thinking this may be a turnoff for customers you are wrong, no one has ever complained and everyone who takes orders on the internet via credit card is going to have to comply sooner or later. Probably sooner. There is nothing wrong with third party processors providing of course that you use the right one. Ours charges $10 a month regardless of how many transactions we do, and we do a fair amount (about 500/month). The main point is that they keep you up to date on the ever increasing rules and regulations and whatnot that the credit card companies come up with to be sure your day is full of awe and wonderment and that you do not get bored! And if a chargeback is in the works they notify you and to some extent go to bat for you if needed. They also provide a monthly statement which makes the bookkeeping a whole lot easier; ten bucks a month is a lot cheaper than a full time bookkeeper. Robert Bass, Webmaster www.jewelex.com ------------------------------------------------------- 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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