What Does it Cost to Work Together?

My Satisfaction Guarantee (at the bottom of this page) applies to all services, including telephone consultations, on site SEO training, and email, Slack, and chat conversations with your staff.

Agencies please go here.

The First Call is Free

I’ll personally be your only point of contact throughout our relationship, so lets talk about your situation.

Book an appointment using this link, fill in the details, and I’ll give you straight talk about exactly how we may (or may not) be able to work together. Simple as that.

I won’t waste your time, and your first phone call is free if you schedule it here.

Advice from Google – How to Hire an SEO

One Time SEO Audit & Situational Analysis Starts at $800

As a way of getting started, I offer a one time analysis of your online presence.

• $800 for up to 99 page site
• $1,500 for 100 to 999 page site
• $2,500 for 1,000 to 15,000 page site
• $3,500 for 15,001 to 100,000 page site
• $5,500 for 100,001 to 1,000,000 page site
• $8,500 for 1,000,001 to 3,000,000 page site

Sites larger than 3 million pages cannot be fully audited without a minimum $10k monthly agreement for at least 90 days

From an internal perspective, we look at your internal site structure and setup, reviewing everything from your title tags to your web hosting performance.

From an external standpoint, we analyze your backlinks, evaluate your business citations  around the web, and take a look at where you stack up against your competitors.

The audit includes two phone calls, a detailed written report, and a 15 to 20 minute screencast video. Our first call is for my own fact & history gathering, and the second call is a followup after my delivery of the video.

Short Term Hourly Rate:

Some people want a few simple questions answered, some need competitive research, or Google penalty analysis, or web development, strategic planning, or any of 1000 other scenarios. No two situations are the same.

When that’s the case, nobody in the industry will be more forthright and honest than I am. If I don’t already know a technical answer, I can find it. If you’ll need help, I’m the first person to tell you whether we can do it. When we can’t, I can help guide you into a solid online foundation.

Are you evaluating proposals from various agencies that have your head spinning? I can help you objectively make your decision by sifting through the fluff and providing the answers for anything you need.

Schedule a free 20 minute call first, and we’ll discuss the situation. Schedule here

For those that require “one time” hourly rates:.

• $250 for a half hour minimum
• $400 for a full hour
• 100% money back guarantee

SEO Consulting Initial Engagement:

• $3,750* paid over 90 days for a single location brick & mortar business.
• $7,500* paid over 90 days for either a web based or a multi-location business.
• After 5 locations the price increases on a sliding scale
• After 90 Days, we can either be “done”, or you can choose a monthly retainer
• Money back guarantee* for each ongoing 30 day period

Monthly Retainer Pricing is Based on GA Page Views*:

• Following the initial 90 day engagement
• Under 5,000 monthly page views –  $375 to $875 per location
• 5+ locations or 5,000 to 50,000 page views – $1,000 monthly
• 25+ locations or  50,000 to 500,000 page views – $1,500 monthly
• 100+ locations or 500,000 to 2 million page views – $2,000 monthly
• 2 million to 5 million page views – $3,000 monthly
• 5 million to 10 million page views – $5,000 monthly
• 10 million monthly page views & up – $10,000 monthly

On Site training and consulting:

• Air travel & lodging expenses paid 100%
• $1500 fee for one 12 hour day
• $750 per additional 12 hour day
• Meals and travel time are not charged
• Speaking fees for industry specific events are often waived

Google Adwords / Facebook PPC Rates:

• Level 1 – $375 monthly for first $1k of monthly spend & management of up to 3 campaigns.
• Level 2 – $575 monthly for $1k – $5k of monthly spend & management of up to 6 campaigns.
• Level 3 – $875 monthly for $5k to $25k of monthly spend & management of up to 15 campaigns.
• Fees cover initial keyword research, dynamic title and ad generation, and creation of a single optimized landing page.
• Additional landing pages creation for different products and services may add nominal one-time fees.
• Simple A/B  testing  is included
• Multivariate conversion refinement may add nominal fees

Weekly PPC reporting:

• Total $ spent
• Total impression count
• Total number of clicks
• Itemized Conversions & Goals
• Contact forms
• E-mails
• Scheduled appointments

Weekly > Monthly Phone Call:

• Anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes should be spent together weekly on the phone when we start.
• After we’ve spoken the first 4 to 8 times, this usually drops to monthly at your request.
• You should insist on these scheduled phone calls
• The phone appointments may be scheduled here

Local SEO – 90 Days

For a single location brick and mortar local business, the cost is $1,250 monthly for three months, totaling $3,750. If an initial $800 audit was done, that may be deducted from the last payment.

At the end of that 90 days, there is an optional ongoing monthly fee based on the needs analysis that we develop together.

For a brand new business with nothing actually “wrong”, or in need of “fixing”, or no desire to expand visibility, there is often no ongoing service required.

Multi Location SEO

You may have one location or you may have 1000, but they all need to have verified Google Business Profile pages, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and perhaps 40+ others, that all show your name, hours, logo, location, etc.  The pricing varies significantly w/ the number of locations & Google accounts, along with the depth of involvement, and we often recommend working with Whitespark.  For the scheduling of social content we use and recommend Social Pilot

Speaking Rates:

I do support and attend lots of local internet marketing and community events, and speak at lunches and meetings for local industry, businesses, chambers and trade groups at no charge.

I am happy to come talk to your group, and for public speaking engagements there’s usually no charge for local events. For out of town industry conferences, I’m always honored to be asked, and of course I’ll be glad to consider it. Please inquire here

What Do You Get?

Your needs are unique. You may be a new business owner who doesn’t even have a Google account, or you may be a seasoned web marketer with  “unnatural link” warning emails in Webmaster Tools,  etc.  Our initial phone calls will determine your needs.

By the end of the first 30 days, you should have most of this:

• Full site analysis to identify technical SEO debt & issues.
• Vast improvement to remove close to 100% of the identified SEO issues.
• An established conversion process and Google Analytics goals.
• Claiming of your Google, Yahoo* and Bing listings for your local business
• You will be listed in most, if not all, of the top 10 web citation directories.
• Incorrect listings and duplicates should be cleaned up, although may take months to appear live.
• Monthly increase of citations are ongoing (appx. 10 monthly).
• Weekly or monthly status & progress reports, depending on your preference.
• Reporting dashboard with access to everything you need.

Over our initial  “discovery period” we’ll do a thorough analysis of your site and of your stats. As we get to know you and your business better, we develop our keyword research to identify additional areas of opportunity.

For All Clients:

The tools we use for reporting are SEMrush, Raventools, and Bright Local and if you have your own SEMrush account we can give you full access to the project.

We also use research tools from Spyfu, Majestic, Moz, and our own SEO Automatic API. Some of these tools are used to pull data from your own Google Search Console, Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts, so you own the data. 

• Ranking reporting
• Backlink analysis
• Competition analysis of your top 10 competitors
• Backlink analysis of your top 10 competitors
• Weekly phone calls
• Actionable recommendations
• PPC account history analysis & review
• PPC management (up to $2k monthly spending)

If you do not have your own access to these Google services, they will be set up for you:

• Google Analytics – to monitor traffic
• Google Webmaster Tools – to maintain performance
• Google+ My Business – to claim your local business(es)

After the initial setup, this is the ongoing process –

As needed:

• I work to meet your goals and needs however you dictate.
• Every industry and client is different.
• All of my clients have my cell phone number, and needs vary wildly.
• If you involve me and communicate with me, I can provide my experience based feedback on almost any aspect of the internet whatsoever.
• I, (Scott Hendison) will be your only “account manager” and all consulting clients have my personal cell number.
• I will communicate directly with you or your staff members to answer any and all questions that can’t wait for email.
• Your participation and ongoing communication is the key to your ongoing satisfaction.

Weekly

• You schedule phone calls to followup on details and reports.
• We review your Google Analytics to quickly identify trends, whether positive or negative
• We monitor & examine your Google Search Console account to keep the site error free and growing.
• Search ranking reports can be emailed as often as weekly, and history is accessible online.
• Weekly scheduled phone calls during startup and launch phases are fantastic, and monthly calls should continue.
• If you’re not happy, I’m not happy.  Please participate in the process.  Many people hire an SEO company and expect to have rankings rise magically, with almost no communication.
• We look at your website, stats, and history, and determine how to make it perform better, and how to get more conversions from the visitors we do have.

Monthly

• We report the activity on your account, reviewing your progress, we analyze visitor stats, conversion rates, backlinking activity, and review visitor behavior and competitor analysis.
• I personally prepare a screencast video upon request, giving you and your team executive level feedback on the reports, providing additional details where needed. This prevents you from becoming buried in data and meaningless reports, and we can then cut straight to the good stuff by phone.
• You schedule phone calls to followup on details and reports. These are optional but strongly recommended.
• All too often the EXACT same advice, issues and problems come up month after month, call after call, due to IT departments, web designers, marketing teams, and executives being slow.   When this happens, I’ll be the bad guy, following up with your staff to endure that necessary work is done.

Content Development and Linkbuilding

• We do not write your content or create graphics for our monthly retainer any longer. Adding content adds fees, to be discussed.

• In the past, my own linkbuilding and content tactics have been quite diversified and it included a vast array of resources.  Over the years, we’ve used everything from simple directories, to blogs, forums, Web 2.0 properties, private blog networks, third party services, article directories, and lots more. Those days are pretty much gone now.

• Google changed dramatically on April 24, 2012 and although we no longer participate in anchor text link manipulation, we didn’t actually stop until late 2011.

• We’ve never had a client permanently banned and to date, only three clients that I know of have ever received the dreaded “Unnatural Link Warning” email from Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console) due to work we performed. We did help get those penalties removed, and anyone who tells you they never had a client penalized, was probably never very effective in the first place.

• Links cost more money.  We cannot solve your linkbuilding issues artificially any more.  Specific strategies and cost cannot be shared until after we speak by phone. First though, your company has to be a passionate driver of link-worthy content with some value.

What is NOT included for the monthly fee?

• Programming – (unless you use WordPress)
• Copywriting

Most businesses prefer to use their own programmers, web designers, and in-house staff, but in many cases, they may not have staff available. When that’s the situation, we can take the reins to get this work done.

Payments

If you want to schedule your first “no charge” phone appointment, you can do that here at my appointment calendar.

For convenience, you may pay invoices, fees or deposits right here, and you may do so for any of the following subsidiaries:

• Search Commander, Inc. consulting
• PDXTC.com hosting & technical
• GetWPress.com WordPress services
• FeedCommander.com server version
• SEOAutomatic.com white label plug-ins

New Clients –

Step One is three equal payments for the first 90 days

New clients fall into one of two different startup plans, either $3,750 over 90 days, or $7,500 over 90 days. Any initial $800 SEO audit that was purchased may be deducted from payment number three.

Monthly Retainers:

After the initial 90 days, some clients choose a monthly retainer:

Select the monthly amount that we’ve agreed upon over the phone, and we do have a policy of geographic – industry specific exclusivity. We cannot work with competitors of current clients, but we’ll refer you.

One Time Payments – Fill in the Amount

If you choose “one time payment”, enter the desired amount after hitting the button.

Order a one time SEO Review – $400 now, and $400 upon delivery

Includes an initial phone call, printable reports, a 15 minute video, and a 30 minute followup phone call.

Don’t Want to Use Paypal?

If that’s the case, then please fill this out, and an invoice will be prepared and sent to you…

**Lets face it, for some industries the competition is pretty fierce,  especially in local search. just graduated from medical school, and you want to rank for “Beverly Hills plastic surgeon”?  Good luck. That’s not going to happen. The fact is, your industry may be far too competitive, and ranking in the top 10 may not even be realistic.  If that’s the case, I’ll be very honest with you over the phone. We can’t work miracles… Unfortunately, those days are gone. 😉

Money Back Guarantee

If at any time you don’t feel like the advice, knowledge, and results that obtained from our engagement is well worth the money you’re spending, then we simply stop with no hard feelings, and I’ll refund you 100% of the previous month’s fees upon request.  If you ever feel that I’ve taken too long for a task, or something is not completed to your satisfaction, just say so, and a portion, or all of your previous monthly fee will be returned. I value your business, but I also value my reputation and your future referrals.

* Why do I use a rate scale based on page views? Be sure to ask me about this when we’re on the phone.