How to Charge for SEO Services Like Keyword Research

Pricing standalone SEO services can seem arbitrary. Here are some points to consider so that your clients pay for the value of your services, not just your time.

Video Transcript

Stephanie: I was hoping to get some input on pricing keyword research as a standalone service. Not necessarily whether you charge x number of dollars or that kind of thing, more like a pricing structure. Like, do you have a flat rate, or do you price by topic, or do you price, not that I think any of us would do this, but by keyword or whatever?

David: Yeah, yeah. I’ve struggled with this many times because of different perspectives. Right? I go back and forth, to be honest. It takes a fair amount of time to do keyword research. Right? And I don’t want to be in an hourly process. I want to charge for the value, not the time. But if it’s an unlimited keyword research process, I mean, the potential keywords could go on forever. I suppose if you had deep enough pockets, you could pay me for that. I have done a hundred-page site keyword research project before.

Tricia: Holy crap.

David: Not fun. It took a lot of work and the processes kind of helped. I got my content manager in on it, and she helped a little bit, too. So, I think what I’ve narrowed it down to, and I don’t know if this is the right way to do it, but this is what I do. I do have a standard product called keyword research, and that is for five pages.

Stephanie: Okay.

David: Now, the problem I’ve run into with that before is sometimes there are not five things clients are looking for, right? So, remember, when we do the keyword research process, we’re not thinking about words. We’re thinking about topics. So, we’re grouping topics together, words together into topics. And so sometimes you’re like, I’ve got three groups of topics, and I’ve got to find two more pages, right? You’re like, well, so it would be bad under that case to break a list of topics into two pages when Google considers them really the same topic. That would actually hurt the client. So that’s why I think five is pretty good, because I think in most cases, I can find three, and then I can tell the client, here’s a bunch of words I tried that nobody is looking for. I just want you to know that search is not the way to meet these customers. Right?

Stephanie: Yeah.

David: Social does a great job generating demand, and maybe there’s a social strategy for those other kinds of ideas or topics or things. Email can be another good way to do that. If only you knew someone who did social media really well…

Tricia: Stephanie.

David: Like you. Right? So, you have an advantage over me because you could say social is a strategy for these.

Stephanie: Okay.

David: Right? We can drive demand through social media, but we can’t create demand through search. So, the value I try to provide is, first of all, I always like to set the expectations on these projects. I’m going to use the data, but the data might not tell us what you want to hear.

Stephanie: Okay.

David: I just want to set that expectation. I’m going to try to figure out how customers are looking for what you have to offer. However, I always start it with ‘search responds to demand, and social creates demand.’ So, this is search, and we can only respond if people are looking for it. But if people don’t know how to look for it, either I’m using the wrong words, or you have such an amazingly new and unique product that people don’t know how to look for it yet. Right? So, if I preface it with that, then I always start with a 15-minute interview to kind of pull out these ideas from the client because sometimes clients are such specialists in what they do that they use jargon that mere mortals don’t use.

Stephanie: I think that the project I’ve been asked to work on this for is going to be one of those things. There are actually two projects under one agency, and one is legacy data migration from medical EHRs.

David: Right. That’s pretty specific.

Stephanie: Which, in layman’s terms, is taking past patients of a doctor’s office and pulling those records into a safe HIPAA-compliant storage.

David: Right. Well, maybe you think because there are solutions there, like thinking more broadly, HIPAA-compliance solutions.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah.

Tricia: Yeah.

David: But that might be too broad. Well, you don’t do all of the HIPAA compliance; you only do this kind of HIPPA compliance. So maybe it’s HIPAA compliance for medical records rather than HIPAA compliance for this.

Stephanie: Right.

David: The way I wrote the keyword research process, which you’ve been doing keyword research for years, and I’d welcome your critique of it, but the first thing I’m doing is brainstorming.

Stephanie: Right.

David: Part of the brainstorming (without looking at data) is watching what Google does with related searches and bolded words and search results. Because when I got started in SEO, we’d build a page for lawyers and a page for attorneys, right?

Stephanie: Yeah.  

David: When you search for lawyer or attorney, it bolds the other word because it knows it’s a synonym. So, you can search for lawyers, and it will give you attorneys.

Stephanie: I actually went to the Curious Ants page about the keyword research, and I’m like, okay, yeah, this is my process, but I still don’t how to, don’t know how to price it as a standalone service.

David: The pricing is another thing.

Stephanie: I’m so used to doing it as part of a whole site optimization.

David: I don’t really like to do it in a vacuum because it perpetuates the idea that, well, now you’re SEOed, and that’s just not true.

Stephanie: I think part of my problem is just micromanaging on that kind of thing. I don’t want to hand over the keyword research and then let them put it into content and then say, “Well, your keywords didn’t work.” No, your content didn’t work. You didn’t optimize your content. You just put in a few keywords here and there.

David: Yeah. This 100-page keyword project was like, I want you to go through this whole site. And I’m like, okay. It included writing meta descriptions and title tags, which I usually include in keyword research.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David: But that’s just not going to do it. There’s more to SEO than keyword tags.

Stephanie: Yeah. And they don’t even want me to do the title tags and the meta descriptions. They just want me to hand over a list. So, okay, I’ll do that. I mean, I’ll put a couple of dollars in my pocket, I guess, but they’re going to have to sign something to say if this doesn’t work, it isn’t on me.

David: Right, right. This is one of those things where I actually have a standardized document I give to clients when they ask for it. I’ll often do it even if they’re not paying for it separately, like when it’s a new client. In the standard process, I like to include not only the number of searches but also the opportunity number, which I teach you how to calculate in Curious Ants. Then I put it in a bar chart because I actually removed the numbers because the number is immaterial. It’s the comparison between things: there are a lot more people searching for this than that. You can kind of see that. I’ve had many arguments with clients about, “I don’t want to call myself that.” Okay, but nobody calls you that. Right? Look at all the business you’re missing. So, I’ll do that. I also include, because one of the key research processes I suggest you do is to come up with blog topics while you’re doing it, a big list on each page. I say, here are some questions you can answer either on the page or as blog posts separately that are relevant to this topic. So, it’s an additional value to the client. If I’m doing all that value and I only have three pages, and they paid for five, I feel pretty good that I’ve delivered a lot of value, even if I haven’t hit five. But your question is about pricing, and that’s the challenge. So, maybe a guideline might be to say, how much do you charge an hour? Maybe if you offer five pages, and you estimate it might take an hour, well, that’s how much your research project is. I actually pump it up to include an hour before and after. So, I’m actually charging seven hours for a five-hour project because I always include an interview with the client first, and I always have a presentation where I walk the client through it at the end. That gives me a buffer zone of the client thinking, “Oh, wow. There’s a lot more here than I expected.” Or if I am hitting a goose egg, I can go to the client and say, help me understand what I’m missing. And that’s still within the budget because I’m still accounting for it. There are going to be some times when I don’t know enough about the industry. Does this word really describe you or not? And I’d hate to recommend it if it somehow looks right to me, but I’m not sure. So, that gives me a little padding to ask those questions so that the delivery is really valuable to them. So, that’s what I’ll do. I guess what I’m suggesting is if you know how much you would charge for an hour, multiply it by five, six, or seven.

Stephanie: Okay.

David: That would be a fair range.

Stephanie: That’s kind of where I was in my head.

David: Yeah.

Stephanie: So, okay, cool.

David: But if they want you to just give them a list, you can vomit a list on them.

Stephanie: Okay.

David: But (and I know you’ve done this) bite them a little bit on the lack of value you’re providing.

Stephanie: Yeah.

David: I can’t do my best work when you just ask for a list. It really will be much more helpful for you if you let me do title tags for you, meta descriptions for you, and some blog post ideas for you. This is really what I want to provide. Remember that this is one of the first steps in SEO. This is not the end of SEO.

Stephanie: Yeah.

David: In the current SEO climate, title tags are still pretty important, but not what they used to be.

Stephanie: Right. Right.

David: It used to be that title tags ruled – you could almost rank for just those. It just doesn’t work that way anymore.

Stephanie: Yeah.

David: So, if they’re willing to pay you and understand that a list of words… It may not even be worth taking the project because you’re going to be hurting yourself. There’s a sense in which this might be a red flag for a bad client. Where they’re so toxic that they think, “Oh, she’s just a commodity. Just give me a list. Stephanie has no experience or expertise. Just give me a list of words.” Well, you offer a lot more than that.

Stephanie: Right.

David: You’re a Fiverr person. Just go to Fiverr and get a list of a thousand keywords for $5 if that’s all you really want, but you’re paying me for my expertise. There’s a point where it’s like, if you’re getting treated like that, if there’s a toxicity in there, that’s like, no, thank you.

Stephanie: Yeah. When I go back, I need to set the expectation that the data is good the day that I hand it over. It changes all the time. This is not an evergreen list. This is not something you can just sit on and pick your nose about.

Dave: There are a few things that I would consider regarding this. One would be, can I put this into my portfolio? It’s keyword research for this major client that people would recognize. Right? That’s one thing. Another thing is, could they be a good referral partner to you for other things?

Stephanie: That’s part of why I’m considering it; I think it could lead to bigger and better projects.

Dave: That’s one. Another is, can you sell them on other things? That’s another. Will you enjoy it? Because keyword research, at a point, is kind of fun. But sometimes the value is when it’s not fun anymore, and you’re thinking, “Oh, my gosh. I got paid how little for this?” Something else would be if they are a current client that you want to keep for other things. Then, the last thing is to consider the opportunity cost because if you say yes to one thing, you’re automatically saying no to something else.

Stephanie: Yeah. True. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right.

Stephanie: So, you may have the time, and that’s great if you do, but if you’re like, I’m going to have to work Saturday or Sunday to finish this, and you really don’t want to, is that okay? Maybe that’s another thing: do I really need the money from this?

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David: I’m glad you brought that up. Opportunity cost is one of those things I forget. If I say yes, and I’m in the middle of a project right now where I’m just doing some back-end technical consulting, the opportunity cost isn’t worth it because it totally interrupts my day. So, I should have just said no, but now my week’s stressed out because I have to squeeze them in somewhere. They’re paying. That’s great, but I’d almost rather be less stressed out from filling my week. I know.

Dave: Yeah, good point. Yeah, I know. I’ve got an opportunity to work with somebody and it’s a major thing, and I don’t know how much I really want to do it at this point in my life.

Stephanie: Right, right. Yeah. Good question. And you’re right, that’s a big thing to consider. Well, thank you.

David: Yeah. Does that help? Okay, good, good.

Dave: Oh, one other thing. The last thing I should have had on my list is to project yourself three months down the road, or six months, or whatever. How much money would it take for you to feel good about your decision no matter what? You know what I mean? So, in other words, the last thing you want to do is start resenting the client or resenting yourself for taking this job, you know? So, think about three months down the road. What could cause you to feel that about the client or yourself?

David: That’s good wisdom. I need to ask myself that more often, too. Thank you, Dave.

Dave: You’re welcome.