SEO Freelancer Rates – Costs for a UK Freelancer
Monthly SEO and Digital Marketing prices effective 1st May 2021. Any reference to costs before this date are null and void.
It’s funny how SEO and Digital managed agencies are coy about their website costs, isn’t it? As a freelancer I’m so much more flexible than any web agency, for a start you will usually get an email response from me over weekends.
As a sole trader, I understand the budget constraints of similar businesses. From dog trainers to global training schemes; my company was founded in 2008 and I’m celebrating 50 years of age in 2021. I’m here to stay as I prove time and time again my methods work.
Monthly SEO Prices for UK WordPress Local and Shopify Ecommerce
Google rankings improvement promise in only 30 days. Here’s a brief roadmap of your SEO journey and cost breakdown with information at every stage:
- Zoom SEO audit and Google Consultation – £70 with an introduction to SEO basics to learn a few tips over Zoom screen sharing. Google Analytics and Search console setup included with this 90 minute offer. Most digital agencies fail my Google audit!
- 30 Day SEO Booster – £1,000 flat fee with everything delivered. I will write Google content on your home page and SEO one new blog post. I also include 5 “Back To The Future” retro-SEO’ing blog posts with Search Engine tags and categories and bring them up to date. Please note: Tuition not included, however when you come on board on a monthly contract, SEO training is available (see below)
- Monthly ongoing eCommerce SEO contract 6 or 12 months – Full day rate is £560 – Your 8 hours can be redeemed for any digital marketing services you desire, most clients prefer – Monthly telephone catchups, or mail Q&A . Content writing/on-page SEO and off-page content marketing [press releases/blogs/Video SEO Backlinks] Ad-hoc Google Analytics reporting. SEO training is included in your contract with this service.
SEO KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators
What can you expect from an SEO campaign? You already know SEO is a slow process, so although I offer a no-contract 30 Day SEO Booster, when my schedule is complete expect a sharp increase in Google search Phrase rankings. The two main ranking factors are SEO copywriting (on-page) and creating backlinks (off-page) which are delivered in the form of Video SEO.
Target search terms and their position in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) will improve dramatically in 30 days, but this is not possible to deliver such a jump again and again every month. The reason for this is because your website will have had an MOT and a complete engine tune-up with quality technical SEO adjustments – in a high 95% of my new clients there haven’t been any quality SEO methods before. In cases were DIY SEO efforts have been made, or cheap SEO services from Fiverr have been purchased, on occasions, extra work will need to be planned to combat poor, ineffective and sometimes dangerous Search Engine Optimisation work.
Paying for an SEO and KPI’s – Google Keyword Ranking
Google Analytics reports. How frequent would you like website traffic reports? Not sure? I’ll give you a snapshot of the most popular options. If your new website needs SEO and is under 6 months old, I’d say the split in reporting is twofold; daily reports for the first month, then weekly reports. Some clients genuinely do not care:
Get on with it Nina! I don’t need fancy reports, I just want to rank in Google
For clients with domains and websites that are under 5 years old are happy with monthly website traffic and Google Analytics reports. Established business owners in this instance will normally have some exposure to Google Analytics, so if they need to do a quick check they will login themselves.
Google Rankings. As part of working together we have joint access to a Google spreadsheet. As Google Drive is a cloud-based storage, both parties can access the spreadsheet at any time.
Transparent way of working. Again, our Google spreadsheet will have entries every month (specify which tasks for me to document) so when I’ve completed a project, created a new article, written a blog post or produced a YouTube video there will be URLs there for you to click and visit and view my work.
Here is the master document detailing our agreed target search terms. Continuity is essential, we will not be changing search terms every month, or swapping geographical areas unless you’re happy with your Google rankings. Always feel free to write down notes and ideas and schedule a call with me to discuss your points, it’s super handy to have everything available in a backed up Cloud spreadsheet. It’s important for due diligence for you to check your most important search phrases every month as my location is in Somerset and we need to keep a tally that my SERPs results are the same as yours in your location.
What’s Included In Ongoing Monthly SEO?
- Number 1 priority – On-page SEO and content. Usually, blog articles. Depending on your budget the content will be provided by yourself or I’m happy to offer SEO Content Writing services as part of your fee to write blog articles on your behalf
- How long does it take to write an article – Anywhere between 2 hours and 4 hours depending on the word count
- WordPress: Yoast manual SEO optimisation, H1/H2’s/Alt tags/internal linking
- Local SEO and eCommerce: Blog tags and categories, alt tags on images.
- Internal linking with anchor text. Anchor text needs to be using words in your search phrases – example – Read my SEO Reviews
- Google Search Console tasks – URL inspection on new pages/blog articles
Turn your underperforming eCommerce website on Shopify or WordPress into a revenue-busting sales machine with monthly SEO services. I offer SEO copywriting services including on-page coding in my 10-point regime.
Most people believe that backlinks are still a top signal to Google!
May 18th, 2021 – Search Engine Land report
That’s one of the main takeaways from The State of Link Building Report from Aira. As people are working on their links to help improve their rankings, here are some of the other major takeaways:
- The most popular link building tactic is content-led link building
- Success for a content-led link building campaign was up to 40 links and a third of people have had a campaign completely flop and get zero links
- Only 10% of agencies and freelancers said that they’d seen demand for link building decrease over the last 12 months. This means for 90% of clients the penny has finally dropped.
Why we care. Link building isn’t going anywhere. Links are definitely still a major signal to Google, but it’s also interesting to see that maybe we haven’t all got it figured out 100% of the time. Driving links with content is the most natural way to build those new links and keep them coming, but it’s not a home run every time. Take heart in knowing that there are some campaigns that get ZERO links.
I wish people would remember this, which leads me to the next subject: On-Page SEO
Writing content for eCommerce SEO – Keywords and Search Phrase focus
Decide what phrase you want to target and keyword order (most important first) Home page should have 500 words MINIMUM. Your Category/Collection/Blog/Pages should have 500 words MINIMUM – for Google skyscraper content the blog posts need to be over 1,000 words. Read my other blog post: How long does it take to write 1,000 words for SEO?
Now you have chosen your target phrase for Google ranking, remember the next 2 important content guidelines:
URL / Page Title / H1 header should have keywords first as Google views the keywords at the beginning of the Title Tag and Header as the most important. Do not use your brand name.
Avoid using your brand name – the point of SEO is to attract people to your site who don’t know your company. If they do know your brand they will find you anyway on Google!
- The page title – and the URL www.seolady.co.uk/small-business-seo/seo-training-somerset. This is referred to as an SEO-friendly URL with the most important keywords first
- Best practices say your Meta Title should be 70 characters or less in length
- Your H1 should feature your target search phrase and Geographical area at the beginning. Only one H1 per page.
- Your meta description is between 150 and 160 characters in length for optimal SERPs
- Your meta description will be written in a sales and enticing manner, what do you offer that’s for free? End in your phone number.
- A headline and sub headers – Multiple H2, one or more H3 depending on length
- Use Alt tags on images, you can go back and add them in retrospectively
- Alt tags should have keywords first and brand name last – in order of importance
- Keyword rich text – Content is King, write for readers, not Google, avoid repeating keywords/ Blog posts should have skyscraper content of 1,000+ words.
- (WordPress and Shopify) tags and categories in blog posts, no character limit that I know of.
Further reading: 10 Winning Ways to Write Compelling Content for eCommerce
SEO Freelancer vs Digital Managed Agency Team
This is where the 2 roles are night and day. A digital agency team will focus on backlinks, whereby I SEO superior quality content that’s unique and handwritten. Oh, then there’s the cost!
You would pay an agency between £700-£1,500/month and they tart up your website design to impress you with super photos and scrolling design. A freelance SEO will focus on the compromise between flashy website graphics and providing relevant content for Google and Bing/Yahoo.
What’s a Featured Snippet Look Like? How Much Does It Cost?
It’s free! the content required for a featured snippet means humungous work with creating exciting new & unique content, a slapping call-to-action, and at least 1,500 words. Then there are images and a YouTube video (remember Google owns YouTube) it’s a multi-faceted approach that requires a few hours and good collaboration.
Are you up for the challenge?
Skyscraper Content – 1,00 words or more – An SEO freelancer will write awesome Google page 12 content for £90-£250 per page (between 2 hours and 5 hours with unique content and 1,000 words+).
An agency won’t charge you; or provide a cheap copywriting service for £25/page. You get what you pay for, 250 words of tosh and generic script.
In summary, a local services website geographically targeting towns and one city will be cheaper than an Ecommerce store selling UK Nationwide.
- £70 for a 90-minute consultations. Agencies will give this for free.
- £1,000 for my exclusive 30 day SEO Booster with effective Video SEO
- Ongoing monthly: from £280
I’ve got 12 years SEO agency exposure under my belt, so I know how much profit margin SEO Agencies cost versus being self-employed. Agencies naturally demand higher overheads than a sole trader like myself working from my home office supervised by Ozzie.
You can communicate with me in more ways than any agency – I regularly chat with my clients over Whatsapp, Skype messaging, Zoom video conferencing, Telephone consultations, and of course email support with 24 hour guaranteed response for website hacking/down/breaking.
Benefits of hiring a SEO Freelancer – SEO and Digital Marketing Agencies staff members are on financial incentives both team and individual bonuses every month. You’ll be getting a comparable service from myself, as a responsive individual, than waiting for a Team Member to return your call or answer your email.
DIY SEO Tips and eCommerce On-Page SEO Content Writing Advice
Share your website address with me to begin
Zoom SEO Consulations
Relax – I talk your language and have been delivering training sessions since 2009.
I deliver UX advice, honest critique and identify areas for improvement.
Which of the following applies to you?
- Google position bombing or stagnant rankings
- Competitor stalking – why are they better than me?
- New website under 3 months old, what’s next, what can I do?
- Loads of eCommerce website hits but comparatively few sales
- Looking to learn DIY SEO content writing and need guidance
I will audit your website in Google Search Console and Analytics and create a Cloud document that we can both view and edit in advance of us speaking in person.
I will prepare a list of observations and formulate a tailor-made plan of action for discussion. Book in a 60-90 informal chat and discussion over the phone or Skype/Zoom. Following our session, I will provide a list of homework points as a plan of action, plus you have the option to take advantage of 24 hours email Q&A support from me.
Google Analytics explained – I don’t know what I don’t know.
My method is to work backwards from your goal – for example
► How many people come to my website from a specific website or source
► I need to understand how to convert my traffic better, my sales are low
► How do I see what keywords people use to visit my site
► Your website is on Google page 4 and you desperately need to improve
► A brand new website not even in the first 10 pages of Google
► Old domain that’s a few years old but has never ranked
► Please explain how to maximise my use of meta titles, description and H1 headers
► I have bought SEO services from overseas and my site has dropped
► Bad backlinks have resulted in my website disappearing from search results
I want to change my domain, or migrate a WIX website to WordPress.
I’m on Yell/Hibu and need an effective website built from scratch for local services.
I just want to learn the SEO basics in a one-off Zoom consultation, I need to research what are the best keywords and search terms to target.
► Allowing me access to your Google Analytics & Search Console data
► I will create a Google Drive cloud document so we can both view/edit at the same time
► You describe your problem and I’ll work to fix it
► Analysis of visitor data / Keyword discussion based on your initial ideas
► You will be provided with follow-on homework during our session to complete
24 Hour follow on support included over email
WordPress Developers: An SEO Agency Experience
- An old domain that was ranking was changed for a new domain because of a change in business model. No 301 was put in place
- The old domain was not verified in Search Console using the Meta Tag method
- No Alt tags were on any of the 150 photos
- No keywords in H1 header on homepage – no geographical areas simply “Welcome to my website”
- No blog on WordPress, no tags or categories
- No reports, no agreed keywords or search phrases, no traffic reports, just a sales rep on the phone saying they were ‘building citations and backlinks using off page SEO’
- Client had no way of knowing what results looked like with zero KPI’s
- Client was locked in to a 12 month legal contract