There are many conflicting ideas about what a SEO consultant should charge; whilst some people (both consultants and businesses) will whinge and moan at paying $500 for half an hour’s work, others would probably see nothing wrong with the $500 fee, especially if they know it is going to result in an extra $5000 or $10,000 in sales.

What are my views? Well, there is certainly a middle ground. And many do over step the line by charging exorbitant fees, but inversely many should probably be charging more for what they do. Personally, I see there little wrong with a SEO consultant charging $1000/hour if they are getting the business a ROI out of it (and neither do most businesses), however, my major problem comes with SEO consultants who charge this much (or even substantially less) and don’t achieve the business any kind of benefit.

In reality, people shouldn’t be so critical of the SEO consultant that charges $1000/hour and gives the business results, they should be more worried about the SEO consultant that charges $100 an hour and gives no results. Because of the nature of the job and industry, it naturally attracts its fair share of snake oil salesmen, but price is not the issue here; it is quality of work we should be concerned with.

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen several businesses charging hundreds of dollars for simply “search engine submission”, undoubtedly through automated programs submitting to a bunch of search engines nobody uses. This $200 will not result in any more sales, or benefit to the business, so there is something definitely wrong with charging for this. Whilst charging for changing some page titles, no matter how rudimentary it is, may only be 10 minutes of work – but may result in a 50% traffic boost in the next month. This may be a highly valuable service that the business would have realised without the guidance of a SEO professional.

If a business was to hire a consultant in any other industry they would charge similar rates such as these for the kind of results they get; and believe me SEO usually provides much better ROI than most business consultants.

People should stop viewing SEO as a simple labour process where all they pay is the labour costs of optimising a site… this leaves out all the know-how, knowledge, and research that goes in to a SEO campaign. If your average run-of-the-mill office employee was to sit down and research everything that a SEO consultant knows it would take weeks, or even months to come close to just the knowledge base – and that is not even getting started on the skill of many SEO’s.

It is true that some of the more basic elements of SEO are quite simply very basic or even common sense that it feels we shouldn’t be charging this much for SEO, however, you are charging for the information and know-how. It is the same in nearly any other industry which has a highly specialised skill base, but even more pronounced because of the necessity of a SEO consultant to be constantly up to date on the latest progressions of the industry; plumbers, electricians, or even professionals such as lawyers do not have the same constant requirements as SEO professionals. Although every industry changes, SEO is one of the most volatile industries that it does require a constant exposure in order to keep up to date; something which most part time ‘marketers’ would never be able to keep up with.

In reality I probably would have a problem with a business charging $1000 to change some meta tags even if it did help sales, but I do see that there should be a definite middle ground; SEO professionals have to charge a fee that reflects their commitment to the job, their knowledge, skills and ability to return a return on the businesses investment, but they also have to weigh it up with the labour involved. Something such as changing a couple of meta tags or page titles verges on the labour side of things so should be charged accordingly, whilst putting forth a proposal to completely re-program a site to dynamically create search engine friendly page titles and meta tags verges on the knowledge side of things, so again should be charged accordingly. It is all about balance.