How Successful Freelance SEO Professionals Score Monthly Retainer Fees

While quite a few search engine optimization professionals prefer to work independently as freelancers, others start off working at online marketing agencies before they switch over to the self-employment side. When this happens, one of the first considerations is related to the services they will be offering and how much they should be charging.

A new freelancer with 10 years of experience working at an established agency recently asked questions about how he should approach new clients who accept monthly retainer contracts. The questions were related not only to how much this monthly fee should be but also how many hours of work should be enough. Here are some of the answers:

• Smaller companies that are easier to optimize because their competitors are not very strong can be serviced with less than 20 hours per month. Once the client starts dominating the Google search engine results page (SERP), the time working on their websites could be reduced to just five hours per month. In this scenario, $1,000 to $1,500 should be a reasonable monthly.

• Medium-sized companies that are entering a crowded and competitive space will initially require up to 30 hours per month. In this case, $2,000 to $3,000 should be fair, but the initial workload will likely be significant. It would not be unusual to put in the full 30 hours per month during the first three or four months.

• When it comes to big contracts that present formidable competition, SEO professionals will have their work cut out, particularly if there is an online branding angle involved. A nice juicy contract of $5,000 per month would not be unusual, but this could easily turn into a full-time job. The client may not even see great results until after three months, but once a rhythm is established, the workload could be reduced to about eight hours per week.

Monthly retainers are not so common these days; many clients prefer to start off with hourly work in order to test what the SEO professional can do. When hourly work is performed, a $200 per hour rate is not unheard of, but the reality is closer to dedicating half a day to the client in non-billable time. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/haqv6s/howmuchdoyouchargeandwhatdoyouincludein/.