Why Digital Cornerstone charges for an SEO proposal
There are a few schools of thought on how to approach SEO proposals, some companies don't charge anything, some will insist on a full audit and some won't do any kind of written proposal whatsoever and will only provide a 10-15 minute loom video explaining where the problems are.
I, however, have come to the conclusion that it's best all round if there's a small fee involved if you want a proposal from me. And the reason is 3-fold.
- My proposals are detailed and lay bare all of the faults your site has.
- A proposal will take roughly a day to complete and my time, like yours, shouldn't be thought of as free.
- Often the person requesting a proposal will decide that an SEO campaign is too expensive and will try doing it themselves.
My proposals pinpoint your problems, tell you how they need to be addressed and give you clear instruction on costings. Ideally, you will also give me access to your GSC so that I can break it down in detail, too.
My fee for a proposal is £250
And at the end of the day, if £250 for an overview on how to get your site moving in the right direction is too much, then I'd suggest that SEO isn't the way forward for you at this time.
The problem with other proposals
The issue I see all too often with taking a different approach to proposals is this.
Free proposals – They are nearly always handed out by agencies/consultants that simply want you to embark on a 6-12 month campaign because they are only interested in your money.
They'll give your site a cursory glance, then fire over a generic template that's effectively a 1 size fits all approach that will tick boxes to make it look like they're doing something.
Full audit – To be honest, carrying out a detailed audit of an established site is a really good idea, but the reason I don't insist on this is that they're expensive, on top of any monthly SEO work that needs to be done.
However, if you have the budget then this is something I thoroughly recommend doing 1st.
A side note on free audits. Stay away from them at all costs because they're worthless and potentially damaging to your site. And like free proposals, a free audit is only there to entice website owners that don't know any better to work on a campaign.
The person doing the free audit will do the absolute minimum, such as a basic crawl with Screaming Frog and a backlink data dump comparing you and your competitors from Ahrefs.
Loom videos – In principle a short video showing where your problems are is an okay idea, but the only reason I see these being effective is that the consultant is afraid to charge the client.
The problem with this approach is that things get missed because the person doing the overview will be doing it for free and will likely miss important aspects. Especially if they don't have access to your Google Search Console.
Last updated on 15th August 2022 at 15:44