I get this question pretty frequently:
How long will it take me to get ranked on google for {insert medium competitive phrase here}?
And How much do I need to pay monthly to reach the goal?

I want to know your typical response to this question.
In general, I would want to give them a number, and I would hope they would pay over a period of time. Typically, I give them a few choices:
1) Aggressive SEO which includes buying links, as well as directory submission (free and paid), and on site optimization. I tell them buying links is a little riskier, but may bring results faster.
2) Less aggressive but consistent optimization: directory submission, on site optimization (studying traffic patters and optimizing pages), and some link exchanges.

#1 is usually 2-3 times as expensive as #2.

What do you think?

sounds about right. the other tactic is to define cost based on amount of your time.

For a medium competition phrase I've had the experience that it'll take 9-12 months, due to sandboxing and that was still only top 20. Low competition #1 can be hit in 3 months/less, IMHO/experience.

Cost: Time you put in baby, how difficult/creative it is. If they're already ranking and just want to do better you can charge less per month whereas starting from scratch will cost more. 300-500/month is reasonable for a small/medium firm to pay their SEO.

If you are a BH master you can rank for the competitive terms in a a couple weeks. I am not though.

a BH master?

Originally Posted by Bookworm-SEO

300-500/month is reasonable for a small/medium firm to pay their SEO.

That seems like a pretty light campaign to me. What would you cover with that budget?

LOL 500 a month for SEO is charity...

BH = Blackhat.... and a few weeks is a JOKE. The whole point of BH is to get in, make money, get banned, repeat... a few thousand times a week. It's not unheard of to get indexed on the first page of SERPS in a few hours, <24 hrs for sure.

So for $300, how would that money be alloted?

If this is "small potatoes", what be an example of the expenses for a large seo project?

Originally Posted by Josh P

BH = Blackhat.... and a few weeks is a JOKE. The whole point of BH is to get in, make money, get banned, repeat... a few thousand times a week. It's not unheard of to get indexed on the first page of SERPS in a few hours, <24 hrs for sure.

Heh.

Originally Posted by dvduval

So for $300, how would that money be alloted?

If this is "small potatoes", what be an example of the expenses for a large seo project?

$300 wouldn't cover a day of a decent SEO consultants time IMHO. I mean think about it. Most of us put in over 10 hours a day... but say we only do 10 hours... thats only 30 dollars an hour to hit the 300 mark.... puts it in perspective in my eyes.

well ranking no.1 in Google for a very competitive keyword is sometimes not that much easy and it requires a lot of time and effort.

Akash

...he has to start getting clients somehow....or keep waiting until someone bites.

Originally Posted by chovy

...he has to start getting clients somehow....or keep waiting until someone bites.

Heh. Love the forum spam... I bet he has tons of #1 rankings with the manual stuff he just did.

Check this Blackhat SEO Blog

You may or may not agree with it, but it is what it is.

Originally Posted by Pearse

$300 wouldn't cover a day of a decent SEO consultants time IMHO. I mean think about it. Most of us put in over 10 hours a day... but say we only do 10 hours... thats only 30 dollars an hour to hit the 300 mark.... puts it in perspective in my eyes.

If you think about it, sometimes a couple of hours of your time can earn the client thousands of dollars. In that case, charging $500/hour would be too cheap. This is sort of why I was posing the question of how we establish a dollar amount and justify paying that amount over a period of time. I suppose the best justification is proven results and references from other customers. But I would still love to know how people explaining their charges to the customer.