Hey SEO's & Web Guys... Is this a good price for SEO?

The developer is getting the short end of the stick, big time. So yes, you’re walking of with one hell of a deal.

If you’re getting a web site that’s generally improved in terms of usability by your customers as well as maintainability by your business, then it might be worth it for that alone.

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However, SEO ain’t that easy. Most SEO services, at any price or discount, simply are not worth the cost.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2340694,00.asp

I think the concepts that drive SEO date back to the mid-1990’s. Anyone else here remember when you could “suggest” new web sites to Yahoo? You’d pick the site’s classification by some hierarchical categorization structure. And they’d have real people validate and confirm it all.

These days, modern search engines apply highly advanced statistical and heuristic models to determine the best ranking of sites in their results. And those models are protected as corporate secrets… so no one outside Google, for example, really knows what they need to optimize on a particular site to improve its ranking in Google’s database.

You’re going to let someone else poke around in your code, and then pay them for the privilege? You will need to trust them a great deal IMO, and the fact that your asking this question suggests to me that you don’t yet have that level of trust. I would not go for a deal like this, but I don’t know anything about your existing relationship with this SEO provider.
I’d be reluctant to have a separate organization come in and modify your existing codebase unless you are absolutely sure that they will adequately document their changes at minimum. I think it’s less likely that they will be willing to maintain non-SEO-related changes than that their changes will break something else down the line.
Most of the changes that you cite are things that could easily be done in-house, and would likely be done more easily by someone who already is familiar with the existing code. The exception to this would be search engine submission, which is not difficult, and getting others to link to your site. Quality of incoming links matters, so you will want to look into that if you have not already. A bunch of incoming links from a link farm might actually lower your page rank. All this stuff can be learned from books that are probably on the shelves at your local library. Also the Web has a lot of information about SEO.
Personally I would not go for it. I’m cheap. If you know and trust this provider to do a good job, get you more hits and improve your code and your site without breaking things, then yes, it sounds like a good deal.

I would go back to step one instead of getting caught in operationalized problems. And this step is: What do I want from a website?—Now, there may be other ways to get there. Use someone who can set up a new website based on a CMS (content management system) – like Drupal. Design a template or adapt one that suits your site. Then add in content and custom modules (php) IF needed for specific functions.

This would be about 400 – 500 with a likely cap at 600. Starting from “scratch”. It sounds like you already have the content, so it’s a styling and organization issue.

No I likely wouldn’t think that 800 for that would be a good idea. Because it sounds like you have a static site etc. If you’re going to spend money, go dynamic – re-usable. Getting a site that you could train yourself to maintain/update/re-use. Or have people do fix-ups for a lot less.

Only downside of common opensource CMS is security, so setup a frequent backup system and mirror/imaging – and you’ll be fine :)

Thanks for the responses guys.

@koanhead – broken code and trusting someone with an FTP account is the least of my worries. If that was an issue, I wouldn’t be considering SEO help. Also, there’s reasons why not everyone can do SEO themselves, the main ones being – No Time, and I don’t want to mess it up trying to do something I “think” or I “read” how to do as opposed to a competitive rate for an expert who’s got experience.

If this person has a good track record, examples of quality of work and you trust them I say go for it. SEO people can promise the moon sometimes but what will be delivered by this person sounds very rational. That price is fair if they truly are a professional.

Like you mentioned, you don’t always have time to do everything yourself. It makes sense to pay someone experienced to do it.

Can you give us your site link? In which program is made? How old is it? How many content you have there?

I think the price is very nice for the services provided, are people that can charge you even 2 times this price.