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Although marketing has been around for decades as a stand-alone science, you still have some mountains to move.
For example, some CEOs expect budget – or even wholly free audits – from their marketing agencies.
In our previous article on how to sell SEO audit services to SaaS companies, we discussed the importance of positioning your audit services as premium.
SaaS founders understand that things aren’t cheap in this industry, so they expect to pay more for quality.
But you can’t exactly touch the corner of your mouth with your pinky and demand one billion dollars like Dr. Evil.
Instead, read this article to find out what a fair price SEO Audit checklist would look like in 2023.
TL;DR
Pitching Customers – The Prep Work:
- Demonstrate expertise without revealing too much.
- Explain to SaaS CEOs how quality audits can identify and rectify errors, saving money long-term.
- Consider offering a free standard audit or a quick-win method to gain trust.
- SEO audits should encompass categories like SEMRush ranking, keyword ranking, organic traffic, home page UX, and primary forms.
Before the SEO Audit:
- Establish a monthly retainer based on website size, industry, and potential.
- Discuss key objectives with clients.
- Prepare a checklist, including access details, company background, goals, competition, and target analysis.
SEO Audit Proposal Checklist:
- Be transparent about pricing. It's often better to sell bundled services at a discounted rate than individual ones.
- Detail each action in the audit process for transparency, including tools setup, content audit, keyword research, competitor analysis, and more.
- After identifying errors, propose actionable solutions, such as fixing technical issues, refining content, and optimizing keyword strategies.
- Define SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) objectives with clients.
Conclusion:
- Position SEO services as premium and offer bulk service discounts.
- Clearly list all services to ensure clients understand their investment.
- Maintain a professional website to enhance credibility and conversions.
Pitching Customers – The Prep Work
This stage is essential because you want to show you’re an expert in your field without disclosing too much.
You also need to understand niche specifics, so your pitch should differ for SaaS and eCommerce SEO audits, for example.
If you’re pitching to SaaS CEOs, they’ll understand why quality audits can help them solve and prevent many errors.
At this point, you can explain how an initial audit can save them money in the long run.
You can also suggest a free standard audit if you feel this increases your chances with a particular client.
The quick-win method works too.
Here’s how you do it:
Split your SEO audit into categories like:
- SEMRush ranking review
- Keyword ranking
- Anchor texts
- Organic traffic
- Home page
- UX
- Primary forms (contact, e-mail, and lead generation)
Auditing these services won’t take long, plus they’re treasure troves of minor errors that break the conversion funnel. So, if you can identify and fix a checkout page bug that leads to more conversions, you can get the job faster.
Before the SEO Audit
So, you’ve scored your client 🚀!
Now that you’re in the pre-audit stage, here is some advice to make sure everything goes smoothly:
- Consider a monthly retainer of 5-40 hours, depending on the website’s size, industry, and outlook.
- Discuss the general feel with your customers, such as their objectives and the big things they want to improve.
- Do a checklist with information about:
- Access information
- Company background (goals, competition, target, SWAT analysis)
- Questions
SEO Audit Proposal Checklist
In this stage of the conversation, you’ll have to be very precise about your pricing structure.
Our advice when selling separate SEO services is to sell them more expensively because:
You’ll need to set aside some hours to understand a company, whether you’re doing just keyword research or the whole shebang.
If you’re using this knowledge for three services, you don’t need to charge the client each time you’re applying an insight you’ve gained on their company.
Here’s an example:
A customer needs an SEO audit with content strategy, keyword research, and technical SEO.
In this case, you can reduce the total price of your package.
Besides, your customer perceives your business relationship as valuable to you.
So, your SEO audit’s prices should reflect all the actionable steps you’re taking and what you’re looking for.
We’re going to give you a ballpark list below, but you should detail it with as many actions as possible so that the client understands what you’re doing:
- Tools setup
- Index & crawl audit
- Current content audit
- On-page & website structure audit
- Current ranking & position review
- Keyword research, portfolio & analysis
- Inbound link profile audit
- Competitor audit
At this point, it’s up to your customer whether they want to continue working with you or not. If they do, they’ll want you to fix all of the mistakes you’ve identified to ensure their website gets smooth conversions.
So, your price proposal should include things to fix or use after the audit, such as:
- Technical problems
- Shortlisting some of the most successful competitors that could give you valuable ideas for more relevant content
- Auditing the content on all of the website’s pages
- Indexing difficulties
- Crawling efficiency
- Any problems with their link profile
- Devising useful keyword maps that would attract more visitors and trigger more conversions
Besides, you must set up a meeting with your customer to decide on a few goals.
If you remember this from college, your objectives have to be SMART, which means:
- Specific: the precise increase in revenue within a fixed time frame and set budget
- Measurable: make sure you can keep track of these objectives with your system (it can be Google Analytics or another)
- Achievable: make sure these goals are feasible for your company; you can’t expect a 300% profit from a brand that’s been declining for a year
- Realistic: explain to your customer that a four-hour day won’t help them rank first on Google. Your goals have to be practical compared to the current industry standard and the amount of work needed to make them true
- Timely: always set precise time for the goals and make sure your client understands all possible lags before they see a spike in organic results
In Conclusion
Now you know what you should include in your proposal and what prep work you need before sending your proposal.
Remember to start with a helpful correction and to position your services as premium.
You can offer a considerable discount for bulk services, plus a free initial audit to hook your customers.
Prepare a complete list with all your services, too, so your customers understand where they’re investing their money.
Another essential element is to make sure your website looks professional.
That way, your customers will see all the valuable info faster, and you’ll get more conversions.
