My Thoughts on Buying SEO by the Hour

This will be a quick hit as I have a terribly full day today. A concept hit me. Can SEO by the hour be real? I had a colleague tell me I was really missing an opportunity (a financial opportunity, in truth, is what he meant) by not offering SEO via this pay method. Well, I’m going to just quickly hammer out why I do NOT offer this service.

SEO is not measurable before you get started. In fact, I don’t really think it’s measurable until about 1 to 2 months into it and even then SEO never truly ends. Anybody who says it does is either lying to you or doesn’t understand SEO.

Links, for the most part, are not instant. Some links take months to get approved, so even when you are not charging “by the hour” links are still trickling in. So, it’s not like you can buy an hour of SEO and see an instant result. Also, there is no timeline for when Google will index these links. Sometimes it takes up to 2 weeks. So, if a client calls and says, “Shane, my rankings are horrific; I want to purchase a few hours of SEO,” I cannot produce him instant results. Why not charge by the project and throw the SEO Link-Building Book at it instead?

Another reason: Google is always changing its algorithm, which makes SEO by the hour impossible to measure. What if you purchase SEO from me in week 1 of August and I go on a major link-building campaign only to find Google has shifted weight away from certain links and is now giving more credit for a totally different type of link by the end of August. Wouldn’t you want your hours back? Well, if you purchase via the project and via an expected result, Google changing its algorithm is not your problem; it’s MINE!

Here’s a quick example: I had a national client who wanted to tangle with some of the best in his industry. I saw it as a daunting task and gave him a 4 to 6 month window before a top page ranking could be expected. Wah-la, he was ranked in the top 10 three weeks later. I cannot tell you how many hours of SEO I performed to get it there, as I do not punch a clock or have an SEO meter. However, I can tell you that I threw the link-building book at the project and spared no expense. Had I attempted to sell it by the hour, there is no way I could give a reasonable time line as to when a top page ranking might be achieved.

Predicting how long it will take to build a house is understandable. You know where to get the materials, you know what each material costs and you can purchase everything up front and await your finished product. With SEO, you cannot call Google and ask how long it will take, and you cannot ask them to stop changing their algorithm as often as everyday.

So, do you want a firm that will work around the clock for you and around the ever changing algorithm or do you want to purchase a few hours in hopes that what you get in return yields results?

SEO San Diego CA is located at 8002 Avenida Navidad, San Diego, CA 92122. T: 619-723-6060