Do you offer Maintenance service?

[HoosierBuff]

I seemed to get asked this fairly often. The idea is, I've done 6 good months of fixing the on site issues, setting up the profiles, some content work, etc. The client is happy, but, they don't want to keep paying the same price - but want someone to occasionally look over things, and make sure things aren't on fire, maybe a few changes here and there, or a bit of backlink outreach.

I'm trying to figure out what an SEO maintenance package would look like, in terms of what would if offer (like, what exactly would I do), and what the price would be.

I'm thinking:
- Continue directory submission
- Monitor traffic and site health
- Monthly traffic reporting?
- Reputation monitoring?

what do you think?

 

[Christopher W]

I seemed to get asked this fairly often. The idea is, I've done 6 good months of fixing the on site issues, setting up the profiles, some content work, etc. The client is happy, but, they don't want to keep paying the same price - but want someone to occasionally look over things, and make sure things aren't on fire, maybe a few changes here and there, or a bit of backlink outreach.

I'm trying to figure out what an SEO maintenance package would look like, in terms of what would if offer (like, what exactly would I do), and what the price would be.

I'm thinking:
- Continue directory submission
- Monitor traffic and site health
- Monthly traffic reporting?
- Reputation monitoring?

what do you think?

I sort of cringe when I hear directory and packages lol

Sounds like a good idea. I find it hard to offer packages since most have different circumstances.

I do all of these things for my clients monthly and just charge hourly. Except the directory thing you mentioned, it has to be super relevant.

I would think a package deal would have to have more meat on it. Content creation and promotion etc. as you said some back link out reach would be good.

Cheers,
Christopher

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

I do offer a maintenance package, but with that package I'm not doing monthly reports - rather they're quarterly.

I include monitoring of listings, updates on what's happened in the digital space that could impact them, monitoring and minor changes to website, backlink cleansing / monitoring, domain & hosting management, maps spam management, online plagiarism management and a smattering of other things.

What my aim to do is take away all the niggly things that distract from people running their business. So yes, sometimes things happen only once a year, but it all gets rolled into one package so they feel they can "set and forget".

The forget doesn't mean they never get involved - negative reviews for instance are one thing that must be responded to and actioned quickly by the business.

I start with a low-cost base plan and then provide add-on options. Content creation & backlink outreach (beyond very basic) are add-ons, as some small biz owners don't want to do it. Some just want to know they have an expert on tap who will fix things if something goes wrong.

 

[Linda Buquet]

That sounds like a really well rounded plan M! I can see saying something like:

Mr customer: We've invested the time and hard work to get you ranking well, now we need to go into proactive mode to try to keep you on up there.

A Google GMB hiccup, someone changing your listing, a competitor using spam tactics to leap frog you, bad backlinks are just a few of the things that could knock you back down. Plus your top competitors are making continuous efforts to improve their ranking, so we need to continue to keep making progress on several fronts as well, like content and links...

Russ, I think I would hesitate calling it a maint. plan. That sounds like it would be very inexpensive. To be able to command a decent price, maybe beef it up a bit like M suggests and incorporate some value driven features and call it a proactive protection plan or something???

 

[Marie Haynes]

I have some clients that I have helped in the past and they pay a small monthly fee just to be able to have me available should an issue come up. One is as little as $100 per month. I do almost nothing for them, but every now and then they email me and ask me about potential issues that they are having. We're both happy with how the plan works.

I think it would make sense to offer some type of ongoing maintenance or consulting plan where they get up to x hours per month of your time for a relatively low fee. That way, if you get someone who is a real time suck, you have yourself covered as their plan only covers them for say 2 hours a month.