SEO battle: company or freelancer. SEO battle: company or freelancer SEO company vs. freelancer vs. full-time SEO specialist

Freelancer or SEO company? A question that every webmaster has asked at least once. Before choosing methods, strategies and tools for website promotion, it is worth determining who exactly the performer will be. SEO agencies are often associated with professionalism and a business-like approach. While freelancing comes with budget savings and low quality work. A categorical division into good and bad is wrong. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, which we will discuss in detail in this article.

Who is a freelancer

A freelancer is an agent (performer) who works for himself. Services are usually provided remotely (working from home). You find a specialist on the Internet (on exchanges, on social networks, through recommendations, etc.) and negotiate with him personally. No preparation of contracts or other paperwork: place an order on the freelance exchange → select a contractor → receive the result → pay.

The work scheme is very simple, which attracts customers. In this case, both parties receive guarantees. For some, the fulfillment of the stated services is guaranteed, for others - payment. The guarantor is the platform on which the transaction is carried out.

pros

Prices are lower. Of course, there are also providers who charge a lot for their work (even more than SEO agencies), but in most cases the average cost of services is lower.

Large selection of performers. Thousands of specialists are registered on exchanges. Each company will be able to select a contractor to suit its needs. It is enough to leave an application with a detailed description of the technical specifications. Freelancers will find you themselves.

You “dictate” the terms yourself. If the customer knows at least a little about SEO and wants the service to be performed in a certain way (methods, tools), the contractor will adapt to the requirements.

Individual approach. The way freelancers work does not allow them to use template approaches. They work with each client individually, solving specific problems.

Communication takes place directly with the specialist who performs the work, without managers (intermediaries). This allows for better communication and understanding of what the customer needs.

Minuses

The risk of running into an incompetent performer is greater. Registering on a freelance services website is easy. The doors are open to everyone, including inexperienced beginners. This is a waste of time for the customer, and sometimes money down the drain.

It takes more time to check and select a contractor. This one follows from the first drawback. Due to the large number of pseudo-professionals, you have to spend a lot of time checking your portfolio, reading reviews, communicating and determining your level of competence.

Slow progress speed. It is logical that a whole team of specialists, where each is responsible for a certain area of ​​SEO, will cope with the assigned tasks faster than one person.

The quality of work is lower. One person cannot have a deep enough understanding of all aspects of search engine optimization (programming, layout, copywriting, internet marketing). As a rule, an SEO freelancer is self-taught, whose knowledge is superficial.

There are no legal guarantees. Applies to transactions executed outside of freelance platforms. If you were deceived, you will not be able to complain to the court or any other authority. Freelancers do not have physical addresses, and full names may be fictitious. Fraudsters will get away unpunished.

Human factor. The contractor may disappear at any time, get sick, etc. In the end, he can simply refuse to cooperate without explaining the reason. No one is immune from force majeure situations. Result: the order and deadlines are missed, you have to look for a contractor again. In agencies this factor is absent or minimized.

SEO agency

An SEO company is an organization that provides services in the field of Internet promotion. The main difference from freelancers is that it is not one person, but a whole team of specialists, where everyone is responsible for a specific type of activity. The agency does not hire inexperienced people. As a rule, each of the employees is a person who has worked in the market for a long time and has more than one successfully implemented project behind him. The company's representation on the Internet is its website and pages on social networks. This is where services are ordered. Less often - in the company office.

Important: be able to distinguish the website of a real SEO agency from one created by a freelancer and supposedly designed as a company website, otherwise you risk overpaying for the service. Check the office address, the entry in the RPO (register of audited organizations), and read the information about the employees.

pros

More professional performers. Agencies employ many people and each has specific responsibilities. Programmers are responsible for the technical condition of the resource, copywriters are responsible for the text content, marketers are responsible for the site’s ability to sell and retain potential buyers. Together they have more knowledge than one freelancer.

Promotion is faster. Since more people are working on your project, your goals are achieved faster.

Using expensive tools and services. Promotion and analytics are carried out using expensive professional tools and services. A freelancer cannot afford to buy such programs. He uses free, limited-functionality analogues.

Minimal risks of bumping into an incompetent performer. If a company has been on the market long enough, it cares about its reputation and competence. The number of incompetent agencies is minimal, since they do not last long (they are replaced by more professional competitors).

Wide range of services. As a rule, cooperation is not limited to search engine promotion alone. Companies often offer a whole range of services to increase sales and brand popularity.

Legal guarantees. Each order is accompanied by an agreement, all rights and obligations of the parties are specified. For violation of rights, the customer can always go to court or another appropriate authority.

Minuses

Price. The price for services exceeds those offered on freelance exchanges. But do not forget that you are paying for experience, professionalism and guarantees.

Communication with the direct executor through the manager. In most cases, the customer communicates with the project manager, who in turn transmits information to the contractor. This may lead to misunderstandings between the parties and errors.

You don't choose the tools and methods. When ordering promotion from SEO companies, you have to choose from the available options. That is, it is not you who determine the methods, tools and strategies. You just pay for the result. An exception is individual orders (the service is not provided by all companies).

Bottom line

There are good and bad performers both among freelancers and full-fledged SEO companies. The best way to understand which is best for your project is to try both. But not everyone has the right to make a mistake, so you have to choose the option with the least risks.

This question has undoubtedly been asked by every website owner. Seeing the prices in the agencies, this same owner grabs his head and regrets that he even started doing this whole business.

But you don’t need to despair so much right away. Yes, the site requires investment. Any business requires this. A website can help your company reach a completely different level, where completely different money is circulating. And what you spend now will come back to you a hundredfold.

It is necessary to promote the site. It’s not enough to just “make it and hang it up so it’s there.” In this case, your resource will truly be a waste of money. The site, like money, must work.

There is only one way to save on promoting an Internet resource - to do everything yourself. But believe me, without the necessary knowledge, without the ability to use special tools, you shouldn’t get involved in this matter.

The best savings for you is to contact a good specialist. And to begin with, before looking for an SEO expert on a freelance basis or in an agency, let’s understand a little about what stages website promotion consists of, and how much this difficult task will cost you.

Main stages of promotion

1. Defining goals, studying the client’s business. You need to understand why the site is being promoted, what final goal needs to be achieved. Perhaps you need to enter the top 10 sites for one request or several at once. Depending on the goal, the SEO specialist will develop a promotion strategy.

The client himself can determine the goal - it’s free. A specialist can advise you and should also develop a promotion strategy. The price for such a service varies, some agencies even offer it to you for free(subject to further cooperation with them). On average - focus on an amount of 10,000 rubles. But before agreeing to this service, you should definitely clarify what exactly you, as a customer, will receive as a result of this work, since you risk buying something completely wrong.

2. Formation of the semantic core. This is a selection of keywords for promotion that best suit your site. Keys can be high-frequency (from 5000 impressions), mid-frequency (from 500 to 5000 impressions) and low-frequency (up to 500 impressions).

Just understand that these figures do not show demand statistics, but statistics of impressions of a particular word in a request.

For example, take the phrase “Rent a hall”.

Shows per month hall rental - 14703

The “Impressions per month” figure differs from the number of queries that are shown at the bottom of the Yandex search page when you enter the same word.

“Hall rental” - Requests per month: rent - 1,595,473, hall - 243,783.

The Yandex Wordstat service used to have an explanation:

“The numbers next to each query in the search results give a preliminary forecast of the number of impressions per month you will receive if you select this query as a keyword. Thus, the number next to the word “phone” indicates the number of impressions for all queries with the word “phone”: “buy a phone”, “cell phone”, “buy a cell phone”, “buy a new speckled cell phone”, etc. "

It turns out that you can use this tool to select keywords, but you need to understand what exactly it does and know a lot of nuances.

Therefore, the formation of the semantic core should be entrusted to a specialist, and not to do it yourself.

No one will immediately tell you the specific amount of this work: it all depends on the number of requests and their frequency.

3. Analysis of competition for each request. You definitely need to look at your competitors’ websites for your chosen queries. What promotion methods do they use, exactly how much content is on the competitor’s website. Perhaps, in connection with what we saw, we will need to change our strategy somewhat. You cannot expect that a newly created website consisting of 30 pages should compete with competitors' sites that contain more than 2000 pages. Since a small site, compared to a large one, does not exactly reveal all the nuances of a product or service.

4. Site audit. It is necessary that this work be carried out by a specialist with extensive practical experience. You need to find all the pros and cons of the site that may interfere with promotion.

But a website audit is not a panacea. You can change your website every year by creating new ones. When creating a website, you need to think about the needs of your consumer. Think in advance about what questions a site visitor should get answers to.

5. Internal optimization. At this stage, the main preparation for promotion takes place; pages are selected that will be optimized for search queries.

6. Adding a site to search engines. You need to register your site with Google and Yandex, and optionally with other search engines.

7. External optimization. If all the previous stages can be carried out once, then external optimization is an ongoing process. Search engine optimization needs to be carried out constantly so that the site maintains its ranking and position in the search. To do this, you can buy permanent links through exchanges.

What determines the cost of promotion?

1. From the state of the site. Is it new or has there already been attempts to promote it, whether it’s been banned by search engines or not. Each site has its own characteristics or initial parameters. You can promote almost any website, only two months will be enough for one resource, and a year will not be enough for the second. The fact is that the site has a number of characteristics that are important for optimization. It is more difficult, and therefore more expensive, to promote young sites that are poorly perceived by search engines. It takes them a long time to earn the trust of search engines. It is very important what structure the site has and what information it is filled with. If the site has a logical organization, its content is complete, unique and well presented, then the optimization process will proceed without interruption. Otherwise, it is necessary to make modifications, which will affect the final cost.

2. Depending on the number and type of search queries, according to which the site will be promoted. High-frequency keys have the highest price, but their efficiency is much higher. On the other hand, dozens, or even hundreds, of less competitive requests will give a much greater effect (since the competition for them is lower, which means it is easier to fill these requests, and in bulk they will give much more sales than competitive ones) - this is called long-tail promotion .

3. On the volume and complexity of the required technical work. The site itself must work properly: errors in the code, hidden texts and texts in scroll areas are unacceptable, and the presence of long-loading pages also negatively affects promotion.

4. From content prices. The site needs to be constantly filled with content. The price of promotion as a whole also depends on the price at which you buy texts. Here we also add the work of a content manager, if you do not add articles yourself.

5. From the quality of the content. The content can be completely different.
Customers love to order texts for websites without paying attention to competitors’ content. But you need to carefully study what queries, in what forms, and how many times are used in texts. And the length of the text plays an important role.

Freelance prices

The range of prices for freelance promotion services is simply enormous, and it is impossible to announce a specific price. But many customers know that a freelancer can do it much cheaper than an agency.

I was able to see some prices listed by freelancers on their pages or in responses to projects.

The cost of comprehensive SEO website promotion is from 10,000 – 15,000 rubles. per month.

The cost of work on individual stages of promotion is from 5,000-10,000 rubles.

SEO website audit – from RUB 3,000.

Cost of work to promote a website using low-frequency and mid-frequency keywords: from 13,500 rubles.

Work on internal website optimization - from 1,000 rubles.

Again, it is worth understanding that these prices are indicative, and much depends on the volume and complexity of the work.

Now let's talk about content prices. If you remember, it needs to be constantly updated so that the site does not lose its position.

You can hire a copywriter, or contact an exchange (for example,) for constant comprehensive placement of content (the “Carefree Project” service).

The price for copyright on this exchange is from 75 rubles per 1000 characters. Let’s say that every day 1 article per 2000 characters is uploaded to your website (that’s 150 rubles). 150*30=4500 rubles. The service also needs to pay a 20% commission “for worry-free business management.” This is another 900 rubles; in total, filling the site with minimum content will cost 5,400 rubles per month if you work through the exchange.

Results

It is important to understand that with a website it will not work out like with any other thing - you pay once and forget about it. You will have to pay for it constantly: pay for the domain, content and promotion.

As I wrote above, some work is carried out once, and some - constantly. For example, you can pay for an audit once and continue to cooperate with this specialist or agency on an ongoing basis. But if you change the specialist – 100%, the new one will conduct the audit again. Each broom sweeps differently, and it is important for each broom to understand what he is dealing with and whether he needs to change his strategy or not.

The range of prices for promotion is huge, and it is almost impossible to come up with an average figure. Too many factors influence this process: the age of the site, its technical condition, the subject matter, and the experience of the optimizer.

I express my sincere gratitude to the Internet marketer for the advice and assistance in writing the article

Today we will talk about one of the most promising types of earning money on the Internet - how to make money on SEO website promotion.

SEO promotion (short for Search Engine Optimization) is a set of works aimed at improving the site’s position in search engine results. The higher the position a site occupies, the more visitors it has, and the higher the site’s traffic, the greater the profit it can bring.
It is not surprising that SEO specialists are in demand, and their work is rewarded with decent fees.

SEO optimizer: responsibilities

If you want to test your skills as a private SEO optimizer, you will need certain knowledge and skills. First of all you must:

• Know the basics of HTML and CSS programming;
• Understand the operating principles of search engines and monitor any changes in the operation of their algorithms;
• Learn to compose the semantic core of a website based on its focus and target audience;
• Know the basics of website usability;
• Understand external optimization methods.

So, if you are ready to develop in this direction, I suggest moving on to the next section and learning how to make money with SEO promotion.

SEO promotion: earnings for freelancers

Without experience in SEO promotion, it will be difficult for you to find high-paying projects. However, working as a private SEO optimizer, you can take on low-cost orders, providing yourself with not only a stable income, but also a portfolio that guarantees income growth in the future.

Where can a beginner SEO optimizer look for work? The easiest way to start a career would be on a freelance exchange. Firstly, there are a huge number of varied customers on the exchanges: from representatives of small, “one-day” projects to serious, reputable web studios. Secondly, some sites give you the opportunity to view the portfolios of your competitor applicants, which means you can get a clearer idea of ​​what direction you need to move in and what skills to develop.
As for the sites themselves, some of the most authoritative today are:

• freelance.ru;
• weblancer.net;
• seolancer.net;
• profi.ru - here you can place your profile so that customers can find you themselves.

To make your search for customers more effective, we recommend registering on several exchanges at once. Some of them require a registration fee, but if you are determined to work in this field, your small investment will pay off very quickly.

How to become an SEO optimizer from scratch: some tips for beginners

Working as an SEO optimizer will be much more effective if you use the tips given below.

• First, you need to study all the current search engine recommendations. Please note that recommendations change periodically and may differ in different search engines (you can check this by paying attention to the order in which sites appear when requested in Google and Yandex);
• Secondly, regularly visit thematic forums and communities of SEO specialists (including search engine blogs). This way you will always be aware of all changes in the field, and in addition, by adopting the experience of others, you can significantly improve the quality of your work;
• Thirdly, after successfully completing a project, try to take on a more complex project. This way you can hone your professional skills, which means you can ensure a comfortable existence for yourself.

How much does a CEO earn?

The level of earnings largely depends on the professional skills and experience of the specialist. After all, those who know how to create an endless stream of cheap traffic using SEO are a tasty morsel for all companies in need of promotion. There are millions of sites today, but there are only a few intelligent specialists who, in addition to loud statements, can prove their knowledge in practice. The shortage of such professionals creates a huge demand for them and promises a decent level of income. For those whose life's work is CEO optimization, earnings reach several hundred thousand rubles.

On average, prices for SEO services in the freelance services market are as follows:

• compiling a semantic core 400-12,000 rubles depending on the number of requests;
• comprehensive website promotion - 10,000-28,000 rubles;
• SEO audit - from 700 to 20,000 rubles;
• website optimization (meta tags, technical setup) - 5000-8000 rubles;
• placement of external links from 300 to 6000 rubles depending on quantity and quality
• setting up and optimizing contextual advertising in Yandex.Direct, Google.Adsence - 500-3500 rubles.