The best way to charge clients for SEO services

I am search engine marketing specialist, and I would like to hear your opinion on what is the best strategy I have to choose in order to charge my clients for SEO

I think the best way is to charge the client first for On-Site optimization (Code Clean –Up, Converting tables to CSS if necessary to increase Content over code ratio, Optimizing 10-20 pages, Meta Tags, Keyword Research, Optimizing the text copy, internal linking, html – Google- yahoo sitemaps, etc)

So I got the first part.

What is making me a little bit frustrated is that I can’t figure out how much should I charge the client for link development. I am currently using several methods of obtaining links
Free SEO friendly directory submissions
Paid Directory Submissions
Article Distributions (submitting articles to Article directories)
Press Release Distribution
3 way linking
And of course buying links

What do you think I should do? Should I charge the client per each obtainable link (including my profit)? Or should I charge the client on the monthly basis?

Another thing is that most of the SEO people do not promises to place the clients’ sites to the top 10 of SE SERPS, so what should I do in this case? Do I need to approach the client different way? Something like: You have such amount of unique visits before, and after my work you have gained 50% or 100% more? I still don’t get that! Can you please share your own business strategy, pricing model as an SEO expert. How do you charge your clients for that type of business? What promises do you give them? What if you don’t get them what they expected you to do for them?

 

having a unique selling position is an advantage in any business. you don't need to guarantee a top 10 placement, but offering something substancial that most other services don't offer is definitely a good idea.

as far as your expenses... I'd talk to them about how aggressive you want to go with the link building campaign and adjust rates from there.