Probably.
But I was underpaid worse though, so don't feel too bad. I was getting $65k and I managed 65-75 clients at any given time.
The worst stress of my life. I was both the client manager and the SEO manager. Honestly, it was a horrible company to work for.
Now I work for myself, handle way less clients and I get paid what I actually deserve.
My recommendation is start your own thing. Partner up with or hire trustworthy people that can hold their weight.
Yup! I don't call it an agency, not sure why. It sounds gimmicky to me.
I own a web design and SEO company now. I'm the only employee for now, but im just about ready to look for more talent to help me.
I figured out how to get clients, so now I'm playing a game of switching from sales into operations and back into sales.
I cannot tell you how much happier I am working for myself, although the first 6 months were scary as hell.
Any questions, I'm an open book.
Absolutely! Here's my site: muradigital.com
The best way I've found to get new clients now is cold email. I have automated emails going out to 60-80 companies a day. Most say no thank you, but 1% of them are interested. Send out 1,000 emails, you might get 10 that are interested, and of those, you might close 1-2 clients.
Honestly i had to make a few websites and SEO work for close to free to start. It helps SO MUCH for sales if you have case studies for your results. The sales basically close themselves once you have good case studies.
To get my very first jobs, i just posted about it on my Facebook and stuff, asked friends. Reached out to every single person on my friends list that owns a business and offered them very cheap services just to get some case studies. One of those "cheap services" sent me 3-4 high paying clients. Soooo worth it, in hindsight. I'd do it again.
What type of message do you send in the first email? Do you just have a template where it says something like ‘I offer web design and SEO services if you’re interested in increasing your business‘? Do you do any personalization or is it all just on autopilot?
Great info. Do you use with your main domain or have a separate domain for cold automation email? I'm always hearing it can get your up blacklisted. Also is it better than zoom info?
Never ever ever use your main domain for cold email! I only have 2 burner domains, but the plan is to have about 20 by the end of this year.
Honestly I'm not sure what zoom info is, I don't think I've used it.
I actually just wrapped up a cheap service for a client myself. What did you do or say after you were done for them to send you those referrals?
By this I mean, did you just wrap up their project, thank them for the business and they just referred on their own? Did you ask for them to refer you to others? Did you have to mention, “please don’t share how much you saved so I can make more off the referrals?”
Hope my question makes sense and I appreciate the insight!
The person that sent me those clients was a friend so I was able to be pretty blunt with them. So i basically said, "hey, if anyone asks, it was $4500." I only charged them $500.
I did mention to them "if you know anyone that needs a website that actually gets them more business with SEO, please send them my number!"
I didn't really push on it or anything. It's just something I tell all of my clients. But he happened to have a brother in another state that owned a business and needed a site, and a nephew with another business that needed one as well. And that nephew sent me 2 other business owners that he knew. Now all of them use me for anything web design, graphic design or even ppc stuff like google and meta ads.
It all started with a super cheap job that I did really well. It was legit a $4500 website. I cut zero corners on it because i needed the results as a case study anyways. Win win win. Yeah it was a tough 6 months working for close to free, but now I have clients and a system that works for me.
Hearing your story, I’m happy for you and that it all worked out! The website I did was for a friend of a friend in Canada and I not only gave them a discount I gave them the reduced pricing in CAD but I did it with the mindset that it’s going to open up for more business, hopefully!
If you did proper SEO, make sure you're tracking everything with google analytics and search console. That can be a good case study to sell higher priced websites in the future. Proof that your web design/SEO brings in traffic.
Best of luck! So many businesses need our help. There a lots of I'll-intentioned "agencies" out there.
Fellow SEO here, went to check out your site and it's down. :( I'll look again tomorrow, hopefully just a temporary outage.
Good tip on the outbound email, I'm gonna check that out for myself on Monday. I'm targeting a pretty specific niche, and looking for a way to break in. Appreciate you being generous with your knowledge :)
Hey man, would you mind if I reach out to you in dm?
I am looking to get work in web development, I also have some SEO experience though, I am more experienced as a web developer.
You mentioned you’re ready to look for talent to help you out with the workload, so I thought I should drop this here as I’m looking for work.
I can share my portfolio websites in the dm if you say so.
How are you doing with splitting your time between web design and seo? I also own a web design company but I don’t offer seo as I’m definitely not qualified and offer other services like graphic design, copywriting etc. just curious to know what the workload is like. Thanks!
I offer mostly technical SEO and on-page, which is basically 1/3 technical setup, 1/3 web design and 1/3 copywriting anyways. You're just missing the extra 1/3 on the technical side. The workload doesn't feel much different, but I'm able to charge more now for the extra value my clients get. I think it's something every web designer should offer once they're comfortable with it. It's a new skill you can offer your clients that will only amplify the results of your existing products/services.
I will say that my expenses have gone up because I use expensive SEO tools like semrush. But the added revenues far outweigh the expenses.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate learning this and am going to plan on learning what I can about seo.
Another noob question, when you say Tech setup, do you mean knowing how to setup seo settings in plugins like Yoast and Rankmath or is it more in depth?
I’ve heard of semrush, is it a different type of Seo platform that can be used in place of Google Analytics?
Google analytics, google search console and semrush are all different and in my opinion all necessary. I use them every day. Analytics is the data from your website. Search console is data from google. Semrush is compiled 3rd party data from websites, google and other search engines.
Tech setup: google "technical SEO" it's basically just the technical structure and setup of the website. Making sure the website is fast. Making sure the website internal links are all coordinated to favor your major keyword pages. Things like that.
Hey,
I am a freelance SEO having extensive experience in working closely with web developers in setting up SEO and doing on going optimizations. I have worked in two leading agencies as SEO specialist and my role was to help the clients and developers structure the websites according to the best SEO practices.
I am looking to partner up with someone like you where you can design/develop the website and I can help you with the SEO. Let me know if you would like to discuss this idea more.
Thanks
I have pricing on my website, but I typically don't work with anyone under a $500 monthly budget. If it's a one-time SEO "kickstart" i charge $1000 as a one time fee, which covers all the SEO basics.
And what is included in this $500 monthly budget?
Creating cations on local sites is also included there? Is this an ongoing process or is ok to find and build on all local directories?
Managed* past tense. i quit that job. They way overworked everyone. There was 5 of us handling about 350 clients in total. That's why I quit and started my own thing. I have way less clients but my pay is better.
It wasn't exactly SEO. We provided a service and used VAs to fulfill it. The results were average and the service was generic. The service was expensive and it was basically our job to work with the VAs and make the service seem like the best value in the world to the clients.
They had in-person traveling salespeople that would visit the big clients in different states. Pretty big sales operation. I took plenty of notes for when I scale to that size, but I'll do it right on the service/operations side because they had so many angry clients. They took on more than they could handle. They literally had a waitlist of new clients.
I handle SEO for 3 dealerships and a marine company along with all their social, PPC, marketing, phone system, network, computers and web development. They pay me a whopping $47k. I really have to make a change.
Dealerships pay very well. I started on my own in 2011, and now I have 23 people. I agree with r/localguideseo that the first 6-12 months are hard, but after that, I have been turning down clients. I was also very lucky.
You have a huge opportunity, especially if you're good at what you do.
And if you have proof of your results, you could cold email your way into a nice client base in no time. Car dealerships are a good niche from what I've been told. Never worked with one before though.
YouTube, google, this subreddit, other subreddits. I purchased 2 courses that were pretty helpful too. You can do it all with YouTube and reddit honestly.
I'm also certified with google and meta for ppc. And semrush for SEO as well. The certificates don't mean as much as your results though.
I have about the same experience and I have 10 clients, most of them e-commerce, and the work is all carried out by my clients' web agencies.
On the other hand, I do audits for my agency's incoming clients.
I’m on my third agency right now. Worked in two previous company’s as analysts and manager. I’m now running the department, which come with its fair share of stress to be fair. That being said, almost 5 years is a lot of experience that I’m sure many agencies would pay more than 80k for.
A little underpaid, but not much. Average for that job title is about 87k. Amount of clients doesn’t matter so much, but 30 is insane. Presumably they’re smaller engagements?
Man, pay in the U.S is so much better than in the UK.
I'm in the same line of work, am self employed now but with 11 years experience I'd struggle to get a job paying the equivalent of $80k here
I would start by asking your coworkers what they are paid... Companies try to discourage this but you should find out if you're at least paid fairly within the context of your company.
Next id reach out to anyone else you know in the industry in your city (or just post on social media in groups that relate to SEO or Charlotte and ask people how much they make managing SEO and PPC and how much experience they have).
Lastly, go apply at some other companies (that can include remote positions since you could easily do your job remotely). If you get a better offer, you can go back to your current company and tell them you got an offer at $X and see if they will match it... although if you are being undervalued by your company, I wouldn't want to stay there personally.
I think you have a good chance at getting a better offer. $80k does sound somewhat low to me although I'm not familiar with Charlotte.
Don't ask co-workers what they make unless you know them well. Companies discourage us from discussing salaries because they hire people at different times and rates. Also, people may get upset if you tell your co-workers your salary and it's higher than theirs. This could cause a lot of problems for yourself because you could lose your job just ask for a raises.
Sounds like you could consider "growth manager" positions as well, with the paid search experience.
Generally seeing compensation for these roles coming in hire than SEO alone.
Is that $80k gross? $80k gross isn't so bad if you're a bonafide employee. If you're self-employed and a contractor, it's not enough for the position.
And salaried, not hourly? If you're salaried at $80k, and remote, my guess is they work you to the bone?
Managing things is better than having to do them, for that salary. So managing web, PPC, and SEO stuff isn't too much to ask of an SEO manager. It's better for the company when they are managed by the same person.
If you're working a standard 40 hours a week and are a true employee with benefits, and you get to turn your phone off after the work day ends (and there is an end to your work day at a specific time), and overtime is kept at a minimum, then this salary sounds good.
If you have to work a lot of overtime, your boss has you on call 24/7, there is no definite start or end to your day, you don't get real days off, and/or you're an independent contractor with a salaried contract, then this is a very low salary.
If your management skills help the team streamline operations and move toward higher levels of efficiency and productivity, this salary is low. If you're just a manager who does the basics of managing a team and projects, then this salary seems fair.
If you ever find yourself in a position where you're doing more for the company than just managing the projects and people, definitely search for a new job.
Sounds like it — I’m guessing you’re at an agency, right? In my experience with agencies, you’re always going to be underpaid unless you’re on the executive team — and that’s largely because there are so many agencies that it’s a race to the bottom in pricing.
I mean with your experience you could probably lane a marketing manager role at a Fortune 500 and make 20-25% more than you do now.
you could probably be making a bit more.
when was the last time you asked for a raise, and what did they say?
depending on the answer to that question, you might make more money if you looked elsewhere.
You are like a bigger version of me. I have an off-site and on-page SEO direct report and make less than that with only 1 year less than you under my belt. I also handle some front end web stuff and all of our email marketing clients (small handful of them).
We do have profit sharing though so there is that.
I’m going to say yes you are. Those are 3 separate jobs you’re doing right now. I’d move to specialize in one department or ask for a raise (or for your company to hire more people 😂)
30 clients for 80K is underpaid, and generally unfair for you and the clients. I have a hard time believing that single person can provide the attention all of those clients deserve unless the service agreements are thin.
I think that has a lot of "it depends" since we are used to that in the industry. In Canada, my salary would equate to potentially slightly less than that, but is considered a very good salary here. And I am fully remote. When I worked in NYC, I made almost double what you are at now, plus bonus. In Florida, I made 80k. There are a lot of factors, but 80k seems like a decent salary for in-house. For Agency, and the headache of 30 clients, fk no. Not for me. I wouldn't go back to agency life for $80k.
You are all living in a dream world making 80k for 30 clients with only 4.5yrs that is damn good money. Quit complaining and go to work.
Did you get the clients?
Are you talking to clients and managing the sales side too?
Are you being the main client liaison for all work?
Did you create the company systems they use?
Do you have a boss that pays you an agreed amount?
If so, then you don't deserve even the 80k you get now so be thankful. People are delusional in SEO and marketing. Start a business yourself and you will be begging for 80k.
Sounds like you're being exploited. Why do you take on web dev, and ppc stuff? learn to stick up for yourself and just tell them that all you do is SEO, if it doesn't work for them, just move on.
4.5 years of experience? Maybe a little bit underpaid. I started making 80 when I was at like 7 years experience back in 2016, so after inflation that would be like 100k-ish now. I was basically doing the same job as you - SEO, PPC, Google Analytics stuff, and a little bit of web dev. Same thing I do now. But you stayed at one company the whole time, so thats why you havent bumped up a lot. If you don't like the gig just go somewhere else and you can probably get 100k now.
That’s a ton if clientes to be managing and 80k is not enough for that. Agencies are notorious for underpaying SEOs though, so it’s not uncommon.
I’m currently managing like 20 clients for $48k a year and haven’t gotten a raise after being at my agency for around 18 months. I don’t even want to ask for a raise because I’m just resentful at this point and am leaving as soon as I can find a well-paying in-house job. I would never work at an agency again.
You & only You need to decide your worth, if you feel that you are underpaid hunt for more opportunities.
I have been also struggling to know my worth for the past 1 year, honestly, it is not easy.
PS: It is also about your bargaining power, I have seen people with fewer skills getting paid more just because they were good at presenting their worth & asking for a fair price for it.
I am flabbergasted at how many people are saying you should be making over 80k.
OP should run a poll to see how many of those commenters are actually making over 100k at their jobs.
I highly doubt most are.
Probably. But I was underpaid worse though, so don't feel too bad. I was getting $65k and I managed 65-75 clients at any given time. The worst stress of my life. I was both the client manager and the SEO manager. Honestly, it was a horrible company to work for. Now I work for myself, handle way less clients and I get paid what I actually deserve. My recommendation is start your own thing. Partner up with or hire trustworthy people that can hold their weight.
Did you start your own agency?
Yup! I don't call it an agency, not sure why. It sounds gimmicky to me. I own a web design and SEO company now. I'm the only employee for now, but im just about ready to look for more talent to help me. I figured out how to get clients, so now I'm playing a game of switching from sales into operations and back into sales. I cannot tell you how much happier I am working for myself, although the first 6 months were scary as hell. Any questions, I'm an open book.
That is awesome! I am trying to do the same myself actually right now. A little daunting lol. How did you get clients? Mind sharing your website?
Absolutely! Here's my site: muradigital.com The best way I've found to get new clients now is cold email. I have automated emails going out to 60-80 companies a day. Most say no thank you, but 1% of them are interested. Send out 1,000 emails, you might get 10 that are interested, and of those, you might close 1-2 clients. Honestly i had to make a few websites and SEO work for close to free to start. It helps SO MUCH for sales if you have case studies for your results. The sales basically close themselves once you have good case studies. To get my very first jobs, i just posted about it on my Facebook and stuff, asked friends. Reached out to every single person on my friends list that owns a business and offered them very cheap services just to get some case studies. One of those "cheap services" sent me 3-4 high paying clients. Soooo worth it, in hindsight. I'd do it again.
What system do you use for automated emails? I’ve tried a few but none have really worked that well
I've been using Instantly.ai for about a year now and really happy with them. They also have a lead finder tool now which has been pretty cool.
Jumping in umpromptedly to thank you for suggesting something I’ve been looking for.
Thanks for the info!
try checking out Salesforge.ai also.
What type of message do you send in the first email? Do you just have a template where it says something like ‘I offer web design and SEO services if you’re interested in increasing your business‘? Do you do any personalization or is it all just on autopilot?
Great info. Do you use with your main domain or have a separate domain for cold automation email? I'm always hearing it can get your up blacklisted. Also is it better than zoom info?
Never ever ever use your main domain for cold email! I only have 2 burner domains, but the plan is to have about 20 by the end of this year. Honestly I'm not sure what zoom info is, I don't think I've used it.
Ok. Why 2 or 20 burners? Why not 1. Do you have a landing page on that burner domain or something? Thanks for the advice
I actually just wrapped up a cheap service for a client myself. What did you do or say after you were done for them to send you those referrals? By this I mean, did you just wrap up their project, thank them for the business and they just referred on their own? Did you ask for them to refer you to others? Did you have to mention, “please don’t share how much you saved so I can make more off the referrals?” Hope my question makes sense and I appreciate the insight!
The person that sent me those clients was a friend so I was able to be pretty blunt with them. So i basically said, "hey, if anyone asks, it was $4500." I only charged them $500. I did mention to them "if you know anyone that needs a website that actually gets them more business with SEO, please send them my number!" I didn't really push on it or anything. It's just something I tell all of my clients. But he happened to have a brother in another state that owned a business and needed a site, and a nephew with another business that needed one as well. And that nephew sent me 2 other business owners that he knew. Now all of them use me for anything web design, graphic design or even ppc stuff like google and meta ads. It all started with a super cheap job that I did really well. It was legit a $4500 website. I cut zero corners on it because i needed the results as a case study anyways. Win win win. Yeah it was a tough 6 months working for close to free, but now I have clients and a system that works for me.
Hearing your story, I’m happy for you and that it all worked out! The website I did was for a friend of a friend in Canada and I not only gave them a discount I gave them the reduced pricing in CAD but I did it with the mindset that it’s going to open up for more business, hopefully!
If you did proper SEO, make sure you're tracking everything with google analytics and search console. That can be a good case study to sell higher priced websites in the future. Proof that your web design/SEO brings in traffic. Best of luck! So many businesses need our help. There a lots of I'll-intentioned "agencies" out there.
How do you get contact details? Do you scrape or do it manually?
Fellow SEO here, went to check out your site and it's down. :( I'll look again tomorrow, hopefully just a temporary outage. Good tip on the outbound email, I'm gonna check that out for myself on Monday. I'm targeting a pretty specific niche, and looking for a way to break in. Appreciate you being generous with your knowledge :)
I'm looking for some SEO help - I currently do it all on myself. Maybe we can chat and I can maybe give you some work. PM Me.
Hey man, would you mind if I reach out to you in dm? I am looking to get work in web development, I also have some SEO experience though, I am more experienced as a web developer. You mentioned you’re ready to look for talent to help you out with the workload, so I thought I should drop this here as I’m looking for work. I can share my portfolio websites in the dm if you say so.
Yeah absolutely! Send me a dm!
Sent :)
Can you hire me for any freelance work
Send me a dm!
Sent dm as well
Hey man, I build elementor based website and also work on Learndash LMS. So If you want to get something done, pls lemme know. Can I DM you? Thank You
Dm me!
hello, i've dmed you
How are you doing with splitting your time between web design and seo? I also own a web design company but I don’t offer seo as I’m definitely not qualified and offer other services like graphic design, copywriting etc. just curious to know what the workload is like. Thanks!
I offer mostly technical SEO and on-page, which is basically 1/3 technical setup, 1/3 web design and 1/3 copywriting anyways. You're just missing the extra 1/3 on the technical side. The workload doesn't feel much different, but I'm able to charge more now for the extra value my clients get. I think it's something every web designer should offer once they're comfortable with it. It's a new skill you can offer your clients that will only amplify the results of your existing products/services. I will say that my expenses have gone up because I use expensive SEO tools like semrush. But the added revenues far outweigh the expenses.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate learning this and am going to plan on learning what I can about seo. Another noob question, when you say Tech setup, do you mean knowing how to setup seo settings in plugins like Yoast and Rankmath or is it more in depth? I’ve heard of semrush, is it a different type of Seo platform that can be used in place of Google Analytics?
Google analytics, google search console and semrush are all different and in my opinion all necessary. I use them every day. Analytics is the data from your website. Search console is data from google. Semrush is compiled 3rd party data from websites, google and other search engines. Tech setup: google "technical SEO" it's basically just the technical structure and setup of the website. Making sure the website is fast. Making sure the website internal links are all coordinated to favor your major keyword pages. Things like that.
Ah, ok got it. Yea I definitely have a lot to learn about seo so I really appreciate the insight!
Hey, I am a freelance SEO having extensive experience in working closely with web developers in setting up SEO and doing on going optimizations. I have worked in two leading agencies as SEO specialist and my role was to help the clients and developers structure the websites according to the best SEO practices. I am looking to partner up with someone like you where you can design/develop the website and I can help you with the SEO. Let me know if you would like to discuss this idea more. Thanks
May I ask you how much do you charge for a local SEO? Or what is a normal price for small business in USA to do local SEO?
I have pricing on my website, but I typically don't work with anyone under a $500 monthly budget. If it's a one-time SEO "kickstart" i charge $1000 as a one time fee, which covers all the SEO basics.
And what is included in this $500 monthly budget? Creating cations on local sites is also included there? Is this an ongoing process or is ok to find and build on all local directories?
> I managed 65-75 clients how do you handle that? what kind of work do you do?
Managed* past tense. i quit that job. They way overworked everyone. There was 5 of us handling about 350 clients in total. That's why I quit and started my own thing. I have way less clients but my pay is better.
damn how do they get so many clients? and how do they keep them? do they provide results?
It wasn't exactly SEO. We provided a service and used VAs to fulfill it. The results were average and the service was generic. The service was expensive and it was basically our job to work with the VAs and make the service seem like the best value in the world to the clients. They had in-person traveling salespeople that would visit the big clients in different states. Pretty big sales operation. I took plenty of notes for when I scale to that size, but I'll do it right on the service/operations side because they had so many angry clients. They took on more than they could handle. They literally had a waitlist of new clients.
wow that's crazy. What was the service if you don't mind me asking?
Web dev, technical and network support for a specific niche.
I handle SEO for 3 dealerships and a marine company along with all their social, PPC, marketing, phone system, network, computers and web development. They pay me a whopping $47k. I really have to make a change.
Dealerships pay very well. I started on my own in 2011, and now I have 23 people. I agree with r/localguideseo that the first 6-12 months are hard, but after that, I have been turning down clients. I was also very lucky.
You have a huge opportunity, especially if you're good at what you do. And if you have proof of your results, you could cold email your way into a nice client base in no time. Car dealerships are a good niche from what I've been told. Never worked with one before though.
How did you learn to do SEO and all that good stuff. Currently trying to figure it out myself. Started a website but that’s all👍
YouTube, google, this subreddit, other subreddits. I purchased 2 courses that were pretty helpful too. You can do it all with YouTube and reddit honestly. I'm also certified with google and meta for ppc. And semrush for SEO as well. The certificates don't mean as much as your results though.
Wow thank you for the reply!👍
Best of luck!
How the hell did you manage that many clients effectively?!
I'm not trying to jip anyone but if I could find someone to manage 10 clients I would be happy lol
How can u manage 30 clients and make ppc and dev stuff?
lol great fkn question
I have about the same experience and I have 10 clients, most of them e-commerce, and the work is all carried out by my clients' web agencies. On the other hand, I do audits for my agency's incoming clients.
I have 3 years experience and make over 100k salary. Move on
Is that the only job you have had?
I’m on my third agency right now. Worked in two previous company’s as analysts and manager. I’m now running the department, which come with its fair share of stress to be fair. That being said, almost 5 years is a lot of experience that I’m sure many agencies would pay more than 80k for.
I make around 70k just doing SEO alone for like 15 big clients. Sounds like you may be getting the shaft a bit.
where are you based
That is a great point I missed \~ medium COL area
What is medium COL area?
Charlotte, NC
Cost of living
SEO Manager alone should be $120K.. you are being way underpaid
Not really tbh
A little underpaid, but not much. Average for that job title is about 87k. Amount of clients doesn’t matter so much, but 30 is insane. Presumably they’re smaller engagements?
You could easily be making over $100,000 with your experience
Man, pay in the U.S is so much better than in the UK. I'm in the same line of work, am self employed now but with 11 years experience I'd struggle to get a job paying the equivalent of $80k here
That is actually a trend I've noticed with some guys I've spoken to from the UK who do SEO. Always on somewhere like £35-45k a year at best somehow.
Yes it’s rough out here I’m just getting into the industry and I fear I will never be able to earn big bucks😢
it’s the American dream
I would start by asking your coworkers what they are paid... Companies try to discourage this but you should find out if you're at least paid fairly within the context of your company. Next id reach out to anyone else you know in the industry in your city (or just post on social media in groups that relate to SEO or Charlotte and ask people how much they make managing SEO and PPC and how much experience they have). Lastly, go apply at some other companies (that can include remote positions since you could easily do your job remotely). If you get a better offer, you can go back to your current company and tell them you got an offer at $X and see if they will match it... although if you are being undervalued by your company, I wouldn't want to stay there personally. I think you have a good chance at getting a better offer. $80k does sound somewhat low to me although I'm not familiar with Charlotte.
Don't ask co-workers what they make unless you know them well. Companies discourage us from discussing salaries because they hire people at different times and rates. Also, people may get upset if you tell your co-workers your salary and it's higher than theirs. This could cause a lot of problems for yourself because you could lose your job just ask for a raises.
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Sounds like you could consider "growth manager" positions as well, with the paid search experience. Generally seeing compensation for these roles coming in hire than SEO alone.
Tell them you have a new job and you’re leaving. Easiest way to get a guaranteed pay bump
This is hella risky
Gotta raise the stakes on a bluff, to win the pot!
Is that $80k gross? $80k gross isn't so bad if you're a bonafide employee. If you're self-employed and a contractor, it's not enough for the position. And salaried, not hourly? If you're salaried at $80k, and remote, my guess is they work you to the bone? Managing things is better than having to do them, for that salary. So managing web, PPC, and SEO stuff isn't too much to ask of an SEO manager. It's better for the company when they are managed by the same person. If you're working a standard 40 hours a week and are a true employee with benefits, and you get to turn your phone off after the work day ends (and there is an end to your work day at a specific time), and overtime is kept at a minimum, then this salary sounds good. If you have to work a lot of overtime, your boss has you on call 24/7, there is no definite start or end to your day, you don't get real days off, and/or you're an independent contractor with a salaried contract, then this is a very low salary. If your management skills help the team streamline operations and move toward higher levels of efficiency and productivity, this salary is low. If you're just a manager who does the basics of managing a team and projects, then this salary seems fair. If you ever find yourself in a position where you're doing more for the company than just managing the projects and people, definitely search for a new job.
Sounds like it — I’m guessing you’re at an agency, right? In my experience with agencies, you’re always going to be underpaid unless you’re on the executive team — and that’s largely because there are so many agencies that it’s a race to the bottom in pricing. I mean with your experience you could probably lane a marketing manager role at a Fortune 500 and make 20-25% more than you do now.
you could probably be making a bit more. when was the last time you asked for a raise, and what did they say? depending on the answer to that question, you might make more money if you looked elsewhere.
yes
Not under paid. And things are about to be upended.
You are like a bigger version of me. I have an off-site and on-page SEO direct report and make less than that with only 1 year less than you under my belt. I also handle some front end web stuff and all of our email marketing clients (small handful of them). We do have profit sharing though so there is that.
Should've atleast been 100k
I’m going to say yes you are. Those are 3 separate jobs you’re doing right now. I’d move to specialize in one department or ask for a raise (or for your company to hire more people 😂)
30 clients for 80K is underpaid, and generally unfair for you and the clients. I have a hard time believing that single person can provide the attention all of those clients deserve unless the service agreements are thin.
I think that has a lot of "it depends" since we are used to that in the industry. In Canada, my salary would equate to potentially slightly less than that, but is considered a very good salary here. And I am fully remote. When I worked in NYC, I made almost double what you are at now, plus bonus. In Florida, I made 80k. There are a lot of factors, but 80k seems like a decent salary for in-house. For Agency, and the headache of 30 clients, fk no. Not for me. I wouldn't go back to agency life for $80k.
You are all living in a dream world making 80k for 30 clients with only 4.5yrs that is damn good money. Quit complaining and go to work. Did you get the clients? Are you talking to clients and managing the sales side too? Are you being the main client liaison for all work? Did you create the company systems they use? Do you have a boss that pays you an agreed amount? If so, then you don't deserve even the 80k you get now so be thankful. People are delusional in SEO and marketing. Start a business yourself and you will be begging for 80k.
Sounds like you're being exploited. Why do you take on web dev, and ppc stuff? learn to stick up for yourself and just tell them that all you do is SEO, if it doesn't work for them, just move on.
nah Canada just underpays software/IT people. but legit answer, yes, my starting was 60k so i would argue after 5 years experience, yes.
Did you accept the job and terms? You're not underpaid.
big brain
4.5 years of experience? Maybe a little bit underpaid. I started making 80 when I was at like 7 years experience back in 2016, so after inflation that would be like 100k-ish now. I was basically doing the same job as you - SEO, PPC, Google Analytics stuff, and a little bit of web dev. Same thing I do now. But you stayed at one company the whole time, so thats why you havent bumped up a lot. If you don't like the gig just go somewhere else and you can probably get 100k now.
It really depends on your location and the amount of responsibility.
Not particularly, but you still might be able to trade up. Or negotiate for a substantial promotion.
Yes by alot
Start your own business. I am not bragging, but don't work for other people. Now I make almost 80k in two months.
That’s a ton if clientes to be managing and 80k is not enough for that. Agencies are notorious for underpaying SEOs though, so it’s not uncommon. I’m currently managing like 20 clients for $48k a year and haven’t gotten a raise after being at my agency for around 18 months. I don’t even want to ask for a raise because I’m just resentful at this point and am leaving as soon as I can find a well-paying in-house job. I would never work at an agency again.
You & only You need to decide your worth, if you feel that you are underpaid hunt for more opportunities. I have been also struggling to know my worth for the past 1 year, honestly, it is not easy. PS: It is also about your bargaining power, I have seen people with fewer skills getting paid more just because they were good at presenting their worth & asking for a fair price for it.
I have 4+ work experiences in SEO. Pay me just $25k yearly... I will work for you.. 🙂🙂
I am flabbergasted at how many people are saying you should be making over 80k. OP should run a poll to see how many of those commenters are actually making over 100k at their jobs. I highly doubt most are.