u/ImpossibleAddendum93

Me and my friend landed a potential client — a private university in India. We need advice on pricing.

Current state of their website:

• 18-year-old domain, completely untapped
• 90% of pages not indexed by Google
• 98% branded traffic, zero organic traffic
• No schema, no sitemap, no mobile optimisation
• Important content buried in PDFs
• Messy URL structure, no on-page SEO at all

What we plan to do:

• Full technical SEO audit + fixes
• Complete website redesign (mobile-first)
• 40–60 pages of SEO + AEO + GEO optimised content
• Schema markup, internal linking, content clusters
• PDF to webpage conversion
• GSC + Bing Webmaster setup
• CMS templates for their team

Our situation: Two-person team, both under 2 years freelancing, handling everything ourselves. Timeline is 6 months to 1 year.

Our questions:

1. What's a fair price for this in the Indian market?
2. Are we missing anything important in our scope?
3. How should we structure payments across 6–12 months?
4. Should AEO and GEO be separate line items or bundled?
5. Any red flags with university clients?

Would love input from anyone who's done education SEO or large website rebuilds. Thanks!

I've landed a potential client — a private university in India — and need honest advice on pricing. Here's the full picture of what I'm dealing with and what my partner and I plan to deliver.

The current state of their website:

• Domain is ~18 years old (great DA potential, completely untapped)
• 90% of pages not indexed by Google
• 98% of traffic is branded (people searching the university name directly)
• Zero non-branded organic traffic
• No money pages indexed (courses, admissions, departments)
• URLs are a mess — no logical structure
• Most important content buried in PDFs, completely unindexable
• No schema markup whatsoever
• No proper XML sitemap or robots.txt
• No content strategy, no internal linking, no on-page SEO
• Outdated design, not mobile-optimised

What we're planning to deliver:

• Full technical SEO audit and fixes
• Complete website redesign (modern, mobile-first)
• New URL structure + 301 redirects + XML sitemap
• Convert key PDFs into properly indexed web pages
• Write 40–60 pages of SEO + AEO + GEO optimised content
• Content cluster architecture (pillar pages + hub-and-spoke model for topical authority)
• Schema markup (University, Course, FAQ, Breadcrumb, LocalBusiness, Article)
• AEO: FAQ schema, featured snippet targeting, People Also Ask optimisation
• GEO: entity-based content structured for visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini AI Overviews
• CMS templates so their staff can independently keep adding SEO-ready content
• Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools setup and indexing push

Our situation:

We're a two-person team based in India. Both of us are relatively new to freelancing (under 2 years each), but we're handling the entire project ourselves — strategy, design, content writing, and technical SEO. No subcontracting. Our estimated timeline is 6 months to 1 year for full delivery.

Our questions for experienced folks:

1. What would you charge for this scope in the Indian market — both at a beginner/small team rate and what an experienced agency would quote?
2. Is our scope missing anything critical for a project of this scale?
3. How would you structure payments across a 6–12 month timeline? Milestones? Retainer? Mix of both?
4. Would you pitch AEO and GEO as separate line items or bundle them under the SEO umbrella?
5. Any red flags to watch out for with university clients specifically — approvals, IT departments, scope creep?

Any input from people who've done education sector SEO or large-scale website rebuilds would be genuinely appreciated. Thanks in advance.

"We have been given free hands to do anything with the website"