Beware of Performance Only Search Engine Optimization Contracts
Over and Over again I get approached by people who have signed up with these “performance-based” SEO companies where you only pay if they get placement. Most of the time, these people waited for months and months with little or no payoff. This may sound good on the exterior. I mean come on, these SEO companies are really putting their money where their mouth is, right? Not really.
There are huge problems with this model for the person waiting for placements and almost no downside for the SEO Company that signs you up….crazy am I? Let me explain.
I would say out of 50 companies we talk to, 5 of them are “right on the edge” of good placement. When one of these clients comes aboard, we can do a couple of title tag changes, make a couple of nice site maps, and do about 5 hours of on-page optimization, and we are done. These sites tend to be the older websites that have a strong “natural” campaign. After all, not all sites placed in the top of the search engines were worked on by a search engine optimization company. In fact, I would say that more than half are not. This is because sometimes Google, Yahoo, MSN do their job and rank good sites. What on earth does this have to do with Performance-based contracts? Keep reading….
Now, if you are lucky and you are in the 5% of websites that just need a little “push” then the Performance based SEO Company will give you that slight push, and then you will owe them money for the length of the contract. Not always a bad thing, but it could get expensive.
Now the really bad news. If you are in the 95% of companies that need a lot more of a push, chances are, the Performance only SEO Company will not put the necessary resources in. To implement a first-class search engine optimization campaign costs thousands of dollars in hard cost and I really doubt one of these companies will do what is necessary to get you there.
The overall model of the performance-based SEO model is to essentially throw as many pennies in the air and hope some land face up with little or no effort from their company.
You have a simple choice when evaluating one of these models. Do you want to “hope” to get to the top of the placements to save a couple of bucks? The fact is 95% of the time, SEO takes lots of hard work and dedication and money. Make sure the agreement you are forming with any search engine optimization company spells out how much work they will put into it. It will take 6 months to see if a company is doing a good job or not. Saving a little money up front pales in comparison to the amount of business you will loose as a result of not engaging in a strong SEO campaign.
July 16th, 2007 at 10:56 am
This is soooooo true. I wasted 1 year with a performanced based company and got nothing. Come to find out, they did nothing.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Good points. But let’s face it: people love to not have to pay up front. It’s right in everyone’s budget.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
In my opinion, it’s the last ditch effort to get the sale. Especially when it’s “Money Back”.
All you do is tie up funds, and wait for results that seldom match the hype.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
All too true. I went to a SEO basics class and the majority of business individuals that went were NOT aware of the WORK that goes into optimizing a website. If you want SEO for your website, you MUST do your research before committing. Also many people think that there are “tricks” and “games” to play with the search engines. That is not true. Find out from the SEO firm that you are interested in and ask them questions. Don’t get ripped off. I learned something interesting while I was at a jeweler, “If you want something good, its not cheap. And if you want something cheap, it’s not good.”
July 20th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I agree that most performance based SEO agreements are a ‘recipe for disaster’.
These situations entice companies to undertake unethical techniques to produce needed results in order to stay profitable.
No beuno!
July 20th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I don’t really consider “pay-for-placement” to be the same as “pay-for-performance”.
True pay-for-performance would be paying for increased qualified traffic, similar to paid search campaigns such as PPC ads.
My company does true pay-for-performance in one of its pricing models, for instance, and we’re not tricking clients in the process. Most SEO firms are not willing to take on the risk and accountability required to do true pay-for-performance — they just want the client to pay out the kazoo with no warranty of service.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Silver,
In response to your comments, even with the pay-for-performance model you suggest the same problems and issues will exist. If, as a pay-for-performance company, you find that “sweet spot” that you need to hit in order to make your desired ROI then you are prone to not giving the client a complete campaign. And you run into issues in what you would consider “qualified” traffic and what the client considers “qualified” traffic. There are just as many holes in this pay-for-performance model as there would be in the pay-for-placement model.