Billing for results not by the day. Thought?
-
Hi,
We are searching for a new SEO provider for www.compoundsecurity.co.uk and I notice that some SEO providers are now billing against results rather than days spent doing the work.
Considering the high prices and lack of work done for those fees by current provider, this is of interest to me.
Does anyone have experience of working this way and or have any advice please?
Thank you
-
Keri:
You are such an instigator! Sounds like you are angling for a joint blog post from me and EGOL.
In your evll and nefarious way.
NYAH-HAH-HAH.
<<evil grin="">></evil>
-
This subject often comes up in Q&A, both by people wanting to hire using this method, or sell their services with this method. All of your arguments here would make for a good YouMoz post if someone was interested in giving it a comprehensive treatment.
-
** just because previous providers haven't delivered,...**
I know a few people would say the problem is a lack of vetting.
-
I agree with EGOL. I would decline a "pay for performance" model because too much is out of my control: client cooperation, algo updates, new competitors.
Performance and accountability are important. Who could argue with that?
But just because previous providers haven't delivered, it doesn't necessarily follow that shifting to a pay for performance model is the way to go. This often degenerates into the futile pursuit of phoney metrics, eg. ranking for non-competitive terms, social media shares, etc...
You need to find a provider you trust with a track record of delivering results. Limiting yourself to those who will accept pay for performance compensation may limit your search -- and your bottom line results.
-
Are you willing to turn over your entire site to the "SEO provider"?
That is a good idea. If I am going to do SEO on the basis of performance I will start my own website and sell the leads or dump the shopping cart to the highest bidder. Then I get paid for everything that I kill and can move the business to Company B if Company A does not perform. I would also then have complete view of the activity on the site and the transactions that occur there.
Just like being an affiliate or having a drop shipper - which I currently do.
-
Some seo's have been offering this type of billing, on results only, for quite a long time now.
I can see the attraction, although i would never offer it myself, especially since the consequence of a good contemporary seo program extend far beyond ranking results. For example an SEO's efforts sorting out all the social media profiles for the SEO benefit and advice or work on the ongoing social profile management would likely result in more reach, engagement and hence traffic and hopefully sales and increased brand awareness and reputation etc etc. Hence client would likely be receiving high value results from social immediately but not paying anything for it. So i wouldnt be happy working like that.
I would ask what defines a result that justifies billing ?
Is it simply a ranking result for keywords they choose (in which case be very wary since they may not convert) OR keywords you choose based on research OR is it conversions from organic search result to your website OR is it an actual sale tracked back to organic search (& arguably social too if they are doing a holistic 'Inbound' package).
If its the latter and the CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) they propose/you negotiate leaves you with a profit then worth considering.
Interested to hear what other think ??
-
I do have some experience in this area. If you operate a highly measurable marketing program, some web marketing agencies will agree to a "pay per performance" model of compensation, but you will have to work with them for it to be clearly defined, and they will still want a flat rate compensation for their hours spent. At the end of the day, agencies want to get paid period. And they should be. You may end up paying more for their services going this route, so if saving money is your concern I wouldn't recommend it. If ensuring that your agency can deliver and that they have some "skin in the game" to keep them honest, then this could be a great direction.
A typical setup I've seen is the agency will give you their hours at "cost" or a very low rate as a baseline to cover their expenses and time, then if you have very good past historical performance reporting setup, and they are comfortable that they can do what they say they can, you can define a payout based on "results" such as website conversions from organic search sources. So comparing year-over-year, say you got 100 conversions in October 2012 from organic search, you could say for every conversion we get in October 2013 above 100 you get 25% of the revenue, or something like that.
Also keep in mind, the industry is somewhat in free fall right now in my opinion due to the increase of "not provided" keyword data. In the past, you would do a contract like I outlined above specifying that you would not count branded keywords. The last thing you want is to run a magazine ad which increases searches for your brand 2000% and have to pay the agency for the influx of organic search conversions that you would have gotten anyway! With all the organic search data lumped into one bucket now, I don't see how that will work anymore personally.
-
If someone asked me to work on the basis of results I would decline. Why? Because I don't have any control over new companies entering your business niche. That is market risk that belongs to the business owner, not a service provider.
Even if you offered me a percentage of sales I would not take the deal because sales are determined by factors that you control such as retail price level, shipping charged, quality of staff serving the customer and more.
SEOs have a base line value on their time that is determined by how much they can earn by doing other things. If you want the time you gotta pay the price.
Perhaps SEOs who are new to the market or those who will do "anything required" to get your site ranked and collect the fee will be interested. But they might not be able to hold those results once Google figures out that they have spammed.
-
What are "results"?
Are you willing to turn over your entire site to the "SEO provider"? If not, it's truly difficult to pay for results.
It's a two-way street; your SEO firm can only be effective if you're doing your part. The days of paying a company to "go out and do some SEO" are long gone.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Sudden downfall of the results, intelligents can easily find the solution
Dear, previously my site got top rank results (first place in first page) for 1. "Vastu" (Landing page: https://www.subhavaastu.com/vastu.html) 2. "Vaastu" (Landing page: https://www.subhavaastu.com/vaastu.html) 3. "Vastu shastra" (Landing page: https://www.subhavaastu.com/about-vastu-shastra.html). 4. "Vastu Consultant", (Landing page: https://www.subhavaastu.com) Previously say about 4/5 years back, I got only 1/2 place in google for the above keywords. Now my site is not visible for the said above keywords. But for these below keywords I am getting very good rankings 5. "Vasthu" (Landing page: https://www.subhavaastu.com/vasthu.html) (3 rd position in first page) 6. "Vaasthu" (Landing page: https://www.subhavaastu.com/vaasthu.html) (2nd position in first page) I got good improvements with my attemps. Require to get again first page first rank for these keywords. Vastu, Vaastu, Vastu shastra, vastu consultant. Anybody can help please.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SubhaVaastu0 -
How-to: Geography Based Search Results for Job Board
Hi, I’m working with a client that is building a job board website. We want to have the ability to show search results in Google that show job results for a specific area. For example, “Office Administrator Jobs in Chicago” or “Marketing Assistant Positions in Cleveland”. How can we go about setting this up? Do I need to create a separate landing page for each of these exact searches? Or can this be done with a taxonomy or the job search function? This is a WordPress built website and we're using the Yoast SEO plugin. Any help would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cslingerland0 -
Community Discussion: What changes are you seeing as a result of Penguin 4.0?
We've been waiting on the latest Penguin rollout so long it would have been appropriate for Google to launch it with a creepy meme titled "I'm baaack." But now that it's here, what changes are you seeing to the websites you monitor or manage? We'd very much enjoy hearing you stories, thoughts and proposed courses of action below in the comments. If you need to get up to speed on Penguin 4.0, Dr. Pete's post, Penguin 4.0: Was it Worth the Wait?, is a great place to start, as is the latest Whiteboard Friday by Rand: Penguin 4.0: How the Real-Time Penguin-in-the-Core-Alg Model Changes SEO. RS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ronell-smith3 -
How to dominate first page results?
see this https://www.google.com/search?q=podiatrist+edgewater+nj&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS592US598&oq=p&aqs=chrome.4.69i60l3j69i61j69i59j69i60.2731j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 Dr. Gehegan ; Progressive Podiatry How I can appear my main keyword 3-4 times on first page results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Green.landon0 -
Sitelinks in non-brand based organic search results
Hi all, I have a question for everyone. Sitelinks have been around for a while now & I've always seen them when the search is for a brand's name. However, today, when looking at the rankings for one of the campaigns we manage, we noticed there were sitelinks in the number #1 & #2 positions in Google (Australia) for the search term "Dance Costumes". Whilst both the companies have Dance Costumes in their title, so do all the other results & so I don't see why it warrants the sites to be relevant via their brand name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBB_Digital
Note: The results are organic results, not paid results (where you can add sitelinks). Firstly, has anyone seen this before (screenshot attached)?
And secondly, is there markup/schema that allows you to do this (none that I know of)? danceCostumes-sitelinks.png0 -
Add noindex,nofollow prior to removing pages resulting in 404's
We're working with another site that unfortunately due to how their website has been programmed creates a bit of a mess. Whenever an employee removes a page from their site through their homegrown 'content management system', rather than 301'ing to another location on their site, the page is deleted and results in a 404. The interim question until they implement a better solution in managing their website is: Should they first add noindex,nofollow to the pages that are scheduled to be removed. Then once they are removed, they become 404's? Of note, it is possible that some of these pages will be used again in the future, and I would imagine they could submit them to Google through Webmaster Tools and adding the pages to their sitemap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Question about Google Search Results
I have a question regarding google search results. I have a website www.911signalusa.com when you type this into google search box the URL comes up repeatedly. I have several competitors here is one of them www.emergencycity.com when you type in their name it only come up as the first result. How did our SEO guys make this happen? I have another site tha when we type in the URL it only comes up as the first result. However when you do site:www.------.com All of these site are indexed in Google. It is not causing any problem we knoe of but it appears to me that our 1 site has it better? Or is it that maybe there are very minimal links to the site? Thank you for your time and consideration in answering my quesiton.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scamper0 -
Search result clicks for one of my posts down significantly
I started receiving a warning warning in google webmaster tools about 2 weeks ago that said "big traffic change for top url". On reading the message i saw "Search results clicks for http://goo.gl/EyhUJ have decreased significantly". When I search google using the keyword "sore breasts" for which that post used to rank at least number 2 on google, I dont see anything. The related post http://goo.gl/vP025 is still ranking well. Can anyone give me an idea of what might have happened? I am totally at sea. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adaeze0