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Home::SE Optimization
Think Before You Ink - SEO Contract Advice
Author : Michael J. Gallagher
Understand the Service
In just about any industry in the world, you understand the
product or service you will be receiving. If you were going to
have a contractor build a deck in your backyard, you have a
basic idea of what's involved. The contractor has to provide
design services, labor, materials, and make a profit. After a
few quotes, you have a fair idea of where the market is in your
neighborhood. You also understand the deliverable, a new deck
in your backyard.
Many SEO companies operate by a different set of rules. There
seems to be a big secret around how some companies will provide
a customer with the results they promise. Now that doesn't
sound very fair. How can you determine what you should pay for
a service when you have no idea what services will be
performed? How can you compare two different SEO companies when
they both have "secret" formulas they cannot disclose to you?Â
The answer is simple. You don't do business with either company
and you look for one that will be a little more honest about the
services they will be providing. There are no secrets in SEO and anyone
telling you differently should not be trusted.
There are a few reasons an SEO company would not tell a customer
how they intend to increase their search engine visibility and
neither are good. The first is that the service they will be
providing is basic and overpriced. This is actually the better
of the two. The second reason the process may be kept secret is
because the SEO intends to use unethical or black hat techniques
such as doorway pages, cloaking, or disposable websites which
can end up doing the customer more harm than good. There have
been many websites banned from major search engines due to
practices performed by questionable SEO companies.
Understand the Agreement
Contracts can be very misleading and deserve a great deal of
attention before signing. When it comes to SEO contracts, it is
imperative that the verbiage reads exactly as the oral
commitment. I have seen many SEO contracts that state the SEO company will "guarantee
X number of top ten listings in any of the major search
engines."Â Most of the time, the oral agreement is based on
specific pages and keyword phrases within the customer's
website. The issue with this or a similar statement is that it
is too vague. The door is left wide open for the SEO company to
define a second tier search engine as a "major search engine."Â
They can also use any successful keyword phrase from the
customer's website rather than the keyword phrases they agreed
to optimize for verbally. If you agree to optimize for the term
"lion king tickets" with such a contract, the SEO could come
back and say you received a top ten for the keyword phrase "new
lion tickets king york" so, therefore, their end of the contract
was met. I think it's safe to say no one in their right mind
would search for Lion King tickets in New York in this
manor.
The key to avoiding such trickery is to add every specific
commitment into the contract. That means keyword phrases,
individual web page URLs, and any other details need to be
defined within the contract. If the SEO company is not willing
to amend their contract for any reason, they are not worth doing
business with.
Money Back Guarantee
If an SEO company is as good as they say they are, they will put
their money where their mouth is. There are many SEO companies
that will promise a money back guarantee if they fail to live up
to their commitment. Sketchy SEO companies will claim they have
no way of controlling search engine changes so there is no way
they can make that commitment. A trustworthy SEO will be able
to adjust their optimization model to meet any changes that come
along from the search engines. They may need a little more time
to achieve the committed results, but they will succeed in the
end. Managing change is part of the game. Think about it. How
would any SEO company stay in business for any period of time if
they were not able to adjust to search engine algorithm
changes?
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