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?  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.""  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.""  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?

About the author:

Michael J. Gallagher is the author of SEO In A Can , a do-it-yourself guide to search engine optimization.  Some of the subjects covered in SEO In A Can are keyword usage and placement, back link distribution, SEO pitfalls, and advice on hiring an SEO.  Please come visit my website @ http://www.seoinacan.com .