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A week ago, we polled our audience asking Are You Still Offering SEO Services Paid By Performance? For example, are you willing to exchange direct payment in exchange for payment on the basis of rankings, or traffic or on revenue earned.
The majority of respondents said they never will or have taken this type of payment in exchange for SEO services.
Here is a breakdown of the seventy-five or so responses to the question "Do You Offer Pay For Performance SEO Packages?"
:: Never said 41 respondents or 55%
:: Very Rarely said 13 respondents or 18%
:: Sometimes, Only Great Ideas said 10 respondents or 14%
:: Very Often, But Depends said 5 respondents or 7%
:: Only Do Pay For Performance said 3 respondents or 4%
:: Other answer said 2 respondents or 3%
I wish we would of had more responses, I guess I should have pushed this poll more. But I do think these numbers make sense and likely represent the industry as a whole.
Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.
Comments:
Katinka Webdesign
03/10/2009 03:18 pm
Actually the question isn't clear. If affiliate deals are included in 'pay for performance' (which makes sense, but I hadn't thought of that when I voted) then I doubt there are SEOs out there that DO NOT do revenue share of some sort. (maybe except some in house SEOs). But as an SEO there are all kinds of targets a client might have, and not all of those translate into revenue share as a viable option for the SEO.
Barry Schwartz
03/10/2009 03:26 pm
Affiliate is "pay for revenue" in my book.
Derek Kean
03/11/2009 04:03 am
It would appear that 87% of the total are in the never-sometimes range. This is a reasonable result, because it is difficult if a client wants only rankings, or needs traffic via search, to determine a pay-for-performance contract. When this is the case it does require alot of up-front work and constant monitoring. If their goal is rank #1 it may be a good chunk of time before that happens. Between now and then- we all have to eat, and their traffic will increase each week until then. -Derek
L. Mohan Arun
03/11/2009 03:30 pm
I dont offer this kind of pay for performance for my SEO services simply because I have to invest my time and money and effort doing the SEO and I expect to be paid for that. Results can not be guaranteed always - if someone just bought a domain they cant expect to hit top pages just because they did good SEO.
Doug Heil
03/11/2009 03:45 pm
I have no idea why anyone would work for only a pay for performance. If you were going to do that with a client and SEO services, why not simply build the site and own the site, and sell the same product yourself? You could be doing all the work upfront, and working with some kind of a client deadline, and never ever get any money from your client at all. LOL
No Name
03/11/2009 10:56 pm
The concept of pay for performance is asinine. Look, as a company, no SEO company or SEO marketer should be paid for work predicated on performance. It just doesn't work like this since no SEO can guarantee results. I liken SEO to a tax accountant. You pay the professional to do the work - but that accountant can't guarantee that you will never get an IRS audit. Now most importantly is this - it never pays to do pay for performance unless the contract stipulates that after gaining one milestone, the payout is something like $100K. Then it would be worth it - maybe. But most importantly is this - is the SEO is working pay for performance, why would the SEO do all that work for only a small payout? Why not own the website, the domain, and all the assets, and get paid 100%? Pay for Performance is a backwards way of looking at offering SEO services. Bottomline is this - if I got the knowledge and skills, and you are the guy needing SEO, I got all the cards, you don't. You can't come to me and say, get me results and I'll pay you.
Scott
06/16/2009 08:48 pm
As an SEO customer, I think some of these comments are indicative of the general feeling of self-importance within the industry. Comments such as, 'Why not own the website, the domain, and all the assets, and get paid 100%?' and '...why not simply build the site and own the site, and sell the same product yourself?' are utterly ridiculous and shamefully arrogant. Here are a few reasons for you: business set-up costs, brand creation, product design and manufacture, expert customer service... In my opinion, being the experts in their particular field, SEO companies need to set targets in order to measure performance. If they don't meet these targets, they don't get paid--as in any other industry. It's up to SEO companies to skillfully set realistic targets with their clients. Otherwise we may just opt to increase our website popularity using other forms of marketing.
Zack
09/09/2009 08:32 pm
I believe PPR (Pay Per Ranking) is the best pricing method for both client and SEO company sides.
seo services
06/16/2012 09:54 am
SEO company gives cusinesses the opportunity to be marketed and offered over the Online. This is the greatest benefit for any business, because the Online is used today to find anything, and to do this people around the world go on search engine. These applications are used to market companies, and an online organization that uses SEO will use articles to market and increase their customer's pr on that internet look for search engine.
SEM
06/19/2012 10:05 pm
Some of the SEO services won't really offer pay for performance deals, rather the paying method that they use is pay per rankings. There are still many SEO companies who have a different paying methods according to their output of work or find of services that they offer to their clients.