Return on Investment for Professional SEO services?
March 3rd, 2009 | by Peter Cullen |Let’s start with the basic premise – you pay for something on the assumption that you receive something back for your money – a benefit of some kind – a return on your investment.
In PPC (Pay Per Click) you pay money to Google, Yahoo, Bing…etc and in return they give you clicks, or traffic or people visiting your website. It’s quite easy to measure – you pay more – you get more traffic.
So, what happens with SEO – you pay more – you get more traffic – Hmmm, well not necessarily.
What you get at the start of an SEO campaign is a commitment that a serious of SEO actions will be taken on your website – and that based on previous actions on previous websites – X is likely to happen – X being more traffic.
Granted some more experienced and confident companies will not take your money at the start of the SEO campaign – they are confident enough to wait until X has being delivered. They invoice only part of the total at the start and then invoice you the majority at the end of the campaign.
In this case the supplier is taking more of a risk. What happens if Google decide to update their algorithm, as they recently appear to have (putting more emphasis on branding and semantic indexing enhancements)? The supplier of SEO services runs the risk of delivering professionals SEO services without the client seeing the return promised.
The challenge here is to implement a charging model that works for both the supplier and client and to define how to acurately measure the ROI from SEO. I believe there are three approaches to measuring ROI on SEO and these three methods could be combined into a standard model that can be used as a charging model for SEO services.
This model is shown graphically below:
Three different charging milestones;
- Milestone 1 – SEO Changes – charging based on implementing on page and off page SEO, e.g. keyword research, meta data, internal links, image optimisation , architecture (CSS, HTML, Broken Links), body text, link building – a flat charge based on hours, i.e. one hour to implement new meta data = charge equals X
- Milestone 2 – More Traffic – charging based on X percent increase in traffic. Naturally a baseline is agreed at the start of the campaign and closely monitored thereafter. X can be incremental, i.e. 10% increase in traffic is charged at Y, 20% increase in traffic is charged at Z…etc
- Milestone 3 – More Sales – charged based on extra sales made through the website as a result of milestone 2. This can be hard to measure as new clients may contact the company through email or phone. Easy to do on an ecommerce site. Also, new clients may only start buying after the campaign ends, in order to avoid cases like this it’s better to agree on a 12 month SEO campaign from the outset.
Now let’s look at the model proposed above.
1. Pay X for the implementation of the SEO factors that need work
2. Pay X after 6 months based on the traffic generated
3. Pay X after 6 months based on the additional sales generated through the website
This model reduces the risk for the client as they can monitor what work that is initially being carried out on their website. The supplier can cover their costs through the campaign only invoicing for what work is done. The real differentiator is when it comes to the SEO results – the better the results the more you should/are likely to pay.
What about your experiences?
What charging model have you used in the past?
What charging model have you used to pay for SEO services?
What software tools do you use to analyse the website and drive productivity?
Related posts:
- Do You Believe That SEO Services Have A Bad Reputation? Have You Been Burnt In The Past By Over Hyped...
- Why Are Your Organic Search Services Harder To Sell Than Pay Per Click Services? Why do people find it hard to sell Organic Search...
- Develop an SEO Sales Methodology to Build Your Search Business – Part 1 Delivering search or seo services to the market place has...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
24 Responses to “Return on Investment for Professional SEO services?”
By Chaunna Brooke on Mar 4, 2009 | Reply
..good day! i read your blog and it inspired me a lot. Yeah you’re right. The greater the traffic the more income you’ll get. that’s why you should have the good charging model like that of what you have presented. Keep it up. God bless.
By seo tips on Mar 13, 2009 | Reply
SEO Experts, here’s something very interesting and helpful
http://www.thedotcomlifestyle.com
By SEO expert on Mar 16, 2009 | Reply
To get more traffic with the help of SEO, it is absolutely not necessary to pay a lot. A good SEO campain can do the best job.
By Pet Foreclosure Assistance on Apr 6, 2009 | Reply
I am almost brand new to blogging and really like your post, it is really on target.
By Search Engine Placement Consultants on Apr 14, 2009 | Reply
Hi,
Glad to stumble your article… Nice article…. I think this blog will helpful to seo people……………..
Search Engine Placement Consultants
By Kieran on Apr 16, 2009 | Reply
That is a great post and one I really agree with. Tracking the performance of an SEO campaign is imperative to being able to calculate the value of that campaign. Knowing how your efforts affected the actual goals of a website should be determined from the outset and built into the costs.
I really like the way you have broken it down into 3 categories.
By Peter Cullen on Apr 16, 2009 | Reply
@Kieran
Thanks for dropping by and commenting. I wonder how many agencies actually implement this model? It really requires a lot of confidence in your SEO processes.
By SEO Agency on Apr 30, 2009 | Reply
Very useful seo pricing strategy, thanks for the post. Every seo agency will be different in the way it charges, this is just one example.
By Cherilynn Stone on Jun 10, 2009 | Reply
Exactly what I needed. Thanks for sharing this!
Take care
By Maggie on Jun 12, 2009 | Reply
Great framework on how the SEO is linked with sales! Thanks for sharing!
By Lyndon on Jun 12, 2009 | Reply
Thank you for this valuable info! Tracking an SEO strategy is really important.
By SEO Services on Jul 23, 2009 | Reply
Hi
Glad to stumble your article… Nice article…. I think this blog will helpful to seo people.
By SEO Company India on Jul 28, 2009 | Reply
The model you propose is very good but client generally argues that leads mean all to him/her and want a primarily leads/sales based model
By gabe nowak on Aug 21, 2009 | Reply
Great article – this is all something new when it comes to SEO services and what to charge – we usually go overboard on our service to our clients and will do a lot of consulting to not only get extra traffic but also give them ideas on changes to their site to increase sales / leads etc.
By Head Honcho on Aug 21, 2009 | Reply
Nice well balanced article. We’ve used Site Surveys by http://www.oevaemarketingconsultants.com which gives you the tools necessary to request, track and evaluate customer input. We use the feedback to make better decisions and increase client opportunities at making a profit.
In addition to Site Surveys we use a Search Engine Visibility product that has some robust analysis (including keyword usage, spiderability, and Robots.txt files and Robots Meta tags) which outlines strengths and potential weaknesses.
I agree that there is no standard way of search engine optimization… that’s like saying there’s only 1 way to bite and apple.
Gibrón T. Williams, Head Honcho at Oevae Marketing Consultants and this is my opinion.
Follow us at Twitter.com/oevae
By Kunga52 on Aug 21, 2009 | Reply
According to Google’s own statistics, 75-80 percent of traffic to websites originates from a click-through off the “natural” or “organic” search results pages. That leaves only 20-25 percent of click-throughs from PPC. If your online behavior is anything like mine, it’s easy to figure out why: I’m not interested in people TRYING to put their name out in front of me for products and services that have nothing to do with the keyword search I just submitted. My eyes ignore the “Sponsored Links” area and go right to the natural pages.
If you look at how much money is being spent on PPC for websites with terrible natural positions, and even more terrible capture design, it’s very apparent why people have such trouble figuring out the ROI model.
By Brian Barghout on Aug 22, 2009 | Reply
I really liked your article, and for the most part agree entirely.
However with my experience over the last 25 years, I think you’re going to need a lot of luck to find clients that will actually own up to any benefits and pay you what you’ve earned if you have anything less than a concrete, iron clad contract.
Knowing what I can do in terms of SEO, first page placement with Google, and Link Building I’d happily do the work for free, and get paid according to the results, except past experience has made me a lot wiser.
When a Client pays for an advert in the newspaper, he pays in advance, and not according to whether anyone read the copy or not. So a client should work either work with SEO people he trusts or was recommended.
By texasseo on Jan 13, 2010 | Reply
Great Seo presentation. However, Seo’s differ to what approach we all take and which tools are best for the campaign and not entirely on the page rank.