Is the dog on the right a short term "transactional buyer" or a long term "relationship buyer"? (click to enlarge photo) Please forgive the "dog" analogy here, but I couldn't resist using this Long Beach, N.Y. photo taken in front of my old apartment building, right on the beach (a great 4 years of my life - 23 years old to 27!).
This Cre8asiteforums.com post talks about the theme of "customer differentiation" as it relates to SEO services selling. My opinion is that the dog on the right is NOT seeking a long term relationship. Value driven and ethical SEO sellers and buyers SHOULD BOTH be looking for long term relationships!
Why? Because, I agree with Stoney deGeyter's 2/6/06 article "New Algorithm Measures Require New Means For Optimization" when he says: "Today’s SEO is vastly different than that of yesterday." He later says: "Experienced SEOs are finding that many sites can take six months or more just to see any kind of ranking improvement. This makes it increasingly difficult to differentiate from those who can improve your rankings and those who only say they can." Rankings do help with performance, but there are other things like "user friendly navigation", etc. that help with the more important "conversion rate" (visits to actions to sales).
As Ben Shapiro says in "Is Performance-Based Pricing the Right Price for You?", "The parties are forced to deal with one another's limitations, objectives, and trade-offs. The very process of discussing, in precise detail and with great discipline, these issues develops "wide-band width" communication between buyer and seller. Each has the opportunity to precisely present its objectives, and to explain its own issues." This initial and ongoing communication results in a potential build up of TRUST and CREDIBILITY, that goes beyond the first six month's "honeymoon period", and can translate into a long term, "win-win" situation when the "match" is right.
I almost closed out this series of blog posts until I saw this Cre8asiteforums.com Thread on "Protection from Unscrupulous Prospects, Avoid getting ripped off by 'customers'". It would not be "fair and balanced" of me to omit this SEO topic from this series, so here goes.
As you may have already read, "Black_Knight" complains (I'm sure legitimately) about "People posing as (SEO) clients just to get ideas, then using those ideas with no intention of ever buying them." This breaks down TRUST on the SEO seller's side, and I'm sure has created the need to charge for written, detailed proposals (that still shouldn't disclose all the exact specifics of all the SEO Consultant's technical methods over a year's time). I feel these proposals are crucial to "SEO Pay For Some Kind of Performance (Actions)" feasibility!
Besides, any SEO prospective client would be a fool to think that tricking SEO Consultants like this is an effective long term strategy for his web site! Most SEO Consultants would never go into ALL their personalized technical methods that they would use over a year's time in the proposal process, anyway. That, plus the need to keep up with ever changing search engine algorithms would make such trickery an "exercise in futility". As that post says, the idea is for the SEO seller proposal to go into great detail on WHAT they will do over that first year vs. great detail on exactly HOW they will do it. For some aspects, though, like "linking policy" it would be beneficial to give the general outline of how that will be implemented (to be sure no problematic "link farms", etc. will be created). Maybe, stating exactly what will not be done would be good, also.
"Black_Knight" also says in that same post that "It is the client's role to supply a brief." This is very true, but I've always believed that a seller, of anything, has the responsibility to not only educate people to a valuable opportunity, but also to MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM TO BUY. So, the SEO seller should verbally ask these questions of their SEO prospect (thanks to Todd Malicoat who on 2/19/06 updated those questions) that would supply the client's "brief". My opinion, on the other hand, is that "What is your monthly budget? (ask delicately or destroy the deal)" should not be asked, as there is NO DELICATE way to ask. The SEO seller should just state a range of "complete package" pricing per month or year, and let the SEO buyer decide if it is within his budget. However, I would add the question, of "What are your most important keywords or keyword strings, that you feel your buyers use when they search online for what you sell?"
Or, a better idea for the buyer "brief" would be to have "fact finding" questions on the SEO seller's web site with a "drop down" screen of possible answers, along with an "open space dialog box" for each question, so the client can expand on each answer. This would be done only if some initial verbal SEO buyer and seller questions resulted in a good reason to have the prospective client spend that time. It would also show that the SEO seller knows many possible answer scenarios, and cares a lot to try to have a good, long term relationship match. The "keywords" question would provide some specific research information that could show the "competitiveness" involved in the SEO.
TRUST and CREDIBILITY issues need to be addressed if the Search Marketing Industry is to have HEALTHY GROWTH (no bad reputations for sellers or buyers). I believe that this is part of the reason that "SEO Accounts for Only 11% of SEM Spending". I hope my "one suggestion" helps.
This concludes my XXIII Part Series on SEO "Pay For Some Kind of Performance (Actions)". The crux of my "one suggestion" is in posts #18, #19, and #20. However, the entire series should be read, in order to see how the Search Marketing Industry's "bad reputation", coupled with traditional ad agencies now going with more "Performance-Based Pricing", together with many "recycled SEO clients" feeling that they have a lot more risk than the SEO sellers do, creates "market pressures" for a more true, long term partnering of SEO buyer and seller. The irony of all this is in the fact that my type of SEO "Pay For Performance" is a way to insure that the SEO seller is NOT UNDERPAID!
5/6/06 Postscript: On 4/26/06 I attended ad:tech San Francisco (see my 5/2/06 post) where the President of "i33 communications" gave a session on "Pay Your Agency on Results: Risk-Sharing Compensation Models" (23 page PDF of power point presentation). The last page says: "A fair compensation model shares risk and reward." That is what I've tried to do with my SEO compensation model.
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