Comments on: Top 10 reasons why pay-for-performance sucks for SEO

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:26:28 +0000

I have two websites, one offers a more traditional approach to SEO the other offers Pay For Performance. Both sites rank well for a broad selection of industry specific terms.

What is interesting is those enquiries coming from the Pay For Performance site increase month on month. Also there is an ever increasing number of companies contact both sites.

Pay For Performance SEO is a relatively new concept and awareness is low, however that may change in the future. A few companies have given an entire industry a bad name, just do a search for Iomart, and you will see why customers are nervous about parting with wads of money before the see any tangible results.

Pay For Performance SEO is here to stay and is a result of an industry that has no formal qualifications or standards and cannot police itself properly.

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By: mayer

mayer — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:42:25 +0000

I dont agree with you at all. I am working with a very large company on this model and am making money hand over fist. Traffic can also be tracked if its good or bad. The client has a right to change keywords on us midway if they are not converting at a pre agreed upon rate. Since my team has done SEO for some of the biggest companies in the world with success we sell this model very easily. The client is also happy since they have seen more traffic and more sales.

Many of the responses seem to be from small one man bands. Bigger companies can handle a little risk for more reward.

By: Daniela Trifone

Daniela Trifone — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:49:23 +0000

PPC price model for SEO activities is like pricing advertising as a franchising selling activity (or, if you prefer so, you can call it affiliate marketing too).

This pricing model not only constrains SEO to share with clients their enterprise risks, but also gives credit only to direct sales coming from the advertising activity without admitting that it will gain long term brand awareness to the promoted brand.

Do you think that other players in the online advertising arena will accept for a long time a performance based pricing model or it’s going to be just a problem for the SEO world?

By: Everfluxx

Everfluxx — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:40:50 +0000

Jim: If I were a client, I would accept to pay for clicks only if I were 100% sure of those clicks’ quality. Because it’s not the quantity of traffic received in a given time period that makes the difference between cheap and good SEO. It’s a matter of quality (including how your web site is perceived by search engines and users), and the ability to achieve stable results in the long run.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 18:11:03 +0000

That’s very nice put on paper. I definitely agree with you.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:59:04 +0000

Pay for performance is good where your skill is unique or seen as such. However, in the SEO arena there appear to be thousands of companies (one man bands many of them) who claim to offer superior SEO skills.

Equally clients can be bamboozled by SEO “experts” who show them sites that are at #1 or #2 for a supposedly key phrase or where there is no real competition or where they have tagged a site onto their in-house link farm to give it piles of links.

So I agree with your points, particularly as agencies are bound to add SEO as a value add to their offering just as you suggest.

Jim

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3greeneggs :: Blogging with Lists (Or, ‘top ten’!) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 03:56:29 +0000

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