Last time we discussed guaranteed SEO, looking at what could be guaranteed and the various industry offers being made. I alluded to a commercial service we can offer which provides our clients with the assurances they need and ties in our remuneration with achieving the clients objectives. Here’s more detail on that service:
Performance Based SEO
There are 3 distinct types of assured service clients are looking for which we offer:
- Keyword ranking position guarantees
- Traffic increase guarantees
- Sales increase guarantees (for ecommerce sites).
Each of these options starts with a technical analysis of the site, identifying any issues which may impede good optimisation of the site. We look at server related issues such as location, speed and so on, on-page issues, content management issues, coding issues – and report back to the client advising of what needs to be addressed before we can move forwards. Any issues identified can then be addressed by the client, his web developer or ourselves
1. Keyword Ranking Positions
This is the most basic service and is relevant to clients who have a selection of keyphrases they want rankings for – typically between 5-10 different phrases.
In this case we will carry out competitive analysis then propose a schedule highlighting target keyphrase ranking positions and associated timescales for the achievment of the rankings. Associated with this will be a monthly payment plan on a keyphrase by keyphrase basis.
For every keyphrase which does not achieve the target position a total refund will be made for that keyphrase. We will reschedule/recost the phrase and give the client the option of continuing with the phrase or not.
2. Traffic Increases
For many sites, particularly ecommerce sites, we can correlate traffic with sales. Doubling the traffic will double the sales. Actually it is generally better than that since when we optimise sites we are generating more relevant traffic and also improving the landing pages to increase the enquiry or sales rate.
The starting point here is a more comprehensive keyphrase analysis which combines analytics information, with search volumes, current ranking positions and also competition…
From this we will devise a plan to get substantial traffic increases by focussing on moving currently ranked phrases into more prominent positions (ie above the scroll) and also bringing in new phrases not yet ranked.
We will propose a plan showing traffic increases on a quarter by quarter basis and our compensation will be related directly to achieving the targets – specifically we will generate invoices based on percentage improvements in traffic.
The work we will typically do here will be a combination of on-page and off-page SEO (link building). We will use all the link building processes defined here which will include blogs, directory submissions, article writing and distribution and so on.
3. Sales Increases
This is the ultimate of course but we need to be in a position where we can measure sales increases. Measuring traffic increases through analytics is straightforward – it’s a little more tricky with sales since although we can measure ecommerce transactions many sales will be made by phone – ie people will find the website through search but then complete the transaction by phone.
In this instance we rely on the honesty of our clients to report to us such indirect monthly sales achieved. It helps if the client has agreed to use telephone tracking.
Similar to 2 above we then tie our invoicing directly to sales made via the web – so true performance bases SEO.
The client needs to commit to a 2-3 year agreement since the project is front loaded with our efforts – mainly link building – with the substantial sales benefits being realised after year one.
Please get in touch if you wish to discuss any of this in more detail or talk about your specific project (jan@janklin.com ; 01928 788100)
