Should you pay for SEO before you see any results?

[NorthSouthMedia]

OK prhps I'll play Devils Advocate here for a bit, at least just a smidgen even...

Here's how I see PFP as a total nightmare, from my own experience ...

How on earth are an SEO Company going to justify that there marketing campaign is the main driving force behind any PFP conversions?

Is a company to stop all other marketing that might drive traffic to their site?

Here's a recent real life study? I have a client that gained massive exposure and sales thanks to the offline media kicking off (again) to the Alli Weight Loss Pill. He gained about 4 months sales in about 5 days thanks to printed media, radio and tv. He's still sitting pretty with sales even after a week. How do I work that into a PFP scale?

Nor only that, WOM (Word of Mouth) Marketing has kicked in as the pill is now favoured discussion around the water cooler.

Thereafter, my client suddenly sees the benefit of refuting that my work is result of week in and week out conversions ... (which drove him to be visible in the first place) ... and my PFP model F.A.I.L.S

Hence, why I stated in my earlier thread, unless its not a defined measurement such as an ecommerce sale, then I'm not interested in PFP. The grey areas are too wide to even contemplate.

 

[stuarty]

I'm working on a "PFP" tender with an offline marketing agency just now (The tender calls it PPP instead). A lot of it I don't fully understand but the stuff that I do understand is pretty clear. Operating costs will be definitely be met and that the winning agency will not make a loss. There's no suggestion at all that the agency is expected to work for free. The agency however has to be fully transparent about it's operating costs - so no skin off any noses really.

This is the first one I've worked on so it's a learning process for me but there appear to be lots of positives for both client and consultant.

What I would say is that it's really not a model that I could see working for many SMEs. It's quite a complex model and heavily project management based with stuff that would be massive overkill for the majority of small companies.

If I were to cherry pick two of our clients then I can see no real benefit for either of them. For example;

Client A - their niche is specialist and relatively low competition - approx 1.5 million results for several of their prime key phrases of which they rank top 3 for each phrase. Their average sales are between £20k-300k and I'm guessing their margins are around 30% from their services. We charge them a very low fee because competition in their niche is low and their site doesn't need any intensive online strategies.

Obviously it would be fantatsic for us if we were getting a 30% share of their profits on top of operating costs but I'm not so sure the client would be so happy to drop 30% of their margin - especially since they sit at the top of their niche anyway.

Client B - their niche is moderately competitive - approx 8-11 million results for their prime phrases and they rank top 3 for these. Profits from their sales range between £10-70. We do a lot more work for this client due to the competitive nature of their niche - it's a lot more intensive in terms of conversions and fine tuning all the time.

Again volume sales would be a great incentive for us but what benefit would this be for the client to reduce their profits when they're already at the top of their niche?

I see potential downsides for small businesses if PFP were to become the norm. Operating costs of the SEO would still have to be met and these could be open to abuse by any rogue SEOs. How would a small business have the resources to verify an SEOs operating costs? Rogues could find ways of inflating their costs no doubt. Add this to losing a percentage of their margins so it might work out a lot more expensive than a fixed monthly fee.

There's potential for increase in Black Hat SEO techniques too - think linkbuilding. Black hats could boost a clients rankings from links from their own network of sites. If the client didn't pay over profits then the black hat could pull all the links from their networks or they could spam the the client's site by linking them on bad neighbourhoods resulting in a google ban.

This is only my first glance at the potential pros and cons of this model and I'm sure more will emerge. Whether it's a good thing overall or not I really don't know - time will tell.