Do SEO experts offer clients guarantee?

[waterworks]

Been considering the business side of things and wondering if SEO experts / companies make any kind of guarantees and what are common rates in your area for SEO services?

Had a client asking me about SEO and asked if I could guarantee he would get to the first page of google in a certain amount of time. I told him I don't do SEO and a guarantee in this game isn't worth a dime because there are so many variables out of your control.

Also, do you make the clients sign up for a period of time such as 3, 6, 9, or 12 month periods, or is it all month-to-month or hour-to-hour type billing?

 

[thedude006]

I have never offered a guarantee except that they will be better off from when they started. Impossible to promise anything with SEO. As far as period of time with clients. I always tell them 6 months is a good amount of time to to see results if ranked in a natural google friendly way but I also understand that things within companies change so I never make them sign a contract for an extended period of time.

I always believe in being transparent with clients. Saves headaches for you and them down the road.

 

[MartysW0RLD]

Most people suggest to never offer a guarantee, I've offered them before, but only when I was 100% sure I could deliver.
Do month by month, not by the hour.

 

[waterworks]

Thanks Dude and Martys. Appreciate the honest feedback. I believe the same thing when it comes to clients. If honest doesn't work with a client, then it wasn't meant to be for us to work together.

I plan to spend about 4-6 months learning all I can through here, before offering my services to clients. The hard part will be finding clients who want to pay good rates.

What do you say to them then ask the inevitable, 'whats my ROI going to be?'

 

[MatthewGraham]

The only people who offer guarantees are people who are skilled enough that it's a waste of their time to work for you.

 

[honestIM]

Thanks Dude and Martys. Appreciate the honest feedback. I believe the same thing when it comes to clients. If honest doesn't work with a client, then it wasn't meant to be for us to work together.

I plan to spend about 4-6 months learning all I can through here, before offering my services to clients. The hard part will be finding clients who want to pay good rates.

What do you say to them then ask the inevitable, 'whats my ROI going to be?'

It is impossible to offer ranking guarantee since you do not own Google. Also, ROI is very much unpredictable. If not all SEO experts on this forum will be making big bucks on their own instead of selling their services. What client should know is that they are buying into a plan, just like any marketing plan there is risk involved. However if they do not take that risk they would not be able to increase their sales. The only two thing that is certain in life is death and taxes.

 

[Peter Ngo]

U can offer them a SEM package, SEO + adwords.

Try to sell urself as a marketer instead of a SEO, trust me, you can save urself a lot of headache.

 

[W9go]

nobody really offers ranking guarantee ..... google is unpredictable

 

[proxygo]

no such thing as dead cert or a 100% sure fire, all u can do is offer something
with a reasonable expectation, that way your not going down in flames for
offering something you cant do which to some can make a user look incompetent
at there job.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

I'd be wary of any SEO offering performance guarantees.

Only thing SEOs can promiss is to follow best practices that have ranked clients in their experience, with a disclaimer that it may or may not work.

 

[Gromit]

You really need to be putting what you're reading into practice and experimenting. Make sure you learn marketing as well.

There's a hell of a lot more to this than just throwing pbns at shit.

 

[Julie Bates]

Yaa, some experts may give a guarantee, But frankly you never know when new google updates come and your site may penalize and rank may also go down. So guarantee can't be taken but if he works in the right direction then the rank of your website may come up.

 

[Laskin]

Give a guarantee that you get the work by a certain time or a certain amount of work. You can't guarantee results.

 

[aShikha619]

Gurantees can be offered for short term rankings....with high authority links you can get top for sure but stay there is altogether a different ball game.

 

[mickyfu]

All newbies will be PMing now. "Sirs mees can give number ones guarantee". Two weeks down the line they are making " My Client" threads here, asking the most basic dumb as shit questions.

 

[issorc]

Gurantees can be offered for short term rankings....with high authority links you can get top for sure but stay there is altogether a different ball game.

"Guarantees can be offered for short term rankings" & "Top for sure" - let me guess, the date you registered was the date you started with SEO too?

 

[aShikha619]

"Guarantees can be offered for short term rankings" & "Top for sure" - let me guess, the date you registered was the date you started with SEO too?

Yes i make progress really fast.....i can get you 90 pa and 90da link today if you can afford that to discover it by youself you may have to pay jr. Vip fees for some more years.

 

[ghround]

Guarantees about link creation are fine, but guarantees about rankings are not practical as search engines arent owned by SEOs.

 

[MisterF]

Thanks Dude and Martys. Appreciate the honest feedback. I believe the same thing when it comes to clients. If honest doesn't work with a client, then it wasn't meant to be for us to work together.

I plan to spend about 4-6 months learning all I can through here, before offering my services to clients. The hard part will be finding clients who want to pay good rates.

?'

Are you going to be honest with them and tell them how new you are to seo ?

Clients will pay good rates for experts who have years / decades of experience and getting results.

 

[kboxer7]

We do.

You only pay when you rank or hit designated benchmarks of ranking and/or traffic that we have agreed upon prior.

Only firm to actually put our money where our mouth is. That said, we are selective with clients and we are in an interesting position given our relationships with over 15,000 publishers (not PBNs) for outreach and immediate link placements on real sites.

Regards,