Liability Text For SEO Work

[steww]

Hi there, bit of a long shot but does anyone happen to have any T&C's to limit liability from any SEO work etc carried out on a clients website? (That the client would sign before hand).

e.g. I hereby agree that I cannot hold 'company name' responsible for adverse results, there are no SEO gaurentees......etc

Any help appreciated,

Thanks

 

[dashu1]

It's not going to inspire much confidence in them is it?

 

[Retired_member41]

Lol i think that's why no one bothered to reply.

 

[dashu1]

Lol - maybe you're right

 

[steww]

Maybe you're right - but would also like to be covered.

Have got something similar now.

Thanks

 

[andrew69]

The trend now is that people get frustrated from building and promoting sites from scratch and the results are not visible for about 6-12months in niches that make money. So the best thing to do is to act as SEO consultant for customers whose sites have almost zero competition. This is easy but the way the SE's operate no one knows , and you could be blamed for the adverse effects even if it is not your fault and just an algorithm update.

 

[RobertPF]

Offering SEO services is a funny one, can't make too many big promises to clients, especially not in the short term.

 

[steww]

Offering SEO services is a funny one, can't make too many big promises to clients, especially not in the short term.

Agree with that, I think it's fine as long as expectations are managed well and from outset - it can be much smoother long term if everyone knows where they stand.

 

[Blossom]

Agree with that, I think it's fine as long as expectations are managed well and from outset - it can be much smoother long term if everyone knows where they stand.

Yeah exactly. Just don't say they will necessarily be number 1 for their chosen keywords.

You can get away with a lot by rethinking their keyword choices for them. If you pick some with loads of searches then it's less important to be at the top. Good for those where you can get on the first page but find it impossible to get higher without a big budget.

Don't know what your disclaimer actually says, but I'd be extremely concerned about hiring an SEO who talked about 'adverse effects'. That implies to me that they either don't know what they're doing or they use a lot of shady black hat methods. Yes you can drop in the rankings - but I would refer to that simply as a blip or just come up with evidence that competitors have a much higher SEO & link building budget.

 

[RobertPF]

Yeah exactly. Just don't say they will necessarily be number 1 for their chosen keywords.
...
You can get away with a lot by rethinking their keyword choices for them. If you pick some with loads of searches then it's less important to be at the top. Good for those where you can get on the first page but find it impossible to get higher without a big budget.

Certainly steww, offering professional seo services where you expect to keep clients for a relatively long period of time is all about managing expectations. Its striking the balance between explaining the reality of it to them i.e. no amazing results "overnight", but at the same time not dampening their spirits too much where they think its too much hassle.

Blossom, I agree with the first paragraph above, but from experience with some of my own sites there is such a difference in being on Page 1 and Page 2 on Google, really you want to be in the top 5 results on Page 1.(I know you didn't say anything about being on Page 2, but I'm just saying that being number 11 instead of number 5 for a search term means your traffic may receive only 10% or less of the traffic that you would receive if you were in the top 5.) One of my sites is on page 2 out of about 150,000,000 results for a search term that gets 2000-3000 searches per month, but only receives circa 50 visitors a month for that given keyword, whereas the sites in the top 5 of Page 1 will probably be getting 1000 visitors per month each, just for that search term.

Although it looks encouraging for a client's site to come from 'nothing' to Page 2, in reality they need to be on Page 1 for any search term, unless like you said its getting a very high volume of searches per month, in which case it is usually a huge amount of SEO work over a longer period.

 

[Blossom]

Certainly steww, offering professional seo services where you expect to keep clients for a relatively long period of time is all about managing expectations. Its striking the balance between explaining the reality of it to them i.e. no amazing results "overnight", but at the same time not dampening their spirits too much where they think its too much hassle.

Blossom, I agree with the first paragraph above, but from experience with some of my own sites there is such a difference in being on Page 1 and Page 2 on Google, really you want to be in the top 5 results on Page 1.(I know you didn't say anything about being on Page 2, but I'm just saying that being number 11 instead of number 5 for a search term means your traffic may receive only 10% or less of the traffic that you would receive if you were in the top 5.) One of my sites is on page 2 out of about 150,000,000 results for a search term that gets 2000-3000 searches per month, but only receives circa 50 visitors a month for that given keyword, whereas the sites in the top 5 of Page 1 will probably be getting 1000 visitors per month each, just for that search term.

Although it looks encouraging for a client's site to come from 'nothing' to Page 2, in reality they need to be on Page 1 for any search term, unless like you said its getting a very high volume of searches per month, in which case it is usually a huge amount of SEO work over a longer period.

Yes sorry, reading it back my post could be misunderstood. What I meant was that if a client was, say, #6 for a search term and they were complaining they weren't #1, but it was impossible to get higher without a massive budget, then you need to give reasons and maybe say why it's not as important as they think.

If you aren't on page 1, you don't exist