Why can't SEO's be performance based?

As an internet marketer, I can understand why SEO's would market themselves like that, but I think many need to make realistic promises.

There are a lot of people out there that take advantage of people, SEO's are no different from anyone else. I think the money up front might have something to do with people taking advantage from them and then not paying them. Trust is important in marketing, in any business really, and because of the amount of people willing to abuse that, people become less trusting of others and prefer rather to cover their own rears before thinking of their clients.

Congrats on the traffic increase. I bet you're proud because you did it on your own (I would). Here's to bigger and better things for you and your site

Why can't SEO's be performance based?

Well they can be, if you sort a decent deal before they start. Forget all this 12 month contract rubbish, 90 days is a fair amount of time to see an improvement, maybe not page 1, but certainly moves in the right direction. If they deliver, then pay them monthly as a rolling contract, if they stop delivering, give them 30 days notice and walk away.

No better incventive than someones pocket

Glad MLF is working out for you, great feedback

Congrats on doubling your visitors, have your sales/leads also increased since visitors increased? Sounds like you are doing a good job on your own. I'm new here but it seems the people of MLF are all happy to help :-).

Our leads/sales have increased but it has been hard work. I am not an IT expert and to be honest I didn't have a clue how to build our website (hornsea ink shop) or how to optimise it. The advice I was given by friends etc was to link build (didn't know what that was either), spam and blog my way to the top of google. I found MLF by accident, thought I would dump a link and never come back. "Steve" pointed out the error of my ways, I sulked a while but hung around and started to read what others had to say. I got good advice and started to apply that to our site and it is working. It's just a shame that I don't have more time to spend on MLF becuase I know it would be worth every second! Stick with it and you will get there. The best advice I can give being if you are not sure "ask" the people on here will give you a straight answer but be prepared that answer will always be very honest and to the point!:

A huge: to MLF
we are growing.

I went to a recent trade show and I seen a company that was pay-as-you-go SEO that you only paid on results. You set a contract with a budget in mind and they worked towards that. Seemed like a good idea.

With regard to the previous post, you didnt make a note of who they were by any chance?

Let me hunt down the flyer in my zoo-of-an-office. Its been many moons since I seen it last.

Pay on results SEO! Like the sound of that. Be interested to hear how anyone has got on with them?

I'm behind you all the way, the SEO industry lets itself down, by not having any kind of regulatory body to oversee it, It's probably not what most SEO companies want either. But for the end user if there were a means of seeing that the SEO company complied with certain standards and conformed to the standards set out then that would give me confidence. So many UK companies charge you thousands to do the work, only to pay someone peanuts out in India to do it. Had a phonecall today from an SEO expert today, it went like this... "Hello" "hello" "what's your name?" "why?" "I'm so and so and we've been tracking your website" "Oh why?" "because your not ranking high for certain search terms" "whose search terms?" "ours" "not my search terms but yours?" "yes, sorry what did you say your name was?" "It begins with an F and it ends with an F any ideas?" And he hung up.
Then last week had a similar email to be quite honest get several a day. Similar type "You know your website isn't ranking blah blah blah" So I thought I'd waste their time and pretend I was interested, I sent a reply asking how much. Reply comes back, saying that depends on what you have done. This got my back up somewhat, hang on a minute I said to him, you send out unwanted spam emails touting for work yet you don't have any kind of pricing? Well if he hasn't a clue of potential costs, then there was no point in carrying on with the conversation.