The traditional agency is almost dead as a new pay-per performance SEO business model has begun to gain favor among SEOs and clients alike.

Be one of the first to embrace this model and you can offer guaranteed results, charge only per performance, and remove the barrier of an initial client investment that can discourage customers reluctant to hand over a paycheck for unknown results.

The beauty of this SEO business model is that the client can finally pay based on clicks; The same way they pay for PPC. In fact, you’ll use that same simple logic to sell your service.

Stop Getting Paid For Work. Start Getting Paid Per Click.

A lot of companies get stuck in the rut of delivering a certain amount of work on a client’s website per month. i.e. Twenty five links, two new blog posts, 50 meta descriptions.

Common sense says the more work you do the better a site will perform. While the more sweat equity you put into a website the better it will perform (usually), this is a killer for stretched SEO companies with small staffs. Especially when there’s 1,000 other SEO companies willing to do more work for less money.

How to flip the old SEO business model on its head and get ahead of the curve.

The old SEO business model says you get a client, give services, and get paid a (hopefully) generous monthly fee.

• In the new model, you’re paid-per click just like Google. No setup fees, no charges until your client gets the traffic. Don’t set up any unnecessary barriers between yourself and the client before getting started.
• Get it in writing: In your contract, identify what you will be paid per click for organic search traffic. Charging just a 10th of a cent per click can generate enormous profits if search volume is decent in the client’s industry. You can’t buy traffic from Google for that price, which is very appealing for clients. Just make sure the client is contractually obligated to remove the your pages if the business relationship is terminated. When the website starts capturing a high-volume of traffic, this makes it very difficult for a client to leave you… ever.
• Require site wide links on the client’s website to your new seo pages. These links could be placed in the footer or in the main navigation site wide. This will allow you to leverage the Page Rank of the clients existing website so your pages get indexed and ranked faster.
• Set up a new sub domain or folder structure where you’re new optimized and keyword targeted pages will live.   For example, yourseopages.clientwebsite.com or clientwebsite.com/yourseopages/XXX (Don’t name these directories and folders Your SEO pages obviously.)
• Segment Traffic: Use Google Analytics to segment organic search traffic that landed on your new pages. Since theses pages are capturing traffic that previously would have been missed, you’ll get paid per click for each new visitor. (You shouldn’t charge for any of your client’s brand related searches that arrive on your pages.)

This model is simple but it works. Best of all, you can finally guarantee results and differentiate yourself from all the other SEO agency’s.

So let me know what you think of this business model the comments: Does it have legs? Or am I just full of crap?