Pay For Performance SEO VS Deliverables-Based SEO 

Nowadays, several organizations are aware of different SEO approaches to stand themselves in the market. Some of them pay for SEO services once they see certain results (known as Pay-For-Performance SEO) while others focus on specific data-driven SEO activities to achieve long-term results (known as Deliverable-based SEO).

Well, both of them are alluring options, but unfortunately, this isn’t the case every time. Because Pay-for-Performance SEO only thrives and cares for results – which could only be short-term and gets penalized in the long run. On the other hand, deliverable SEO is also about completing various SEO tasks such as keyword research, on meta tag optimization, creating backlinks etc irrespective of SEO performance or getting quality results.

So, in case, if you chose any of these for your business, you at least know what an SEO company is actually going to do. 

On this page, we’ll discuss both pay-for-performance SEO and Deliverable-based SEO, plus give you some better strategies for how to do them.

What is Pay-For-Performance SEO?

Pay-for-performance SEO is also known as performance based SEO or pay-for-results SEO. Basically, it’s a pricing model that ensures you only pay for SEO services when the agency achieves certain results. 

The main purpose of a pay-for-performance SEO service is to improve SEO rankings, traffic, and overall revenue for specific keywords. Once you’ll achieve the target numbers and expected metrics, you can pay for SEO services. But, if there is poor performance and found no results, there is no need to pay for services. For all online businesses, this is a win-win situation.

However, always keep in mind that several risks are associated with pay-for-performance SEO, and that’s why it’s necessary to know everything about your hiring SEO agency.

Is Pay-For-Performance SEO Effective?

Theoretically, pay for performance sounds like a beneficial approach. But, this model also has a downside as it carries potential risks and effects if not doing it in the right way. Although not all SEO companies are spam, successful SEO marketing campaigns take time and patience to develop.

In performance based SEO companies, revenue isn’t guaranteed instantly since the results are based on business performance. It might take a year or more depending on how your website performs in the SERPs.

A few times, some companies give preference to black hat SEO techniques along with other spam-oriented practices such as keyword stuffing, over-optimization of content, etc. Through these techniques and practices, a company might achieve a significant boost in rankings as set out in the contract. You have to be realistic about it’s not easy to fool Google. The evolving updates will easily catch up with all performance based strategies. And this is where search engines will recognize the bad SEO process, and thus, drop out the website’s visibility and ranking.

Hence, being a business owner, it’s necessary to apply appropriate and effective White Hat-SEO techniques to achieve long-term boosts in traffic and rankings, plus a strong establishment online. Besides, short-term rankings do not often last over the long run. The worst part is that often these rankings often belong to black hat SEO strategies to get quick results. Whereas White Hat-SEO does take some time and requires patience to get organic traffic. But it works really well in the long run without any chance of getting penalized. 

In simple terms, the concept of pay-for-performance SEO may initially work. However, it’ll negatively impact your website. There is a possibility that Google will drop several keywords from the site or even deindex the whole thing.

So, opt for only the best SEO company that has the availability of proficient and experienced SEO professionals and specialists.

Does Pay-For-Performance SEO Carry Any Risk?

Performance based-SEO could be risk-free or not, depending on the SEO techniques you used for achieving the desired results. 

But, if you want to lure in clients, performance based SEO is not a good idea and you should be aware of that. Because a spam-driven SEO company will do anything in order to get you to cross that dotted line or contract. 

On the other hand, by engaging with a competent SEO firm, which follows ethical SEO practices, it’s almost certain that the decision will help to reach more people online.

What Tactics Do Companies Use in Pay-For-Performance SEO?

It’s easy for pay-for-performance strategies to make your website seem like – it’s performing well in Google SERPs. But, this could be for a short period of time. While looking for a pay-on results SEO agency, you have to keep yourself engaged to determine whether they’re doing right or not.

• Tactic #1: Overuse of Keywords (Keyword Stuffing)

Performance based SEO companies also undergo keyword-stuffing strategies. It involves inserting a large number of keywords into a small portion of web content that may or may not be relevant to the page. 

However, attempting to manipulate search rankings with repeated uses of words or phrases will only cause the visitor to read and interact with the website. This will also result in the site ranking lower in Google’s search results. In addition, it also counts as unethical and unnatural for both site visitors and search engine bots.

• Tactic #2: Use of Vanity Keywords

When it comes to presenting quick results to clients, pay-for-performance agencies make use of only extremely long-tail or zero-volume keywords. 

Targeting long-tail keywords are beneficial if they are part of a larger strategy which will lead to more organic traffic and fewer conversions since they typically have zero search volume. Even focusing on zero search volume keywords is also valuable for a comprehensive SEO campaign. 

However, if you target these keywords without targeting higher-volume keywords, you’ll see excessive rankings without any boost in traffic.

• Tactic #3: Inserting Abusive Link Building & PBNs

A controversial topic in the SEO industry is private blog networks (PBNs). It’s a network of expired websites that allow people to either find or buy links for their websites. These networks consist of low-quality links designed to manipulate search engine rankings.

PBNs are popular because they help to get the exact number of high-quality backlinks without doing hard work. And, since you own the site, you are in full control of the anchor text and surrounding content.

All this may sound great. But, Google will penalize your website and will be recorded in Manual Action under Google Search Console. And thus, you can expect to lose all of your first-page rankings.

As yet, we’ve explained in detail about pay-for-performance SEO and its related tactics that companies use to achieve the desired results. 

Now, we will cover some basic information on Deliverables-Based SEO and techniques that can help companies in obtaining high-quality rankings. 

What is Deliverables-Based SEO?

Deliverables-Based SEO is a “task-based SEO”. It means creating an action plan to determine which SEO tasks (deliverables) should be accomplished first in order to obtain desired results. A clear description of the priorities and key milestones is included in this action plan. Every SEO task, which is also known as a deliverable, is divided into smaller time frames such as 1 day, 7 days, or 15 days to perform a specific tasks.

Here are the following actions involved in deliverable-based SEO. 

• A clear understanding of your immediate, medium, and long-term objectives.
• Defining priorities and key milestones and establishing a plan to achieve them.
• Creating a larger data ecosystem for insights and action.
• Consistent and agreed-upon means of communicating, updating, and reinforcing your investment results.
• Continual improvement based on expert knowledge and evidence-based decisions.
• To achieve your SEO goals you will have direct access to key staff.
• A simple and relevant approach to ongoing support and feedback so you can react quickly to new opportunities and threats.
• A proactive customer service model that enables collaborative working, or full outsourcing depending on client needs.

The search engine optimization agencies providing SEO deliverables fix the issues related to broken links, duplicate content, slow page loading speed, thin content pages, redirects , Google penalties and non-optimized metadata. But, their services are based on the price level. 

A low-priced SEO service works on page load times, broken links, and duplicate content. Going one level above will do the complete on-site optimization plus rewritten meta page titles and main page headers. And, moving one more level above means getting a complete SEO package, including, on-site and off-site optimization, plus content marketing. They divide the SEO tasks and move step-by-step ahead to reach monthly goals.

However, have you ever thought – how can we do that?

Let’s explain to you some strategies through which you can build a strong presence in the market. 

Practices That Work in Deliverables-Based SEO

The good news is that there are SEO experts like RedBlink out there who can explain to clients what, why, and how SEO works. We give a thorough explanation of many of our SEO deliverables, why we do them, and how we do them. Here is a complete rundown of some strategies we provide in deliverables-based SEO: 

• Keyword Ranking Analysis in-Depth

While forming an SEO campaign, the first and foremost thing to do is to conduct an in-depth keyword ranking analysis. This will help in finding out the existing ranking keywords by comparing them with the competitors’ rankings using a tool (such as SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner). 

The main objective of performing an in-depth keyword ranking analysis is to determine low-hanging keywords. Now, you know what to do and where to focus on to carry out on-page SEO optimization.

• Configuring Google Analytics & Search Console

After completing the keyword analysis, make sure the client’s Google Analytics account is set up properly. We first benchmark current website performance metrics to ensure and then compare them later after our SEO campaigns run for a few months. 

There are other various things involved in setting up a Google Analytics account, including executive dashboards, goals, ecommerce conversion tracking, and recording the current domain authority of a website. This deliverable also includes configuring Google Search Console to monitor the overall health and progress of a website.

• Check & Configure Robots.Txt

Search engines use robots.txt to determine which pages they should index and crawl. When optimizing pages, make sure they all are crawlable if you want them to rank. The purpose of this SEO deliverable is to identify which pages are currently blocked by robots. Now, take the necessary steps to index and crawl them.

As well as identifying blocked pages by robots, we also manually block some pages to maintain privacy of website user data.

• Do Keyword Research & Mapping

In order to drive traffic to the top trafficked pages, keyword research and mapping are among an SEO’s most important deliverables. To align with search volume and competition, an SEO consultant analyzes the current positions and revenue analysis for each page and uses those findings to conduct further keyword research and mapping. After vetting each keyword, apply it to heading tags , meta tags and in the content.

• Website Crawling And Analysis

In order to rank higher in search rankings, make sure your website is indexed and crawled for search engines. This will index your website in Google database and presented to users when he puts a related query. This way it  results in attracting thousands of new customers organically. 

The purpose of crawling your website is to identify SEO-related issues, determine the maximum number of pages, and ensure that your website is healthy (from a technical SEO perspective).

Performing a website crawl analysis includes:

• • The site’s HTML pages and architecture
  • Response status codes (200, 301, 302, 404, 501, etc.)
  • Image optimization
  • All metadata and current URLs, plus duplicate URLs
  • Duplicate page titles, meta tags, and H1s

• Duplicate Content Analysis

Duplicate content means copied content that is approximately similar to other websites or page content. If so, Google will penalize sites – not allowing them to move up in the SERPs, which isn’t good. 

This is where duplicate content analysis is done to identify internal or external reasons. If any duplicate content is found, the content marketing team will write new, informative, and unique content that fairly speaks to customers. You can also add a canonical tag on your pages to protect your content from copying.

• CRO Analysis

CRO is known as conversion rate optimization. This SEO strategy aims to increase conversion rates among website visitors by continuously testing and optimizing. A good SEO team performs a CRO analysis to analyze how users interact with your website pages, identify areas of opportunity, and provide data for A/B testing.

• XML Sitemap Configuration

Search engines use sitemaps to learn about your website structure and to update it automatically. In addition, it includes a list of every URL on your site. 

Evaluation and configuration of the XML sitemap and structure are necessary to ensure that the website is properly indexed. An SEO professional also ensures that only the most important pages are included in your sitemap. Because Google also crawls a finite number of URLs available on your website. It’s, therefore, imperative that the most important pages are prioritized over the lesser valuable ones.

• Schema Markup

With schema markup, you can help search engines return more informative results to customers. Generally, schema markup is a code that you place on your website. The overall goal of schema markup is to provide users with more information in the SERPs, thereby increasing click-through rates. It’s also true that it helps clients rank better as well.

There is no way to rank high in SERPs without these SEO deliverables. So, follow these above-mentioned tactics to deliver quality results with 100% accuracy.

Pay-For Performance SEO VS Deliverable Based SEO – Which Is Best?

Whether you’re owner of a small business or running an organization, both pay-for-performance SEO and deliverable based SEO are effective in their own terms. If you are specific about lead generation, website traffic, and ranking and need short term boosts, a pay-for performance SEO will work best to keep in tracking small business goals.

However, if you need long term traffic, nothing could be much better than deliverable- based SEO. In this, you need to keep track of the overall SEO process being employed and look for long term business goals.

RedBlink – Connect With an SEO Specialist!

Always remember that an SEO agency will never make false promises – they will always offer results-driven SEO strategies based on sound principles. So, if you want to rank high in search result pages, do a website audit and determine the points where you’re lacking behind to apply appropriate SEO strategies in the long run. Because when you do it in the right way, the results will come in the form of rewards – whether you’re choosing pay-for-performance SEO or deliverable-based SEO.

In other words, both SEO terms are effective if you use and take advantage of their strategies in the right way.         

Want to learn more forms of comprehensive SEO strategies? Schedule a free SEO consultation and get ready to connect with RedBlink today for an SEO audit and learn about our SEO packages!