SEO Contracts

SEO or “search engine optimisation” is a must-have service for most businesses these days.

For an SEO provider, probably the most critical aspect of an SEO contract is the need for a careful and precise description of the SEO services and in particular to avoid too wide a guarantee of results.

Sometimes, the customer is disappointed with the efforts of the search engine optimiser. If so, the lawyer acting for the customer may crawl over the SEO agreement, looking for a weakness, perhaps an over-generous promise of a first-page Google placement or perhaps a failure to limit liability effectively. And it’s not just promises made in the contract itself. Optimistic promises, whether on SEO websites, in marketing literature or in emails encouraging customers to close the deal, may come back to haunt the SEO company. These may be regarded as “misrepresentations” or perhaps even contractual promises.

So, when search engine optimisation companies promise particular results, whether in the SEO contract or elsewhere, these should be made subject to certain conditions, e.g., full co-operation from the customer. The customer mustn’t change the website or source code without the SEO provider’s clearance. The SEO agreement should prevent the customer from link-building itself or at least the customer should be warned against placing inbound links on websites in “bad neighbourhoods”.

SEO terms and conditions should also protect the SEO company if, say, inbound links which it has placed are later removed from the third party site (provided not the SEO provider’s fault) – especially where the SEO provider is promising to create a particular number of website inbound links within a certain timescale. And so on.