What makes the perfect proposal?

[williamc]

ok, here goes what should be a lively one...

What makes the perfect SEO proposal to prospective clients?

What would yours contain, what data would be shown, what special needs would be covered in it?

Say a system was developed that allowed you to enter a few key pieces of information about a client and their site and it did the rest for you, what abilities would you most like to see in it?

[mjtaylor]

Excellent topic! I don't do proposals - the only time I write something up is the actual agreement that spells out the plan and the terms. But if I did, I think case studies would be a great thing to have for an SEO;s proposal. Especially if you could choose from a database that would show different case studies depending on niche or other relevant parameter.

[hitman786]

This is an expert talk but for the new ones going to apply for first time you should give them a proposal as well and then ask for any addition from experts if needed!

what do you say?

[williamc]

MJ: good idea.

hitman, uhhh, wait, what??

[mjtaylor]

hitman, uhhh, wait, what??

I second that emotion. Hitman, it's not clear what you were saying. Please try again.

[williamc]

MJ, in regards to your post, we often get 'what can be done for my site' emails. In these cases an actual proposal rather than just a contract is often better for us to send out. Our own proposals include statistical data about their site, keywords, trends, etc, as well as what we see as being wrong with the website in terms of it's optimization, both on-page as well as off-page, and gives points on exactly what we will do to improve it.

At the bottom of the proposal would be a contract as well, but the proposal itself is written in a way that newbie webmasters (potential clients) can actually easily see what is wrong, why, and what we will be doing to help them.

This is a before the sale is closed thing. Contracts are for after the sale has been closed. We attach a contract as well, in the hopes that the proposal will close the deal. In some cases a phone call or numerous emails may be required to finish the sale, but our proposals generally do that for us in most cases.

[morestar]

MJ: good idea.

hitman, uhhh, wait, what??

William. hitman is asking you, the Expert in SEO to provide some proposal ideas for new and not so Expert SEOs.

I'm sure hitman's is apologetic for not speaking perfect english but helping him is much more conducive to his future decision to visit this board again.

I apologize for him too. I'll see if he can get his grammar and questions down before he posts.

Thanks for the help.

[morestar]

MJ, in regards to your post, we often get 'what can be done for my site' emails. In these cases an actual proposal rather than just a contract is often better for us to send out. Our own proposals include statistical data about their site, keywords, trends, etc, ...

What do you mean by trends William with respect to their site?

[SteveGerencser]

William, I believe I suggested that you would get exactly this sort of response when asking what people would like to see in a proposal..

For those of you watching from the side lines.. The point of this post was to see what people (SEOs) would like to give their prospective clients in the form of a proposal, or if you are a client, what you would like your SEO to give you..

You see, we have this great tool that makes sending out proposals staggeringly easy to do since the bulk of it was automated.. The intention was to flesh it out with a few more features and then offer it up for free to help out the other SEOs out there just starting out.. I think its a waste of time trying to help 99% of you, William disagreed.. Even though he is the mean one..

[williamc]

Steve: I am getting to that point myself sadly.....