SEOs with at least Partial Pay-For-Performance Pricing Model

What your missing is an SEO doesn't own Google SERPs so your never guaranteed to rank a page. Your only guaranteed that someone will do their best to try & rank a page (legit SEO provider).

The SERPs aren't static, you don't just rank a page & walk away, it's nonstop work for tough competition keywords & there's always going to be new competition popping up in the SERPs to throw a wrench in any SEO work previously done.

If your sick & go to a doctor offline, your not guaranteed to get better, he might do his best to diagnose a problem but there's no guarantees.

Welcome to reality.

I think people are looking at this too black and white. You don't have to insinuate the guarantee is going to be that extreme (except I guess for arguement sake.) Remember, anyone in the business world with a job that gets a bonus at the end of the year is technically in a pay-for-performance. It's a pretty darn common arrangement in business. Salespeople can't predict how much they are going to sell because of the uknown variables just like SEOs can't predict actual ranks achieved.

This is what I've found to be a not uncommon scenario... A set of 3 "medium" competetive keywords, closely related, and the site's SEO profile is showing very few backlinks and there's major room for improvement for on-page optimization. The keywords are currently ranking on page 3. It's not a super competetive industry with lots of players coming and going. The SEO has been in the business at least a couple years, knows all the proper techniques, and stays up on the Google algo changes

Based on their recent experience in the past 3 months working on projects for several other businesses, they are pretty confident they can get them to the middle of page 1 in three months as all their recent projects with similar situations they got them to there or better in 3 months.

The client is a medium size business that is barely in the black so they are trying to be very frugal with their marketing/advertising budget and trying to therefore keep their ROI as high as possible but the money will flow like a river as long as they get a good ROI. Again, in my experience in the business world, not an uncommon scenario. The SEO educates the client and they fully understand the basics of the whole SEO thing and that things are somewhat "fluid" and unpredictable. However they don't want to comit to outlaying a large sum of money without having assurances there is a high probability of some good return on their money. They've been burned before by other service providers, not SEO, that overpromised and under delivered.

So the client asks what kind of ranking improvements they can expect to get for their money. Not an unreasonable question at all. The SEO explains again that specific results are unpredictable. The SEO thinks in the back of their head, based on recent experience, they have a realistic 80% likelihood of getting them to at least somewhere in the 4-8 position range as the keywords aren't super competetive and there is huge room for backlinking and on-page improvement. So they explain to the client that while they think there is a high chance of getting them on page one in 3 months, due to the fluid nature of the SERP landscape, they would only guarantee at least a placement of 15 or higher for 50% of the quoted price. In other words, if the cost is $1000/month. The client pays $500/month and at the end of three months, they get a $500 bonus for each of the three keywords that rank 15 or higher. Note that position 15 is twice lower than their worst rank estimate they are confident they can achieve (8.) I think only a new and/or unskilled and/or Black Hat SEO would have any worries about not meeting this very low bar. Yes, algo changes are unpredictable but as long as you are using solid White Hat tecnhiques and you aren't trying to rank for porn (or similar competetive industries), you shouldn't be encountering any major surprises.

In fact, in my mind, the wise SEO could also say, IF I get you on page one, I want an additional $250 bonus per keyword. If I get you in the top 5, I get a $500 bonus per keyword and so forth and actually increase their chances of making the project even that more profitable. If for whatever reasons, they only get them to say, rank 13, they still make their normal fee and the client's expectations were sufficiently managed so they are happy that they didn't pay out the nose for a crap shoot.

What's the problem with that? (Oh and if the dollar figures seem high to you even though this is just a hypothetical situation, just take a 0 off the end, It makes no difference from a conceptual point of view.)

Essentially it really all boils down to sharing the financial risk AND REWARD. That's how good business deals are typically structured. When their are significant unpredictable variables, I don't think in this type of scenario it's fair for either party to take on 100% of the risk or reap 100% of the reward. It's a pretty common business concept to share risk AND reward. Maybe not 50/50, but some ratio.