How to properly promote a site?

Question

Search Engine Optimization

There is a completely ready site, but in terms of SEO, nothing is set up at all. There were two promotion ideas:
1) Paying a certain amount to the person who promotes
2) Paying a percentage of the profits depending on the complexity of the promotion (city, region, country, etc.).
A question for knowledgeable people, how it will be more profitable for me, as a customer, and until when? How long does it take to advance to the top city/region/country? How much on average is spent on this, if the industry is "Plumbing"?

Answer 1

There were two promotion ideas:

1. Payment of a certain amount, to the person who promotes
   

A question for knowledgeable people, how it will be more profitable for me, as a customer, and until when?

According to the first option from experience, I can say that it will not be like this:

• depending on the niche (cold/hot), region (MSK/Taganrog) and goal (TOP-10/TOP-3), there will be a certain cost of promotion and we will add to it the amount of payment to the Contractor for his work (the run is unknown).
  

As a result, the amount can be, for example, from 10,000 to 100,000 rubles. Let's say you agree on 30.000.
What will happen at the same time on both sides ( based on real events ):

• The customer thinks: I will get everything to the maximum, TOP-3 in 3 months in MF / HF
  
• The contractor (mostly a freelancer rather than studios) thinks: for the money I receive, I will buy a PF cheat, raise the low frequencies and report on traffic from search engines, maybe orders will still go and you can receive at least 30 ke 6 months.
  

Bottom line : after 6 months, or even earlier, the site is banned, the "SEO specialist" gets a stump under the middle. work on website promotion from scratch.
This is one of the options. Why exactly like this? Because the script sucked. 80% of my clients are victims of such scenarios. Only the plot changes, the result remains the same.
Other stories :

• Promotion on 10 requests for the specified amount. Few? But this is the result of a pragmatic calculation. Often found at web studios, they are also businessmen and know how to count
  
• Implementation of some items from the basic optimization. Because this amount was just enough for them. It is found at web studios, because you need to take someone until there is a more profitable client.
  
• etc.
  

What can be done to avoid the above scenarios ?
You will have to delve a little into the situation and tasks. Unfortunately, the times when you could give money and not think about anything have gone forever. Of course, the statement is based only on my subjective experience.
Therefore, I recommend the following :

• determine the work plan for the project (general list: internal, external optimization);
  
• break the plan into stages;
  
• painstakingly select contractors to complete the tasks.
  

What are the cons :

1. you can make a mistake in the contractor and it is entirely your fault. As for the renovation of an apartment, incompetent guys are often selected, tempted by a portfolio on Instagram or a low cost, and here.
   
2. you may not be able to check the result of the contractor's work. With the repair, everything is simple - the plaster has fallen off, which means that something is wrong. The site will not be banned immediately, but for a long time, and you will only know about it after the fact. Therefore, we return to point 1 and focus on the careful selection of a contractor.
   

What are the pros (they prevail over the cons, in my opinion):

1. SEO work becomes transparent and understandable for you so much that you think something like "damn, it turns out there is no magic, everything is clear and simple." I agree, except for a nuance, it is not enough to know WHAT needs to be done, it is important HOW to do it. Everyone does it differently and gets a different result (see where I described the plot for 30 thousand);
   
2. promotion tasks turn into a clear plan and you understand at what stage you are now and what you should get. You receive a report on the completion of planned/agreed and estimated/paid tasks, as well as data on the dynamics of traffic and positions, and you have a calm confidence that everything is under control. No "black" box;
   
3. By splitting the tasks into parts, you have the opportunity to split the payment into promotion in parts. These may not be equal payments, but they will not be the same amount and this is convenient.
   
4. You can give some of the tasks for implementation to different contractors if you find several smart specialists, and not just one (what if you get lucky!). And so that they do not interfere with each other, one can be engaged in internal optimization, the second external. True, I have not seen such options, but you never know, the situations are different.
   

How long does it take to advance to the top city/region/country?

Depends on the volume and nature of the work, and they depend on the subject and competition in it + region.
Subjects: cold or hot.

1. An example of a hot one: order a taxi in Khimki
   
2. An example of cold: buy a sleeveless wedding dress
   

In the first case, you need TOP-1, at least TOP-3 with cosmically high competition
. In the second case, organics will consist of more Yandex collections than landing pages of the site.
In the first case, the cost will be over 100,000 rubles per month (approximately, of course), in the second, you can get by with 15,000 rubles (also approximately).

How much on average is spent on this, if the industry is "Plumbing"?

To evaluate, you need to understand in which region, what positions you want and in what state your site is (i.e. from what it will start, from scratch or it already has basic optimization (technical and search)
. the user Puma Thailand has already answered, though without numbers, but I indicated the reasons for this above.

There were two promotion ideas:

• Payment of a percentage of the profit depending on the complexity of the promotion (city, region, country, etc.).
  

There are already many letters on the first point, but we will finish the question in order to give a complete understanding and completeness of thought.
I don't know what your thoughts are on this point, but as far as expenses are concerned. From my practice, I will write down what you will pay for in addition to the "percentage of profits":

• programmer's work
  
• copywriter's text
  
• admin work
  
• purchase of links (crowd links and "eternal")
  

For understanding, in any case, you will pay for it, both in the first paragraph (for a fixed amount) and in the second (for a percentage). The only difference is that in the first paragraph, these costs can be included in a fixed amount, or they can go separately - as you agree.
The advantages of this method are obvious - the specialist is interested in you getting more orders, BUT the disadvantages are also obvious:

1. it cannot affect your business;
   
2. obtaining the results of labor are stretched in time and there are many risks of not getting them, ranging from the fact that the business will collapse from a pandemic to the unscrupulousness of the Customer.
   

For item 1. From my experience (I probably already got it, but what can you do ..) SEO specialist achieves traffic, makes it maximum AND.. the manager merges leads one by one (calls, letters from feedback forms and chats, etc.). Signal to the Customer, one-two-three, without result. SEO specialist merges. Dot.
We all think that this will not happen to us. But, as practice shows (well, my practice :)). And what are we all the time about the Customer? I am also not sure that tomorrow the site I am promoting will not be banned, because today we are doing one thing and it works fine, tomorrow we passed the AP and the updated algorithm fucks up all the work .. And what about the demand for a business product / service during a pandemic or office workers who don't care or aren't in the mood to close deals today?
Something somehow turned out negatively, didn't it? :)
Probably because Customers think positively more often and that's great! My task now is to prepare for what can go wrong in each of the options you mentioned. And I tried to deal with it.
From the side of the Contractor, in my opinion, option No. 1 (payment for the cost of work on the project) looks attractive, i.e. the pool of tasks is negotiated, the cost, approximate result and implementation time are estimated (I described my vision in detail above).
From the side of the Customer, option No. 2 is more attractive, but over time there is a big risk that even an intelligent and responsible Contractor will merge.

Answer 2

It is necessary to apply a lot of initial energy to spin up the "heavy flywheel", which independently keeps its balance for a long time.
©xmoonlight, 2020

Payment (in %) to a freelancer: 100/(2+N)
N - the number of orders in the last 30 days.
Few orders - more share of the order.
More orders - less share of the order, but the total amount for the freelancer - will be more.
The more you sell together, the more you both end up with.
The complexity of promotion does not play a role: the final result is important.

Answer 3

The topic is competitive, it is expensive to advance, the first option is cheaper than the second in general, always if in both cases the SEO is moving steadily forward.
The larger the city and the region, the more expensive the promotion, if we take the Moscow region, this is already hundreds of thousands of rubles a month, if not millions, with a mass entry to the entire region, against the backdrop of warehouses and delivery, a trifle