Holding Seo Work Hostage, until you've been paid. Options

[Say Yebo]

We allow our SEO clients to pay for their on-page SEO work in three equal installments:

1. Deposit - before we start keyword research
2. 2nd installment is due when they approve our final keyword research / mapping document, but before we prepare our SEO recommendations document.
3. 3rd installment is due when we deliver the SEO doucument for their programmer to apply. (We only ocassionally apply the changes ourselves)

Problem is, once you've delivered the SEO document - they no longer have any incentive to cough up the last installment.

But I balk at asking them to pay for the SEO work BEFORE they've seen or approved it.

Our web designer simply refuses to hand over high quality versions of his designs before he has final payment - but it's different for him because his clients get to see flat layouts of the design and know what they're paying for.

How do other SEO's deal with this issue? Anyone have a better system?

Caro

[Michael Martinez]

We get on the phone and remind people we have a written contract if they refuse to pay. Most clients honor their contracts, however.

Besides which, unless you're just selling SEO plans your work should extend beyond the handoff. If you ARE just selling SEO plans (we've done that), I would ask for payment up front. You don't get to walk out of the store with your merchandise until you pay. You don't get to drive the new car off the lot (usually) until it's paid or financed.

SEO plans need to be paid for in advance, in my opinion.

[Say Yebo]

We get on the phone and remind people we have a written contract if they refuse to pay...

Besides which, unless you're just selling SEO plans your work should extend beyond the handoff.

We tend to do all the major on-page SEO up front, charge for it - and then take the look-see approach. See what happens a few weeks down the road. We then do a spot of tweaking if necessary, at no extra cost. I consider that part of getting it all right in the first place.

Other stuff, like listing in local directories, uploading videos to Google, making recommendations based on their web analytics etc - we quote separately from the initial work and handle it on a case-by-case basis.

But in the end, each new job seems to play out differently...