How to make a contract full-proof

[seojob]

Can anyone please help me with a sample of contract / or some ideas on how to create a contract paper while working as a sub-contractor. I live in India and the seo-firm I will be working with is in US.

Now, what are the points I need to clear to avoid any future dispute?

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

[Kal]

My contract is a hodge-podge of a few sample contracts from other SEO providers and the very good sample SEO contract provided by Proposal Kit. (I wrote a review (http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/Latest-Proposal-Kit-Ideal-For-SEOs.htm) on that one if you want to learn more about it).

A couple of important things to remember:

1) If you are going to use a contract template from another source as your basis, make sure you get a local legal specialist to give it the once over to ensure it covers legislation and tax issues in your State/Country of operation.

2) An important clause I include in my contract is that it is "subject to (SEO name) advice being followed during the optimization of your site i.e. all (SEO name) changes to your site code should be left intact throughout the duration of the campaign and your site should be live at all times during the duration of the campaign to allow search engines to access and re-index it regularly.

It also helps to make your cost estimate just that - an estimate only, because often you'll find job costs can balloon above your original quote if the client's technology or CMS is hampering your ability to SEO the site or you need to bring in additional programmers to nurse it through. Hope this helps!

[Anthony Parsons]

Yep, I would recommend you simply purchase Proposal Kit and get it right the first time. Legalities are quite strict, and some bodged contract isn't worth the paper its written on if the person knows what they are looking at.

[ferret77]

Honestly what can you do if the screw you,

Fly over to the usa to make court appearances?

I was always curious about this, if someone rips you off for less then say $5,000

and they are in anther country or even another state thats far

what really can you do ?

File a claim thru the mail, or retain a lawyer ($) to get them in their area

what if they just ignore you ?

How big does the loss have to be to get out of small claims court?

How much would you have to pay a lawyer to take a case that at most will result in $5,000

[mcanerin]

For what it's worth, I have a sample "formal" contract here that you can download and alter as you see fit.

http://www.mcanerin.com/legal/

It's in the blue box to the right at the top of the page (zipped MS Word file)

Be warned that it was intended to be a very complete version - I have another, simplified version I use most of the time. This one is so complete it's been known to scare away small business people who are used to dealing on a "handshake" level.

On the other hand, if you are dealing with a large corporation or a client that is in a foriegn territory, this can be very useful for spelling everything out.

Remember, it's intended to be altered to suit individual circumstances, so don't feel constrained to using it exactly.

I ask only that you don't package it for resell as a template. Feel free to use it for your own commercial purposes though. :)

Additionally, if someone is wondering about a particular clause in their contract, or is trying to figure out how to word something, I'd be happy to take a swing at it for them in this thread. No guarantees, but I have some practice so I might see something you miss.

Cheers,

Ian

[strategicrankings]

Hi mcanerin, i think there is a problem with either the link or the site itself.

[mcanerin]

Should be fixed now - so many people tried to download it all at once my website thought it was being attacked and went on strike :eek:

Ian