SEO Legal disclaimer statements

A local pediatrician's office wants a formal proposal for having me launch and maintain an online marketing campaign. I usually do business on a handshake, but these guys want a formal proposal. I assume this would require the "legalese" for terms and disclaimers. Thinking through the worst case scenarios brings visions of lawsuits related to malpractice if a patient's overzealous lawyer decides to sue anybody and everybody responsible for helping the patients find the doctor. Other basic limitations and disclaimers related to "...(our company) makes no warrantees..." should be included. Does anyone have a good legal disclaimer for providing marketing consultation services to clients?

Andrew A

Now this really sounds interesting....

did you check out some big competitor sites like webuildpages or other seo services already? I guess those big guys should have their terms up ...

Hire an attorney to get a tight contract written up. Yes, it will cost you, but you will then be able to use it over and over.

gchaney provides some great advice here. You can cut and paste from a few sources, too, but you must have an attorney look at it. In my line of work, lawyers, doctors and teachers make the worst clients. Since you're after one of these 'red flag' category clients, get something drafted quickly.


Here's a start: http://onewayadv.com/contracts/SEO_contractagreement.doc

This one also looks pretty good: http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/live/articles/seo-customer-guide-14.asp
But have an attorney look it over.

I would be pretty careful here.... I would be sure that that they own the site, they do all writing, they are responsible for all content (not simply creation but maintenance, proofreading, responsiblity for errors, omissions, misinterpretations, the whole shebang). You just do SEO and hire an attorney to keep your *** covered.

Robert.... what's the beef with the teachers?

To save on attorney's fees, draft the document yourself from examples as given above then submit that draft to a contracts/corporate attorney (not a family lawyer) for review and recommended changes. If an attorney does it from scratch it will cost you more.

lol - I knew I'd tick off a teacher....and knowing you cater to edu sites, I should've guessed. Before I go on, there are many exceptions to every rule. We'll be doing some fabulous work for a doctor this year, who seems to be a straight shooter. (But we also passed on work for a personal injury attorney...)

From the experiences I've had, teacher's expectations seem to be on the upper end of unrealistic with regards to project scheduling, pricing and our general willingness to bend over backwards. Projects seem to get nit-picked to a greater degree during the process, and project changes seem to happen daily. And maybe it's the nature of what they do, but undeerstanding plan drawings seems more difficult for them than for most. And I have no idea why that is. BTW, I've found this is more the case among teachers of K-12, and not college-level profs.

However, I'll say that I'm not alone in my feelings. I take part in an industry forum of thousands who tend to agree. So EGOL, if you are a teacher, and you have the opportunity to hire out services for your home (construction or otherwise), I would advise you to not tell them you're a teacher. Unbeknownst to you, you may incur a PIA tax of 10-25% for your project. No kidding.

Okay, I've hijacked this thread enough - EGOL, if you'd like to chat more about this offline, send me a PM.

Teachers have careers of being critical about things. So do doctors, lawyers, & most engineers. As a group, the easiest people to sell something to are salespeople. It's routine for them to try to make people happy and to avoid ticking people off. They are habitually friendly, and care more about the personal relationship than about the technical details. The say: "Do you think it will it work?" "How much will it cost?" and "Go for it!"

Andrew A

Good advice. The price tag scares me a little.

I do need something I can re-use without having to spend time rewriting. This particular pediatrician doesn't make me too nervous since we have been using his services for years. But, he is baiting the hook with "I can get you into the larger organization." Someone else I know is claiming they can get me in front of a large group of physicians w/ a multimillion $$$ annual advertising budget. To score there, I have a lot of work to do! Having readily available contracts & proposals at my disposal are a prerequisite in that league.

rtangle, I've found the reasons for difficulty for each sector to be unique - for doctors, it seems to be largely driven by ego. For lawyers, suing a company is like tying their shoes; I also think that some of them prefer to pick a fight. I haven't ever had an issue with engineers, but that may be because they're like kin to me (and some of them are kin to me). For salesman, it seems they enjoy being on the other side of the selling equation - I can't say I've had spectacular success or failure with that group. But I'm probably just an average salesperson myself.


And as I look at EGOL's avatar, I realize it's probably a pic from a school yearbook. EGOL, I hope I didn't offend you - I value your input here, and hope I haven't jeopardized that. If I have, I apologize.

I also apologize to rtangle for sending this thread on a tangent.