SEO Liability

Are you covered? Disclaimed?

[vincevincevince]

For those of you carrying out SEO professionally, how do you deal with the possibility that, rightly or wrongly, a client will blame a downturn in business upon your SEO efforts and decide to sue?

[pageoneresults]

A signed agreement in advance that covers this particular issue. It would be difficult to hold one responsible for something that one has no control over, the search engines and their everyday changes. This is one of the first areas to be discussed prior to any engagement. I see a few already gearing up for this and creating a niche industry. Cover yourselves in your contracts. Hire an attorney to write one for you.

[aspdaddy]

I looked into this recently while setting up a partnerrship, theres so many risks you are liable for in web marketing, even having clients ftp details is a huge risk.

IMO limited liability + indemnity isurance is the only way to do it.

[vincevincevince]

Thanks aspdaddy. I did consider the limited liability + indemnity insurance route but was worried about whether the insurance policy would be sophisticated enough to cover this and a claim would avoid being labeled deliberate damage or something else which sees it exempt. I like the signed agreement route of pageoneresults, but even if you ask a professional to draw up a country he will normally only base it on your own country rather than all countries you might do business with.

[Jane_Doe]

In the U.S., in addition to an appropriate business contract you may want to have insurance that at least included an errors and omissions policy and a company structure that had limited liability, such as a corporation, LLP, or LLC.

If needed, you can even break your business up into multiple limited liability entities. Then your personal assets and business assets are all separate legal entities. If one entity gets sued then the assets of the other entities tend to be legally walled off from the others.

[edited by: Jane_Doe at 5:21 am (utc) on Nov. 26, 2007]

[Fortune Hunter]

insurance that at least included an errors and omissions policy

The bad thing about this right now is that E&O insurance is based strongly on the industry you are in and the insurance company's ability to accurately calculate the risk they face by offering you insurance.

If you are a demolitions expert that takes down high rise buildings for a living your E&O rates will be a bit higher than say a lawn care guy. However in both cases the insurance company has very good stats on the risk they face insuring either company. I doubt if very many decent stats are available about the risk of insuring SEO professionals. Unfortunately if they don't know they will insure high, probably very high. You will be a lot closer to the demolitions expert than the lawn guy until the industry can accurately pin point the precise risk they have of insuring SEO professionals.

Which makes me think I will start blowing up buildings for a living since it probably pays better and the insurance risk is probably about the same :)