Search Engine Optimization

Fair warning, this post may come off as a bit of rant. However, all of these tips stem from real experiences I’ve had with real potential SEO clients (usually with more than one).

There are a lot of blog posts out there about how to hire an SEO firm (I freely admit that I have written some tips myself!), but most of them deal with what a potential SEO client should be looking for in an SEO provider. I decided it was time to take a different approach and instead and am focusing on what potential SEO clients should be doing (or not doing) during the hiring process.

Here goes nothing!

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t send a 50 page RFP and expect a small to medium SEO firm to reply. Be realistic with your RFPs. An SEO company like mine doesn’t have the time or energy to tackle a document that big. If you really want that form filled out, you should probably focus on large, national agencies.

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t schedule 5 calls with me and then just vanish. My time is just as valuable as yours. If you’re serious about hiring an SEO firm, don’t string us along! I won’t be offended if you decided not to hire us, but please let me know.

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t blow me off when we have a scheduled meeting. Life happens, I completely understand. Sometimes you can’t make it to a scheduled phone call and it’s out of your hands; just shoot me an email and give me the heads up. I’ve reorganized my day to make time for our call, so please don’t leave me hanging with no warning.

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t call if you aren’t looking to hire. I can appreciate that you’re shopping around, but please don’t waste my time or yours if you aren’t serious about hiring an SEO agency.

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t call ask for client references, to call some of our existing SEO clients, waste their time and never get back to us again. This is not a good use of anyone’s precious time!

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t forget that I’m here to help you! You should enter into a contract with your SEO provider like you would with any other partner. I promise to treat you with the utmost respect and to provide the best customer service I can. I hope you will try to do the same.

Dear potential SEO clients, please don’t turn crazy on me. We can fire you too.

I think you could substitute “SEO” for any other service based industry and a lot of these guidelines would still apply. I know that every industry has their fair share of not-so-pleasant clients.

I would love to hear from other SEO providers about their experiences with trying to land a client. Do you have any horror stories you’d like to share or do think I’ve just had a string of bad luck?

If you’ve decided to outsource your SEO to a consultant or firm, your new SEO company is going to need three things from you in order to create, launch and maintain a successful SEO campaign. Without these three things, your SEO will never get up to full-throttle and won’t reach its full potential by any of the great SEO companies out there:

1. Trust
Remember that SEO companies are on your side! They are pulling for your website to succeed as much as you are and are going to do everything in their power to help your site and brand reach their full potential online. However, in order to maximize their efforts you as the SEO client have to be willing to trust your SEO company to do the work you hired them to do!

Case in point, I was working with a client that didn’t feel comfortable letting us handle their blog commenting (part of their link building campaign). So we just researched the blogs they should be commenting on every month and passed it back to them; they were supposed to leave the comments. Guess what happened? They never left the comments! The hardest part of blog commenting is finding good, relevant blogs to comment on. Leaving the actual comment takes hardly any time compared to the amount of time spent researching. If the client had just trusted us a little bit more to leave well-written, quality comments on their behalf, their link building would have been much more effective and well-rounded.

2. Content
In my opinion, the worst thing a company can do is launch a blog and then NOT routinely write in it. I will spend all day arguing the benefits of a business blog, but I would rather a client not even launch one than create it and not write for it. Just about every component of SEO and inbound marketing relies on the consistent creation of content. Social networks consume billions upon billions of pieces of content every day, the search engines weigh content to determine a site’s importance, great content helps you connect with your target audience, builds your online reputation and so much more. Without content, your SEO is essentially flat lined. Content is what propels you forward and takes your site to the next level.

Not every business or website owner is a great writer and that’s ok! If you don’t feel comfortable writing content for your blog, than let your SEO partner handle it. They know how to create good content that is both search engine AND user friendly, that works to build your brand and encourages your target audience to share it with their social networks. Again, it comes back to trust. If you don’t trust your SEO company to write content (say you work in a highly specialized field and your SEO company just doesn’t have the knowledge) than it becomes your responsibility to supply your SEO company with the content. You write it up and they will leverage it for your website.

3. Involvement
Handing your SEO campaign off to a consultant or agency does not mean you get to wash your hands of SEO completely! Your SEO company is going to do everything they can to help your site succeed, but they need direction from you to know what “success” means. What are your online goals? Who is your target audience? Have you done any serious link building before? What are your assets and weaknesses? No one knows your brand better than you and your SEO company needs access to the information you have if you want them to do their job properly! You provide the direction and your SEO company will provide the experience.

One of the key factors of success for an SEO campaign is the relationship between the client and the SEO consultant. It’s important that the client trusts their consultant or agency and feels comfortable sharing aspects of their business model with them. However, it’s just as important for the SEO consultant to be able to have a good business relationship with the client. There are all types of clients out there that range from great to horrible nightmares.

Here are 4 Types of SEO Clients to Avoid:

Clients that are Impatient
SEO is a long term building process. It takes many months to see results and to rank well in the search engines. This is especially true if the client is in a competitive space. It’s best to avoid clients that don’t fully understand this process. SEO is ongoing; it’s not like other marketing strategies that have a definite “beginning” and “end”. If you give up on SEO tactics after awhile your site could slip back down in the results. A plan needs to be established and executed properly over the long term. Slow and steady wins the race. It’s best to avoid clients that don’t fully understand this process.

Clients that Only Rely on SEO
The best clients have a well rounded approach to their marketing and don’t just rely on one strategy. They understand that there are different ways to target specific segments of people. This goes for marketing both online and off line. There are other ways to market yourself online including PPC, social media outreach, email marketing, and affiliate marketing. The best clients engage in at least a few other strategies and also use more traditional cross promotional marketing methods as well.

Clients that Will Be More of a Pain Than They Are Worth
If you get the feeling in early discussions that this client will want to talk to you everyday about their SEO, don’t even bother with them. Nobody has the time to talk to their clients on a daily basis. If this was the case nothing would ever get done! It also seems as if a client that frequently “checks in” doesn’t trust you. On the other hand, it’s also best to avoid potential clients that won’t communicate with you at all or provide you with valuable information that will help with their SEO campaign. The more information that an SEO consultant has, the better. Don’t keep your SEO agency in the dark.

Clients that Have a Bad Website
Web design and SEO go hand in hand. One is nothing without the other. The greatest link building strategy will not a help a poorly designed site and the greatest looking site won’t have many visitors if it doesn’t have a good search engine presence. The success of a website relies on both working together. If a potential client has an awful looking website that provides a poor user experience, make recommendations and tell them to contact you again when the site is useable. Creating an SEO strategy for a bad website is basically a waste of time.