Quick disclaimer - this post contains advice on getting SEO done whether it be within your company or for a client as opposed to hands-on SEO tips.
Just before the start of 2011 I published a post on my personal blog titled - "Why Knowing Everything About SEO Doesn't Mean $#!^". I genuinely didn't expect the type of response the post got. I thought it may annoy a bunch of people, in particular SEO Consultants! However the reaction has been great and as a result, I wanted to write a follow on for you guys which contains more of an actionable list of items as opposed to me just having a rant.
Also in this post I wanted to take a different angle. My previous post talked more about how knowing everything about SEO doesn't matter if you don't actually make sure the SEO gets done. In this post I want to address some of the excuses that SEO Consultants use when tasks don't get done, specifically, why it is always your fault if these tasks don't get done.
I could probably generalise this a bit and say that things not getting done is a common problem amongst consultants in many industries. Quite often we're paid to consult and give expert advice, not necessarily do stuff. In my opinion though when it comes to SEO, if the SEO you recommend doesn't get done - it's your fault.
Yes it is. It isn't the fault of -
- The client
- The developers
- The designers
- Your boss
- Your dog eating it
When I first heard this at a training session I went to a few months after I joined Distilled, I was ready to argue. Something like this was going around my head -
"But if the client doesn't do what I tell them, thats their fault"
"But if the developers don't have a clue what a title tag is and can't change it, thats their fault"
It was my fault, I shouldn't be pointing the finger and blaming someone else.
Why is it my fault?
Because the client is paying me to make a difference to their business and give them an ROI. They're not paying me to tell them stuff and leave them to it. Whilst many consultants in other industries do work like this, I don't think SEO Consultants should. SEO is still evolving and is still a relatively new concept to a lot of people and they need that extra bit of help to get it done. The best SEO consulting in the world doesn't mean anything if it doesn't get done.
To try and explain this further, I've got some examples below of scenarios which are quite common in the world of SEO consulting, these also apply just as much to in-house SEOs. Each one of these is a case of where you think you have done your job, but in reality, you haven't.
1) You Deliver a Report and Think Your Job is Done
I've made this mistake. I've spent hours upon hours producing a report for a client. At the time, I didn't realise it was a report, I thought it was a strategy. Here are a few examples of the types of reports -
- Technical site audits
- Competitor analysis
- Link building strategies
Within these reports was loads of great information, SEO tips and recommendations for the client. I was totally confident that all of the stuff I recommended would give the clients website long term SEO benefit. Sometimes these would be 30 pages long! Wow - tons of info!
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Did the client read it? Nope.
They didn't want a 30 page report from me, all they wanted to know was what they had to do. What would have been better, would be to deliver them a small, actionable list of items that if done, will do x, y and z for their business. It can be as simple as -
- Submit your website to local business directories in the attached spreadsheet
- Add a call to action to your website to get people to leave reviews on your Google Places account
- Create an XML sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster Tools
All of these things are tasks that can go onto the clients to-do list. The simplicity makes it much more likely that they'd get done. This is much better than writing a long paragraph explaining how having more reviews on their Google Places account can help their rankings and how they should add a call to action to get them.
I also deliver a document which elaborates on each of the actions, this is still necessary in order to give some context to what you're saying. This can include things such as links to help files on Google on how to do stuff like XML sitemaps etc. But the to-do list is the focus and what becomes the deliverable, it is then your job to get this list of jobs done.
Action -
- Don't deliver a report document, deliver a strategy along with an actionable list of tasks - then make sure they get done
Leading onto my next reason why it is your fault, this style of delivering advice would work for most clients but not all of them. It depends on the type of client they are and how well you know them.
2) You Don't Get Close Enough to the Client
Again, I'll hold my hand up to this one. I've never been a fan of using the phone and probably never will be, but I've got better in the last few months. The point of what I'm saying here is that you can't rely on email alone to keep up-to-date with your clients and expect to know what is going on in their business. Only face to face conversations and chats on the phone can do this for you.
If you work in-house, hey you don't get away with this one! :)
Working in-house, you should still be trying to get close to the people who you need to help you get stuff done. This could be developers, designers or writers, you need to know how they like to work so that you can get them to do stuff for you. If the Senior Developer in your company isn't a morning person, then don't go and ask them to rewrite 3000 URLs for you at 9am! They'll probably look at you like this -
Whoever it is that matters in your company or client, you need to be getting close to them. Find out who it is that matters and who makes the decisions further up the ladder. A great way of doing this is by working from a client's office for a day or even a few hours. Getting to see how they work and sitting in on meetings can be very valuable in working out how best to get stuff done.
The thing that amazed me on this one was that just being around (even if you're doing other client work) has a lot of value to the client. It can help staff in knowing you are there and can answer questions instantly rather than over email. Also just being in meetings where SEO is discussed can help get SEO shifted up the agenda a little bit and you have the perfect opportunity to argue your point. You can also be there when developers start on SEO tasks so you can answer questions straight away and make sure changes are implemented properly.
Actions -
- Talk to your client either on the phone or in person at least once a week
- Work from your client's office once every few weeks
3) The Client Doesn't Like You
Yep this is your fault too :)
I think this is a rare one, but it can happen. Afterall the client has come to you for help with their SEO so they should be quite welcoming and like having you on board. However there are instances where there may be some resistance to your presence -
- There is already an in-house Marketing / SEO person who feels their position is threatened
- Developers or designers are worried their already full workload is about to get bigger because of you
There are a couple of ways of overcoming resistance from these people.
In-house SEO or Marketing People - Make them look good
If there is an in-house person already, then it is totally understandable that they may feel threatened by you. So try and reassure them that you're not looking to get rid of them and enforce the fact that for an SEO campaign to be successful, you need their help more than anyone. Keep them involved right from the start and work with them as much as you can, this is a classic example of where working at a clients office can reward you.
Another tip here - make them look good in front of their boss. Get them to work on something which you can then show to their boss which can get them a pat on the back. This can really help their morale too. Asking for their help on a task can also make them like you.
Developers, Writers etc - Demonstrate the results of the work they did
In terms of other members of the team such as developers, designers or writers, the approach is similar. With developers, don't drop a huge list of jobs on their desk in one go unless they ask for it. They are busy people so it can be best just to give them a few small jobs initially and let them see the results, when they can see the value of what they are doing and see that "hey this SEO stuff really works" then it is easier to give them bigger jobs to do.
When it comes to writers, it can be very easy to demonstrate the value of their work. Just show them Analytics stats on the traffic that their content pulls in, tweets about their content or the links that it generated. These stats can be a great motivator to get them on-board with your efforts.
Action -
- Make your client look good in front of their boss to get them on-side with you
- Tell people when they do work that results in an increase in traffic or links etc. CC in their boss on an email too.
4) You Didn't Own the Problems
This is a huge one for any project. It is nice and somewhat easy to take ownership of solutions. We all love coming up with a great new idea for a client then managing that idea through to completion. But what happens when something goes wrong? Do you take ownership of that too? There aren't many SEO projects that don't hit problems at some point, so taking ownership of the problems and making sure they get solved is important.
The last thing you should be doing is seeing a problem and just assuming that someone else will take care of it.
When a problem arises, make sure that the solution is on someones to-do list. This should ensure that the problem gets solved.
Action -
- Don't wait for someone else to take charge of problems, put it on your own to-do list or make sure it's on someone elses
5) You Didn't Work Closely Enough With Other Agencies
It's quite common for multiple agencies to be working for one of your clients. You could have the following -
- SEO
- PPC
- PR
- Developers
- Email Marketing
- Affiliate Management
Sometimes you can make recommendations that may lead to tasks for another agency to implement. The common one above has been to developers. But lets take another example. Perhaps you are working with another PR agency who are being employed by your client.
As I'm sure many of you are aware, PR work can result in some fantastic high quality links. But not all PR agencies are aware of SEO and the value of links. So they may be getting lots of online brand mentions of your URL but not thinking to follow this up with a call to see if it can be made a live link. This is where you need to be proactive in working with them to ensure that the client is getting as much SEO benefit as possible from all agencies they work with.
Working well with other agencies and getting to know them is just as important as getting to know the client. Again, you should be making an effort to get close to them and see how they work. A good idea here is to setup regular "all agency" calls where you can keep each other updated on your work and get status updates on things that you have asked for. Work closely with them so that you don't end up like this guy:
Action -
- Have a weekly status update with the agencies that you work with to check on tasks you've given them
Conclusion
All of this isn't easy, I'm by no means perfect at it. So it takes time to change the way you work and get yourself into the mindset of delivering change to a client rather than a report. But once you get it, you'll notice a huge difference in the way you approach problems and try to solve them. In particular with SEO where the clients are relying on you as the expert, you need to make sure you're delivering change. Otherwise no SEO is going to get done and ultimiately they'll blame you.
Nice post Paddy! I've worked in a design / interactive agency setting before, and my biggest hurdle to SEO was getting buy in from devs who were my coworkers. Many of them were of the school that "seo is bs". Explaining my changes was the most important part of seeing success in a campaign. I think it's a big problem we all share.
I am glad that more SEOs are taking this line. I remember when I ran my Brighton SEO talk on the same subject so many people came up to me saying that they never thought of it that way...
Great job Paddy!
Real world advice that is extremely important -- oh how I wish I'd know some of these things earlier. Thank You for writing such a helpful article.Andy :-)
Knowing every thing about SEO if you can not get things passed with developers and you can not meet direct with clients is going to be a big problem. I pride myself as been some one who worked on the dev side and is also quite client facing. But you raise some good points in regards to problems faced with SEO consultants. But yeah working in agencies you tend to have problems with the bigger clients becuase soo many different businesses take care of projects for example you have 3 different design companies making the website and then you have 2 different companies doing the SEO it is a complete nighmare when the other SEO company wants to make one specific set of changes which you do not agree too at all!! But working to come to one common goal is the end goal ;)
Hell yeah, two SEO companies or even individuals can be a real nightmare. Project Management is absolutely crucial for any SEO project; tool like basecamp comes handly coz it helps SEO be insync with all the think tank, designers and programmers.
One important point I would like to add to this post is CLIENT EDUCATION. Most clients don't understand the difference between marketing on Internet & Real World and it's duty of us SEOs to give them atleast the basic knowledge about SEO so that they can streamline their expectations from the campaign in terms of timelines and deliverables. This education can be given in the form of one on one phone calls, detailed proposals and deliverables.
I am happy to see this real world post. Very well presented!
Yes for sure effective project management and client training and consulting is key to any effective SEO campaign. If the client does not know what they are getting when they pay for a service then they are going to be left in the dark. You really need to push the 101 training and also as you said get involved with company meetings even if you are not the main voice.
absolutely. especially if it's 'pay for performance' model. If the client doesn't understands the level of challenge he is throwing at the SEO, he may never be able to do justice this kind of model.
Although the details are different, this reminded me of a Jeff Atwood post that you might enjoy.
You know I liked the one on your site - I think this is a nice extension.
There are clients where I look back and think: if I'd been smarter or knew then what I know now, then thing would have gone much better.
There are also cases though, where there is nothing you can do for a client. I think of it as being a doctor for a suicidal patient.
There ARE times when you need to fire your client. Its just tough to know those times
Three cheers for Paddy! You just wrote about our daily problems we have to handle too often. The SEO world is not perfect (like the rest of the world) but you showed us some solutions. Additionally if you are not a SEO boss itself - if you make SEO as employee you have to argue and explain you actions (or not fullfilled results) not only to your clients but to you boss, too.
All the SEOs whether consultants, SEO team leaders, freelancers doing the whole SEO job themselves, etc. face the same problems at various stages of the project.
Yes people want solutions and they do not want to read long audit reports though we want to tell them the reason behind why we want to make certain changes but they are not interested they just want to have the list of TO DO list of things to be done on the site which will give them results. Though there are some exceptions and I am sure all SEOs love to discuss the issues in detail with them.
Communication is another important key factor for the success of any SEO project . If done by a combination of phone calls, emails and social media then it works well but again it will vary from person to person. But if it gets too technical and the SEO jargon puts off the other person then it is a problem again hence the conversation has to again vary from person to person. Sometimes giving references to your blog posts and asking them to read at their leisure also helps.
This thought of being responsible for the success of the SEO project is so ingrained in my head that just giving instructions is not enough but the constant check whether the instructions given have been executed correctly is very very important . Especially once when the instruction given was for the cannonical tag to be added only on the home page but the web developer added it on all the pages and the rankings went for a toss.
Found the post very interesting as I Can relate to every situation mentioned in the post.
Great article Paddy.
I totally agree with you with the fact that you are (almost) always responsabile for your suggestions to be implemented. Complaining that it is some other's fault/responsibility won't get you far. That being said, especially when you are dealing with dynamic and small teams that are eager to learn the logics behing SEO in order to be able to carry on the activities by themselves, some theoretical background is fundamental. Web start ups can be a great example. The bigger your client is the more you need your reports/suggestions/audit to be actionnable and straight to the point
matteo
Nice post on owning the client relationship and being accountable to "wrangling" all necessary parties to accomplish the task at hand. Something else I've learned in working with clients is how to communicate in the language that provides best results. Sometimes this communication is a two-line-maximum email with bolding as necessary or a follow up phone call to my email.
This email has made my bookmarks listing and will be referenced again.....repeatedly in the future.
It's easy to throw your hands up and say, "I told ___ to do ___" and tell everyone that you've done your end of the deal, but what makes great managers and consultants great is their ability to get things done. It's not enough to say "this needs to be done;" someone who is serious about their work says "I need to get this done."
I liked your approach to analyzing how that can be done with common SEO problems, thanks for the post.
I just found this site because I wanted to add a news feed to my website and here we are. I joined and I think it's a fantastic resource to my business. Looking forward to some more fantastic article like this one.
Golden advice in your post for a relatively new guy in the field as myself. Thanks a million
Hi Paddy,
Congratulations of putting up this great article together. Well done (Y)
Very good article that speaks wonders about this industry. There are still plenty of "consultants" who do this, and it is the job of those who can DO to make the difference.
Thanks for the great article!
Another excellent post, made even better by the images ;) I think a lot of consultants find it difficult to get the balance right - it's hard to find the middle ground between giving lists of actions from a distance and breathing down your clients' necks. - Jenni
Inspiring - I'll keep coming back to this.
Cheers!
My wife, also an SEO (yes, very geeky marraige) emailed me this link - and I have to say, props mate! Absolutely 100% bang on.
I wrote a rather hot headed post about practical SEO vs theoretical SEO last year, your post reminded me of it.A snippet :
"SEO is a simple concept, yet blowhard X will talk about method Y and the result is BS…
X+Y = BS
Many of the top SEO’s only implement the “Read And Regurgitate” techniques while others throw in a touch of the “Nobody knows for sure, so I’ll say something that sounds good” method…."
Read the rest here:
https://vincesamios.com/internetmarketing/theoretical-seo-vs-practical-seo
Really a brilliant article, at first client only understands SEO as a magic trick that will that his website the top results & when we start explaining them what SEO is really about then they fill like its not worth. This happens when you fail make your client understand what this all is really about.
On other hand when you are working in-house SEO team the problem that I faced was when I come up with new ideas & statergies it only last for a week & so and people starts working on routine SEO work.
Getting things done in team sometime get diffcult, as you have to see everyone of them is implementing them.
Thanks for your SEO posting. Having worked by myself and now by subscribing to a service, it does make a difference when you hire an SEO expert to do the work on your website. There is a lot to learn in the SEO arena and how to get a high ranking with Google primarily and then to the other search engines. There are so many companies that swear they can get on the number one page of Google but I recommend to know what is SEO all about and then you can figure out which company is giving you the real deal. At my website I post a lot of information about SEO and Search Engine Marketing which is what going to bring you that targeted traffic. I recommend to check out my website at https://truewebsuccessreviews.com to learn about the latest Internet Marketing reviews.
I think it really depends
Strictly speaking, offering "consulting" means offering expert level advice on a topic/problem. Consulting and task fulfillment are two different jobs.
If someone *wants* to pay my hourly rate to have me site and do tedious tasks like uploading title/meta tags, then so be it. But that's going to get really expensive, really fast. If I deliver optimized titles/content/internal linking maps and they (a) don't want to pay me to actually put them in place and (b) don't have anyone else to do it, my hands or more or less tied. Granted... I try and get this all out in the air during the sales cycle to avoid these situations so they get messy.
I wouldn't say that as a consultant everything is your fault - because not everything is your job. It's only your fault if you don't let them know ahead of time what your deliverables are and are not.
I like it! No matter how much you explain to your designers or Devs, they really only focus on their job, not SEO. So it is extremelly important to take all responsibility to verify that everything is done correctly, because it is your job as the expert.
Great post.
There's a lot of truth in this article, and some great tips! The clients I have the most success with are definitely the ones who I build up a good relationship with. One point that is worth making is that by building up a good relationship with the client, they are more likely to trust your judgement and therefore are more likely to allow you to leave you to your own devices. If you have a proven track record with a client and also a good relationship, when you throw an idea at them they are much more likely to action it straight away, not matter how bizzare it may sound.
This post really nails it right on the spot!! To many times as SEO consultants we tend not to accept our own faults and well as your post points out we try our very hardest at pointing fingers. Once an SEO consultant accepts and learns to responsibility things will change. When an SEO consultant is fired, the business owner in many occasions does not want reading material they want to know what needs to be done in order to accomplish high rankings, after all it was the client who sought out your services to help in getting them in a better position. I believe that SEO consultants would need to know when to say "no" to potential clients, if one is unable to say "no" and things do not turn out the way you would expect, do not blame the client. I believe a good SEO consultant will try to find solutions to challenges encountered with clients not implementing the recommended changes to their online internet strategies.
Great post, I see that while working in an agency we struggle with clients and developers implementing very slowly or not at all our recommendations…the same when working as a consultant…clients simply postpone loads of tasks which could be easily ticked off if they cared a bit more…I find it very important which you touched upon at the end of your post a good information and workflow between various types of agencies can change drastically our client ranking situation. Thank you for that post, I truly enjoyed reading it.
Really great post, I love the part about building up the in house teams already there. That can be really hard to do sometime but does huge amounts to maintaining trust.
"They're not paying me to tell them stuff and leave them to it. Whilst many consultants in other industries do work like this, I don't think SEO Consultants should. SEO is still evolving and is still a relatively new concept to a lot of people and they need that extra bit of help to get it done. "
I very much agree with the above. I think that we, SEO consultants, should not assume that our clients know and understand the meanings of basic technical terms in the SEO industry (or at least basic terms for SEO consultants) such as ALT tags, meta description or title tags; not mentioning other more advanced technical words that we include in our reports. It is indeed our job to explain to our clients what they have to do without using highly technical language that do not mean much for them.
Great post Paddy ;)
Dude, its amazing, I have been struggling with exactly this dillema since the past 3-4 months! This post has been a great and "actionable" encouragement. Many thanks for this!
Man I haven't commented on here for a long time!
This is a great post Paddy - I used to be one of the talkers in SEO, spending endless hours reading blog posts, shoving my oar and/or two pence in wherever I deemed appropriate and not really concentrating on actually getting work done. I made an effort to stop that (with the odd exception) which gave me a real appreciation for two of the points you raise in this post; personal accountability and understanding the needs of your client.
One of the great things about SEO is the massive amount of young talent in the industry (not that I'm that long in the tooth) but the flip side of that is inexperience in business. More discussion along the business side of the job will definitely be a good thing!
PS - I'm not suggesting that everyone is inexperienced btw - it's all relative as I'm sure you all know already...
Good post! It is always useful to make ourselves aware of areas we need to improve. I am a very hands on kind of person and I will make most changes myself if I am capable. If not, we do need to utilise other agencies/departments. I also agree that so many issues can be improved or resolved by better contact with clients.
One word "Brilliant!"... that is all
thank you!
Hi Paddy,
great post about how really come over the daily dose frustrations an SEO Consultant feel.
I've to admit that I was one of those saying "WTF does the Client pretends, he has everything there in that Audit". But with time I too understood that 60 pages of theoretical SEO strategy were not really what the Clients needed. As you say, they wants actionable todos lists in order to fix their SEO problems and obtain the SEO objectives they contracted you for.
And that is why I love tools that helps me not only discovering Internal SEO issues and planning a link building campaign, but also that helps me "speeding" the process of put those discoveries and planning into an actionable deliverable.
About communication... obviously a Consultant has to work/talk/chat/tweet on a daily basis with the Clients' devs and SEO in house following the tips you give (ah! thanks Basecamp, Skype...), but if you want to have your recommendations done then who you have to talk to is the HIPPO of your Client staff.
And when it comes to work in parallels with other agencies... well, the most important thing is instantly put clear that you are not there to take the command of the web marketing strategy and lead also their work, but that you are there in order to give with their help the better service possible to the common Client. That is why a scheduled meeting plan with them is essential IMO.
Hmmm. I like your refreshing take on a common consultancy problem and I'd love to buy into it fully but a recent experience prevents me from doing so.
I had a client who totally bought in to my SEO pitch and subsequent actionable task lists. I spent many weeks fighting with the developers at their web design company, constantly having to back up my requests for change with countless real world examples and articles from industry powerhouses.
Their argument was mostly that they could understand the logic of what I was proposing but didn't believe that the changes would have a significant effect on numbers, traffic or sales. They implemented many of my "mission critical" items, the majority of which were to overcome a myriad of content duplication issues and others to open up about 500 product pages to GBot, previously blocked by some JS daisy-chain navigation.
They have not, however, replaced a horrible auto-generated para of text on each product category and sub-category page (called in the code!!!!) with an editable field for the client to fill with lovely unique content. The auto-content is the same on every cat page save for the feeding in of the cat name in various places. Hateful and just plain wrong.
My client is appreciative of my work but slightly underwhelmed by the results. Natural traffic is up 35% even without being able to optimise the cat pages where all the higher traffic terms reside. My colleague says "forget about them, if they're not prepared to do what you've asked, what do they expect?". I see his point of view, but it sticks in my craw. I want to see both parties happy.
The client asked if writing unique content on all cat pages would be the magic bullet and I answered honestly, "No, but it's a part of the mix that cannot be overlooked". I think the "No" in my answer was enough for them to switch off to its importance. I have to take responsibility for that if it is indeed the case.
I am looking to feature client successes on my new website and it wouldn't look very clever to have "This WOULD have been life-changing if the client had done what I'd asked" dotted about, would it? True or otherwise. So I agree on that basis with your thrust about responsibilty.
I do believe that there are cases where neatly actionable plans are still not completed for reasons beyond the consultant's control. This web company's CMS (it turns out) could not do what I was asking for and we are still waiting for the upgrade that will allow it.
Did I go on a bit there? Sorry! :)
Thanks for the part of:
I think working from a client's office every few weeks would be great because everyone may know you. As far as communicating with the client, I prefer face to face because there always seems to be a better fit. AND YES, forget emails.
Ah... right, but to forget mails no. If the ancient Romans were saying "Verba volant, scripta manent" (aka: spoken words fly away, written words remain), that means that to have written communication is always the only way to:
I'm giving this a thumbs up to even up the score a little. Why this got a thumbs down I do not know? I can't imagine how the advice of committing something to print in order to maintain a permanent account can ever be a bad thing.
Thumbs up on this. One of the best, simplest pieces of business advice I've ever received is "document everything."
Great post.
Our 2011 resolution is to only recommend items we truly believe can be acted on. We do a usable asset evaluation at the beginning of every clients contract to see what they can handle, and what will never get done in a realistic world. Then we only recommend actionable items. If they handle them with ease, we will step up the ladder a bit.I learned this after a 6 month struggle to get a painting contractor to make a phone call after job completion to get the client to leave a review.
Great post.
Our 2011 resolution is to only recommend items we truly believe can be acted on. We do a usable asset evaluation at the beginning of every clients contract to see what they can handle, and what will never get done in a realistic world. Then we only recommend actionable items. If they handle them with ease, we will step up the ladder a bit.I learned this after a 6 month struggle to get a painting contractor to make a phone call after job completion to get the client to leave a review.
Another great post Paddy. SEO Consulting 101!
Whenever I've worked with someone, I've always tried to include a 'next steps' list at the bottom. That said, I do find most of what goes into a report to be explaining a concept, the relevance and benefits to their business - you find these don't get read? *yikes!*
On getting close with the client, what are your thoughts on:
* Video Calls -that bit more personal, and that much more strain on the internet connection. (Our internet just can't cope with skype...) More useful than a phonecall?
* How often do you really get to work from your client's offices? How realistic is it after travel time and costs, maybe even hotels etc.
From my experience the best place for action items or "next steps" is at the beggining of a report. An executive summary at the beggining of the report which includes action items as part of the high level report overview is essential. It's quite common in business analysis, seo analysis being no exception, that much of the report is either scanned or not read at all. That doesn't mean backing up your findings and recommendations with detailed analysis and data isn't important. It is important because there are instances when clients want a detailed explanation and it should be available to them in the report. Furthermore if the report is handed over to developers/engineers for implementation they're likely to require justification of the high level analysis. However if the action items are at the end you run the risk of them being merely being scanned or worse, not read at all!
Clients who'd have 'em.....
Er your competitors?
Good post Paddy, I agree that it is easier to blame clients/other agencies/partner rather than take (the sometimes difficult) responsibility and realise that you could have done more to make your client happy.
Hi all,
I am not a seo expert as you persons. But i felt comfortable when i read my exact situations in your post. Yeah, i would like to share a interesting situation here.
Just one month before i joined a new company. When i joined i got only complians and complains from my clients that they are not getting visitors although they have better ranks. I found that the choosen keywords are valueless and less search volume. When i suggested to change keywords again then the all team and clients got problem and jumped upon me... Now some how the situation is under control.
Why i shared this here.. the same situation was in my last month.. a time was to pass the mistake upon others; like it's a mistake from client side that they didn't provide the keywords or developing works are done by them, that's why we couldn't do this.. bla bla bla... When i asked developers to make some changes, really they faced problems..etc..
i did also like that and got comfortable..ha ha ha. So it is a safest area that the mistake can be passed to any body..(sorry, i don't like this, don't take me as like that. Now i am trying to overcome the problem and give the perfect ROI to my clients)
By reading your post, i got some ideas and trying to keep in my mind.
Thanks
My todo list:
Thanks, Paddy. As they say on your side of the pond, I've 'learnt' a lot today. :)
I do not particularly have an issue with getting things done - it has generally been more difficult to persuade clients to permit changes. Having to explain the same thing in about ten different ways is a little nerving at times; and the worst part is when they have read somewhere on the internet that changing a title tag will get you de-indexed; go figure.
But you're right - SEO Consultants need to deliver an ROI otherwise there is absolutely no point in having agreed to provide a consultation to the client/company in the first place.
I suppose the irony is that you're being hired to tell someone how to do something they don't know about, so why would you expect them to know how to do it? 9/10 cases they won't. Just do it...yourself...
This is a good follow-up post. Yeah, you are right we seo consultant's sometimes blame others for the work which is being delayed or not done properly by us. I too had given tons of seo works to my developers to make the client site seo friendly. As you say, we should give small amount of work & wait for the results which is perfect. But I think sometimes those developers are also in fault for not completing the work on time. We know that their work needs a little bit of time to complete, but we always give them 2 to 3 extra days beyond the deadline and also if the work is not done within that time limit then they should be held responsible.
Thanks.
Good topic....the reason u gave i totally agree with it...
Nice post paddy.Thanks for the valuable insight which one can get only from an experienced consultant like you. I like your first post too and you know that. The problems i see with many of the site audit reports ended up gathering dust in client's file cabinet are:
1) Too wordy, no clear 'call to action'
2) No prioritization of tasks to be done (from most important to least important). Like most important crawlability issues (missing title tags, missing sitemap,soft 404, 402, 302 redirects, canoncial issues etc) should be handled first.
3) No deadlines set for each task.
4) Recommendations which require too many changes in one go without proving any 'urgency'
Nobody has time and resources to fix all the -seo issues in one go esp. if the site is very big. So IMO seo consultant should have excellent prioritization skills. Fix most important issues first. Give recommendations in small chunks and follow up persistently unless they are implemented. Always show/prove urgency to get priority for your work. I know it is easier said than done. But it works well for me.