I am always flabbergasted with clients who pay good money for us to develop SEO strategy for them as well as manage their marketing campaigns and yet they do absolutely nothing with it. They ignore requests for web site modifications and enhancements, as well as other marketing suggestions. I liken this to those who pay hard earned money to see the doctor but then completely ignore the doctor’s advice and/or remedies.
It is in these scenarios where SEO does not make sense.
I could tell many stories of clients ignoring good advice. One such case was with a large telecom company. They hired us in 2000 (if I remember correctly) to help them increase their visibility in the organic search results for about 10 choice keyword phrases.
Initially they would not allow us to touch their site but rather wanted us to create brand new pages (what I consider doorway pages) to target the key phrases. This should have been a warning sign of what was to come. However, being still relatively new in the business and naïve at the same time, I assumed that after we developed the initial strategy, they would later give in and allow us to optimize their web site. I was wrong.
For an entire year, they paid good money for advice that they never implemented. It was easy money as each month we simply regurgitated what had been suggested the previous month (can’t get to step B until you completed step A). The downfall is that I knew the relationship wouldn’t last long-term. I was correct in my assumption and after a year they fired us.
This is why I love clients who are very pro-active with their SEO efforts. Sure they can be a pain in the arse at times but it is a good pain to have. These types of clients will keep you on your toes and will find value in what you offer. Best of all they remain loyal to you for a long time.
I especially love clients that give us access to their web sites. In that way we can implement changes right away and let them know about it after the fact. There’s a trust there that is invaluable.
I also appreciate when clients give you a decent size budget to build links, allowing freedom to build them the best way you see fit. One of the scenarios that can hurt a link building effort is where you have to get the client’s approval for each and every link. Often times by the time they give you the go ahead, the link opportunity is no longer available.
Finally I like it when clients allow you liberty in the social space – setting up social media profiles, building followers, socializing their content, etc.
The bottom line really comes down to trust. Clients of SEO – do you trust your vendors? If not, throw your money away some other way, like PPC for example. Otherwise make sure you are getting value out of the relationship.
Here is a short checklist of items to consider prior to engaging in a SEO campaign:
- Will legal red tape or multiple layers in the approval process limit your ability to implement marketing strategy in a timely fashion?
- Do you have or are you able to provide FTP access to your site?
- If your site has a CMS (content management system), is it SEO friendly?
- Does your CEO care if you simply throw money away (some don’t)?
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like 10 Steps To a Successful SEO Relationship.
David Wallace, co-founder and CEO of SearchRank, is a recognized expert in the industry of search and social media marketing. Since 1997, David has been involved in developing successful search engine and social media marketing campaigns for large and small businesses.
Bang. Bang. Bang. I’ll fix that hole in the wall as soon as a finish bandaging my head.
One other situation where SEO does not make sense: where people are not actively searching for what you have to offer. I have turned away work when I honestly had to tell them that SEO would probably not result in a positive ROI and that there were more profitable ways to spend their money (in some cases, even a trip to Vegas!)
Everybody loves proactive clients! I do not agree about PPC tho – sometimes your clients wants traffic for particular keywords and yet won’t let you optimize the landing page to improve the quality score and reduce the CPC – that hurts just as much as ignored SEO recommendations. I’ve been lucky so far tho – most of my clients are every SEO’s favorite type 🙂
Great post! I feel just the same. It’s really sad when you have great ideas that goes nowhere.
I was surprised how the telecom company acted. It was a complete waste of resources, paying for someone to advise them what to do and they don’t actually do it.
Proactive clients do keep pressure on you, but at least you know that your talents aren’t wasted by them.
I’ve experienced that before. Had a client with terrible onsite (all content in flash or images) and wouldn’t make any of the recommended changes to their site. It was crazy. We got them some results through link building alone, but knowing if only they made a few simple changes they would have massively increased their traffic was really frustrating.
Client’s like that we call ‘box tickers’ – they know they need to do SEO, and knowing they have a company doing something is good enough for them!
I agree. I wouldn’t go to a doctor and then tell them their advice is wrong. People pay good money for expert SEO advice and then don’t apply because they don’t agree.
I had a guy ask me yesterday how much it would cost to build links to his website – and his site is not well done at all. I asked what kind of sales data he had on his existing site and what his conversion rate was – he didn’t know what that meant.
I’m fairly new to doing SEO for other people – been doing it for myself for years – and I just don’t think it makes sense to spend money for SEO on a site that doesn’t convert, either.
Sometimes SEO just doesn’t make any sense as you told, but is still a big business for most companies, no matter if they SEO for themselves or SEO for others. Sometimes SEO just for the sake of SEO is a big business for some people, don’t know if I am explaining myself…
Thats really true, many companies spend large sum of money and never implement what the seo company advise them to do so.
This remains a major question why they say dont touch my website. They lack knowlegde, thats why they dont undertand…
SEO is part of the formula, sure. But, it is only 1/3 of it. The person needs to have something to sell, and I don’t mean the latest already out of date software application.
At bottom, no one makes money on the internet unless they have deep knowledge in some area people will pay to know OR a deep skill that people will pay to learn.
For example, we have an acquaintance who has 100,000 unique visits per month come to his blog. However, with that, his total income is $200 from ads.
The man is a college grad who learned how to drink beer and root for a football team while in college.
He also learned that his opinions were worthwhile.
We agree that they are worthwhile, but they are the same as the millions of other kids who graduate with useless majors at dummied down undergraduate schools every year.
Their opinions are worthwhile but they are not the same as having something unique to say.
Beth
Yeah very true and i have also seen people buying hell lot of high page rank domains and purchasing links , but what they dont have is the content ! , if you dont have contect on site /blog then what will visitors visit blog , lol
Thus if content is really awesome , automatically people link to your post and there you get better SEO instead of doing it manually
I started my career as a SEO pro when I was 22 I worked for 2 guys and one guy was bit series and the other just curious but wont implement anything. All my hard work was wasted but the other guy started in a big level and I joined him now. That old guy still have the same website which was updated on 2006.
I really appreciate your way of demonstration, as well as how you shared your experiences about the people who want to make a boost on their site at a Google. Actually people are getting aware that how much SEO is important for their business and for seeking online customers.
I heard of one company who was just bent in creating content without SEO, they think content alone can up your rankings in google. I thought everybody knows about SEO already but I guess not. If given the chance, I will tell them about it, I just hope they listen.
Sorry but I’ll take all of those customers that you don’t want. If I had to do nothing but tell them the same thing every month, then I could spend all of my time finding other customers who will also pay me to do nothing.
SEO has been proven a workable formula for great stability on ranking in Google. It will always be a powerful thing for you to use.
BTW I’m interested on listening to you Andrew and to learn more… Hope to hear from you. Thanks! 🙂
I won’t touch a gig if I don’t have ftp access, theres no trust with the client.
i get confussed with all the ideas of SEO out there and all the methods on how to use them effectively, i find keeping it simple gives me better results.
My philosophy has always been this: if I don’t know something, trust the people that do.
I suck at SEO. But blogs like this help to understand what the heck I am doing so I can get better at it.
Amy 🙂
Yeah SEO is quite complex with so many factors it you’re gonna hire someone to do the jobe please follow their recommendations.