Anyone get this from clients? Any good solutions?

[MicahMMG]

One of our account managers messaged me today.  Click here to see the conversation:  http://imgur.com/apZ9Z  Does anyone have any tips for dealing with really ignorant clients?

[danatanseo]

Hi Laurean,

OSE is short for Open Site Explorer.

[Laurean]

What's OSE?

[Laurean]

Agreed! At the end of the day, my clients want to know: Where are we in the SERP How much more traffic are we getting? How much revenue did this result in? We can talk all we want in SEO speak, but like any other business practice, at the end of the day, it's about business. THEIR business, it ours. We are being entrusted with their businesses, and we need to show them what we've done to moreover their business. After a few months, you have to (according to my dad) S--- or get off the pot.

[danatanseo]

Thanks Zeph - You go right ahead

[ZephSnapp]

I love that last line...

"By the time I'm done, I want my client to feel like a genius...if for no other reason than they were smart enough to ask me for help :-)"

Do you mind if I use it?

[danatanseo]

This is a really good thread with good comments all round. While I am very fortunate that the CEO of my company has a good understanding and healthy respect for SEO, he doesn't run the company in a vacuum. There are 4 other owner/stakeholders that are constantly asking me to prove ROI. We have an issue with a meta refresh on our home page. It's been there for 5 years, sucking page authority out of the life of our site. I finally made enough noise (and got some great support from SEOMoz) to convince them to spend $1,000 to get it fixed. The thing is, and I am sure this is the case with many clients, if they can't see that something is broken, they won't believe it's broken. A lot of times you can hold what you consider to be proof right in front of them, and they won't see it because they don't understand it.

Yes, perhaps the hardest part about being an SEO is being able to explain what we do in terms that people who know nothing about SEO can understand.

Personally Micah, if I had hired your agency to do SEO for me I would demand to see the SERPs. I think tracking the progress of targeted keywords and sharing that with clients is crucial. Otherwise, how do they know what kind of impact your work is having? That kind of transparency can go a long way to building trust between your clent and your team.

I think one of the problems we have as SEOs is using too much "SEO-Speak" and not enough "Business Speak." We need to translate what we do into business terms that normal business people who know nothing about what we do can understand. I think the worst thing we can do is come off as arrogant and make our clients feel stupid. By the time I'm done, I want my client to feel like a genius...if for no other reason than they were smart enough to ask me for help

[ypl]

I enjoy your posts a lot as you make sharp points and offer useful ideas.

[ZephSnapp]

Well, sometimes we have to deal with people we don't like.  One of my first clients was a huge pain in my rear.

I complained until my throat was sore, but the fact of the matter is that him being on me made me better at documenting progress, reporting and explaining processes.

Take those lemons, and make lemonade

[EvolveCreative]

I actually just finished writing a 3000 word whitepaper to address this issue. I have many clients that either

1. Don't understand why they need link building

or

2. Don't understand how to judge the quality of a link

I plan to give away this whitepaper to the community after my designers make it pretty. Send me an e-mail at davec@evolvecreativegroup.com if you'd like a bare bone copy (still lots of visuals and examples though).

Edit - The whitepaper is live here:

http://www.evolvecreativegroup.com/whitepapers/Evolve-Creative-Group-Quality-Link-Building-White-Paper.pdf

SEOmoz wouldn't let us use it as YouMoz because we shared it over e-mail to about 50 people... sorry everyone.

We'll still allow you to use it - just send me an e-mail first.

[Mcarle]

Such is true in almost every service based product business.

If your clients knew everything about SEO, they would not  be hiring the service.

A little education goes a long way.

If it is a "local" client one fantastic solution is to hold classes.

Set up a once a month SEO class where your company teaches the basic SEO theory. Invite all your clients in a 50 mile radius, and have them invite others.

This does three things:

1. Saves you time teaching the same thing to 20 people 20 times.

2. Gets you MORE leads from NEW clients.

3. Gets your clients more leads fro others at the class.

Everyone wins...

(Extra bonus points for having your class press releases gain YOUR company more links & press)

[MicahMMG]

I agree, for the most part, but we're going to do 301 redirects to preserve most of that link juice.  I don't think the client is well enough informed for this to be the issue that he has.

If it were up to me, I'd dump the client, or at least wait until the new site is live.  It's not up to me.

[ZephSnapp]

Welcome to SEO

Explaining what we do and why it has value comes with the territory.

[EGOL]

Excellent comment.

[ZephSnapp]

If the site is a nightmare then you shouldn't be building links to it yet!  First get the site architecture figured out, and then get back to this.

That might even be the reason why the client is so upset...he might be thinking that you should be focused on getting the site built instead of buidling links to an unoptimized site (and he would be right).

[EGOL]

If you want him to be pleased with the service that you provide then it is your job to educate him.

[MicahMMG]

I use GA, SEOmoz Pro, and OSE.  They receive most of the reports that these tools can provide, except for SERPs.  They also receive a comprehensive list of the links I have acquired for them, along with anchor text, domain rank of the linking site, etc.

The problem really isn't the reports they're getting.  The problem is that I've had to spend more time explaining what SEO and Link Building is to this client than I have gotten to spend doing real actual link building for him.

[MicahMMG]

The site has goals.  There aren't specific landing pages that should be targeted with links for fulfilling these goals.

Frankly, the site is an SEO nightmare.  We're working on creating a new one for him.  One of the reasons I'm resistant to providing SERPs is that they don't have a page on the site that has Keyword #1 anywhere on it.  I can make them rank a little bit by pointing anchor text for Keyword #1 to it, but it's never going to rank like it should without that keyword there.

[Mcarle]

The site needs goals.

No use in ranking if there are no goals...

Every business needs goals.

If he sells blue widgets then his goal is to rank for blue widgets.

If he wants to start selling green widgets then new goals are to rank for green ones.

(Final goal is go gain orders for those new shiny green widgets)

[Mcarle]

It should not be hard to put together actual numbers on link building.

I use Google Webmaster Tools.

So far it is free & shows me the most information.

I ran it last week & is showed 76 domains with a total of 2000 links.

This week 76 domains & 2098 links.

Do that with what ever software you are using.

ALSO include the links you have applied for.

You don't have to write an essay use a chart with numbers.

6 Guest blog posts.

5 links from community directories.

100 links from fiver.

If he wants to know exactly how many links will gain him 1000 more unique hits in traffic, again that is a conversation that should have been had before you started with this client.

Client expectations are the job of the vendor.

If he is a retail client then he wants his phone to be rigging more often.

Your job is to get the site to a place where it is.

[MicahMMG]

1. He receives this every month along with my reports.

2. He doesn't have any goals for specific pages.

3. I've been reluctant to provide SERPs because of some pressure from above me.  I understand why my superiors don't want to provide SERPs, because it can cause needless worry for the client.  In this clients case, it might be worth doing.

I wasn't involved in the initial planning period, sadly, as I hadn't been hired, yet.

[Mcarle]

Exactly the client wants to know HOW to judge success.

That sort of conversation should have happened before they signed the contract.

Do they want more links?

Do they want to rank higher?

Do they want more hits?

Do they want more conversions & calls?

All of these things matter, and yet non of them do.

If you rank for a tiny niche phrase that no one wants to buy from?

If you rank for a broad hot selling phrase but your shopping cart is broke or your site looks like garbled spam your not going to get click through.

[Jinx14678]

Hmm so it seems it is just an ROI question...

So personally I would put it in those exact terms - What in terms of gains has been seen since the beginning of link building efforts?

Gains in SEO cannot always be monetary, so what is the goal of the site - and how have you helped towards that goal, and how can you show that you directly affected those gains to the goal?

I would not say he is a dumb person, I would say he want to know his ROI, and if you cannot justify the money he is spending to you (not being a jerk, just my opinion) is not showing tangible results in terms of rankings, traffic or increased conversions (or whatever the goal is) then I am not sure I understand what you would be doing for the client?

Totally agree with Zeph, and kind of goes with my statement "not being a jerk, just my opinion" that he may just be impossible to satisfy cause he does not understand his own goals or how to reach them for the longterm.

[ZephSnapp]

There are a variety of metrics that you can provide.

1. Increased referral traffic.  If your links are good and are coming from pages and sites that people read, then your referral traffic should always rise.

2. Increased traffic to specific landing page.  If you are targeting the links towards specific landing pages, then their traffic should go up, right?

3) Increase in rank for targeted keywords.  This is easier if the client is long term.  We always tell clients its going to take at least 2 weeks for rankings to increase.  This is my least favorite metric, but it does help clients understand.

Another thing that I have found is that clients need to know as much about where you failed as where you succeeded.  We always provide a list of pending or failed link attempts.  This shows them that the work we do is difficult, helps them understand our efforts.

It sounds to me like what could have been improved was the initial planning period.  If you had helped set expectations from the start, writing down your plans and KPI's you might not have this issue.

That being said, sometimes no explanation is good enough.  If you feel like you've done everything you can and the client is still not happy with your answers, it may be best for you both to go in a different direction.  Nobody wants to give up revenue, but sometimes it is for the best.

[MicahMMG]

None of the things you listed are statistical.  If you have good insights about statistical measurements that can and should be used for Link Building, I'd love to hear them.

[MicahMMG]

I send monthly reports that have all of the links I've acquired.  They're all high quality links, not spam, not blog or forum comments.  They're all followed.  Many of them are on .edu domains.

He fundamentally does not understand link building.  He is not a smart client.

[Mcarle]

What is wrong with statistical answers?

Supply the client with:

A chart of new links

A report of what you are doing to GET those links

A plan for getting more good quality links.

[EGOL]

Sounds like a smart client to me.

What have you done for him lately?

Just send a spreadsheet with the URLs where his links are located.  Easy.

If they are links on sites that he respects then he will love it.

If they are crap comments on forums that make him look like a fool then he will not like it.