New consultant looking for advice on setting client expectations
-
I'm just starting to provide paid consultation to a few clients who have approached me for SEO help. As I've not completed a lot of projects, I'm looking for guidance on how to set expectations. I get the feeling that one of my clients is going to expect that once our initial work (keyword research, addressed their primary technical issues, fixing on-page issues) that they will automatically appear on the first page of Google.
In a project with 50 keywords, I believe this may be true for a few keywords where there isn't a lot of competition. However, I believe that for many of the keywords, we won't be able to achieve ranking on the first page unless we do an on-going link-building program. Is this assumption accurate?
-
As there tends to be a risk for clients due to the fact that we can't ever guarantee anything, what we do is tell the client that they're not under any contract tying them to us so if we don't deliver they can cancel at any time. That minimises the risk a bit for them.
Also, if you're thinking in just terms of rankings with them for the moment you can say that if you don't get x number of keywords (whichever keywords you decide between you are optimal) to page x by date x, and then page y by date y, etc... then they stop payments until you do.
-
Dunamis,
Thanks for the feedback. That is how I started; I took on a couple of pro-bono clients to get experience. Always nice to hear what others are doing.
Eric
-
I thought I'd chime in here about how a friend of mine got started offering local SEO to others. She contacted several people in her circle of friends and offered to optimize their local campaign for free. This accomplished two things:
1. She got experience and learned what she needed to learn to get these sites ranking well.
2. She got great testimonials from these clients. These testimonials made it really easy for her to get more business.
It sounds like you've already got some good SEO experience, so this may be a little basic for what you are already doing, but I thought I'd mention it!
-
Great advice. Thank you.
-
Even during your first contact with the potential client you can find out the industry (and geographic area) where they will be competing. That can help you be prepared for your first meeting.
If you are helping someone promote an auto glass repair business in Scranton, Pennsylvania or a plumber in a small town in Georgia the competition is much easier than going after a nationwide competitive area such as insurance sales.
With local businesses you have organic options, PPC options and local search options. Also, if you can get clients located in your own town you will become familair with the local websites where links and advertising can be obtained.
Some people make a living doing SEO for small local businesses in lower competition niches.
-
This is great feedback, Vinnie. I wake up in the middle of the night fearing that I will put all this work into a site and then the results won't be there. It's helpful hearing how someone else handles a situation like this.
-
That is the first thing that I tell every single client. It's usually the first or second sentence in my proposal. Setting expectations is important.
What I DO guarantee my client is that:
-
I will help them optimize their pages for conversions and clickthrough on SERPS
-
I will target a list of phrases/keywords that I feel are attainable
-
I tell them about white hat and black hat SEO, and where in that spectrum that I work.
-
I will show them how to and help them generate quality content that people will want to link to, that will help them generate sales from search engines.
I then document everything I do for them. Not only for itemized billing, but if in three months or whatever timeframe we agreed upon, there is not much improvement I can show them everything i've done. This will include all the links I've tried to get them, contacted sites about, content upgrades, and basically everything I do. I tell them that if they don't get great results they can take my worklog to any other SEO and see what they say about it.
-
-
Egol, thanks for the guidance. I appreciate your perspective as always. Quick follow up question regarding your comment "It is probably best to take easy projects in light competition at first and then accept more difficult work." Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?
I typically spend a great deal of time on keyword research, which I do after I've already accepted the job. Should I ask them in the inital meeting for a few phrases they might like to optimize for, so I can determine if they are going to be an easier project?
-
the keywords are moderately competitive. (somewhere around 40% on SEOMoz's keyword diffiiculty tool)
-
One of the most important jobs of the SEO is to have a feel for the amount of resources that will be needed to be competitive in a business niche.
Some SEO projects require $100,000 (or a lot more) in resources while other can be accomplished with a few days of intelligent work. The amount of time required to accomplish a goal (achieve rankings) can also be highly variable.
I have been working in a few specific niches for many years and am still surprised when I overestimate or underestimate the difficulty of a SERP. I can also be surprised by the success or failure of content.
Without specific experience you can use the tools at SEOMoz to get some feel for the difficulty of a keyword or the power of a competitor. If I was in your shoes I would get some direct experience with a few projects and then use the SEOMoz tool data to benchmark and project into unknown areas.
It is probably best to take easy projects in light competition at first and then accept more difficult work. The last thing that you want to do is take on a tough job and not be able to advance a client's rankings into potentially profitable rankings. That can happen when the SEO has a budget of $1000 per month but a budget of $10,000 per month is needed for success. You not only have to gain backlinks but you have to gain them at a much faster rate than the competition if you expect to advance above them.
Good luck, keep asking questions here while you progress in experience.
-
Client education is critical to setting expectations. Help them understand that quality sustainable rankings both take time and effort. Also, that even if you are able to do all the SEO you believe needed, there's no guarantee that at the same time, other new sites aren't also being optimized, or that the sites already securely in top ranked positions aren't doing additional ongoing work.
These concepts are why it's important to focus on a mix of low but refined, mid-level and high value phrases.
And it's critical to have a contract where you put in writing the outline of the services you will be providing as well as a paragraph about the challenges inherent in SEO.
-
Whatever you do, don't guarantee any position ever... first page or not. It's a big red flag for bad SEO's.
You'll likely need an on-going link campaign whatever the case is. How competitive are the keywords?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to redirect old domain to new domain.
We just recently signed up to Moz with hopes of fixing our Moz Ranking. We have an old domain - http://at-net.net and a new domain - https://www.expertip.net We have set up 301 (Permanent) redirects from all pages on the old site to the new, but aren't getting the ranking or aren't getting recognized from external links to the old sites. I've read the moz article on 'Link Juice' and followed those practices, but it doesn't seem to help. Does anyone have advice on doing this? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | greg.lanier
Greg0 -
Best Practice - Linking out to client websites in niche industry
I have a client in a niche building industry that provides 4 different services to them. She has provided me with a list of 131 past clients of hers that she wants hyperlinked on her site to theirs. The logic is that a lot of these clients are heavy hitters and quite impressive to their peers so the links will be reinforcing my client's value. Is there a best practice for determining whether the link should be follow/no follow? Should I be checking the client's site's spam score, page rank, anything else? Some of these 131 links will be duplicated due to the client performing more than one service for them.
Technical SEO | | JanetJ1 -
Are my Domain URLs correctly set up?
Hi Im struggling with this probably easy concept, so I am sure one of you guys out there can answer it fairly easy! My website is over50choices.co.uk and whilst using the free tools in Majestic it said that I had: 77 Referring Domains pointing to www.over50choices.co.uk and only 35 pointing to www.over50choices.co.uk/ And in Moz it said: The URL you've entered redirects to another URL. We're showing results for www.over50choices.co.uk/ since it is likely to have more accurate link metrics. See data for over50choices.co.uk instead? Does this mean that my domains arent set up correctly and are acting as separate domains - should one be pointing to the other? Your help appreciated. Ash
Technical SEO | | AshShep10 -
Brand New Site Penalized?
I recently launched 2 completely separate and unrelated websites at the same time. Both are new domains and hosting accounts. neither have any links. One is ranking for a branded search and the other is not. The interesting thing is that I tested both sites on the back end of my server before launch. The site that is not ranking for branded search IS ranking still on the back end of my site for the branded search. I have removed all content and 301 redirected the testing urls back to my portfolio page. Could this be do to Google indexing one but not the other. Does it have anything to do with testing on my server first and my DA being higher than current new sites? Or is it something completely different I'm missing completely. Is this a Penalty?
Technical SEO | | CDUBP0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Is it worth setting up 301 redirects from old products to new products?
This year we are using a new supplier and they have provided us a product database of approx. 5k products. About 80% of these products were in our existing database but once we have installed the new database all the URLs will have changed. There is no quick way to match the old products with the new products so we would have to manually match all 5k products if we were were to setup 301 rules for the old products pointing to the new products. Of course this would take a lot of time. So the options are: 1. Is it worth putting in this effort to make the 301 rules? 2. Or are we okay just to delete the old product pages, let the SE see the 404 and just wait for it to index the new pages? 3. Or, as a compromise, should we 301 the old product page to the new category page as this is a lot quicker for us do do than redirecting to the new product page?
Technical SEO | | indigoclothing0 -
Joomla 1.7 sef404 advice please
Hi not sure if anyone uses joomla on here but if they do i would love there advice. I have just got a joomla site that is joomla 1.7 but i cannot find a sh404sef component to make the url friendly and would like to know if there is a component out there or if you can use an older one. I would have thought by now that they would have installed one with joomla 1.7 If anyone uses joomla, then i would be glad to hear from you.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Advice on SEO for videos on a streaming server
I am looking for some advice on video SEO when the video file is housed on a streaming server. An example page is below. The onlyvideo element on the page is a script reading in the filepath to the streaming server so I am not sure what the best course of action is. Currently, none of our videos are indexed. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/webinars/Making-Agile-Work-for-You.cfm
Technical SEO | | SEI0