Don’t Be a BAD SEO Client!
They don’t mean to be a bad SEO client they just are. If you have been in the SEO industry for quite some time you know the red flags to watch out for. Most of the time you can spot them within the first 2 minutes over the phone and often times you can get the sense in the lead form by reading the message and just looking at the website. The search engine optimization industry is a very wild wild west type of industry and until we get some regulation and order in place we are going to have really frantic clients from time to time.
Let’s take a look at some of the red flags that could start waving early in the process that could cause you to drop the hammer on a client.
Bad SEO Client Trait#1 – Being Burned In The Past
You know those clients, the ones that have been burned over and over in the past by other SEO companies promising all the gold in Fort Knox if they sign up for their $59 dollar plan? When you acquire a client that has been burned numerous times in the past and they have decided to drop the hammer on you right from the very start you are going to have a not so fun time on your hands. They have decided to finally stop being ripped off and automatically play the police roll with you. Don’t take it personally they are just sick of losing their money.
Bad SEO Client Trait#2 – They try to teach you about SEO
This one is the best because sometimes I bump into potential clients or newly acquired clients who have never approached an SEO campaign but all of a sudden they’re the professional telling you what is right and what is wrong? Just because you read The Dummies Guide To Search Engine Optimization does not mean that all of a sudden you are the expert. You contacted us for help not the other way around. SEO is a craft and a skill that sharpens with time and experience.
Bad SEO Client Trait#3 – Lack of education on the service
I know this contradicts a little with the paragraph above but every client looking to purchase search engine optimization services should educate themselves a little bit on the process of how it is conducted and the truths about the industry. Just because someone told you they can get you rankings in a week, doesn’t mean that is the norm of the industry.
Bad SEO Client Trait#4 – Unrealistic Expectations
This can often times be a nightmare as well. Unrealistic expectations are something that usually requires lots of time explaining on how things really happen in the SEO industry. Realistic expectations are all about understanding that SEO is a long term process and things take time. Unrealistic expectations are getting irate that you are not number 1 in the search results after one month of marketing your business online.
Bad SEO Client Trait#5 – Lack of communication
When it becomes virtually impossible to get a hold of your client that could cause a nightmare as well. Sometimes the nightmare doesn’t come up until tax season when accountants are going through the numbers. When your clients signs up and disappears for three months that is a red flag that nothing good can happen. For search engine marketing to work how it is supposed to there has to be a constant communication every single month because there are marketing efforts required to be executed every single month.
Bad SEO Client Trait#6 – Denial is strong
This can come in many different flavors. The first is when a client thinks their competitors are nothing compared to them and that things will happen quickly because “our website is better”, it doesn’t work that way. On the other side of the spectrum a client shows up with a hot mess of a website but they think it is the cat’s bag which is also an indicator that there could be a problem down the road. A website needs to be positioned correctly to convert.
Bad SEO Client Trait#7 – Depending on SEO for complete business survival
SEO should be one component of a business’s revenue model. When a client comes aboard and they have nothing else in place and put all the weight of their survival on your SEO that is when disaster happens. Search engine optimization and marketing takes time to really start working and a website just getting started should have other forms of revenue coming in.
Don’t get me wrong it is important to spend the time with every potential client and educate them away from some of these thoughts in order to have a long lasting business relationship, but the SEO client has to have an open mind about learning how SEO is done the right way. Are you ready to become a good SEO client?
22 Responses to “Don’t Be a BAD SEO Client!”
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Awesome list. Passing this around today!
Thanks Janice for reading, glad you enjoyed the list!
Hmm, most of these points could easily relate to “BAD web development” clients too, especially the first one where the client is obviously the expert on all things web related and tries to tell you how to do your job! *sigh*
How about the client who is obsessed with outranking a competitor for a specific term – and then gets upset that SEO isn’t producing an ROI after you’ve told them ad nauseum – OK we can outrank them – but it won’t make you a penny.
Unfortunately #7 seems to be the most common.
That is awesome. I loved #6 and #7. A comment on #6 is when a client looks at a competitor’s design and says “see..these guys are crap.” But in reality that ugly little website has a million links pointing to it.
Thanks Ryan and Tyson for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Take Care,
Nick
Good list, I think managing expectations and educating the client are keys to having a good experience for both parties. Letting expectations go undefined or letting communication lag is a bad recipe that ends up keeping you from your task at hand because you have to do damage control or hand-holding. As an SEO transitioning from being an in-house to having my own clients I am learning these lessons first hand..
A very good shift of attention from the SEOs to the client.
I’ll site a classic example of a combination of Trait #1 and Trait #2.
Once I had just discussed the SEO deliverables , our approach and what the whole SEO campaign shall include, he goes ahead and tells me – please don’t waste your time on all this on-page , off page stuff, XML sitemaps, etc.
Just give me the rankings , keywords and 1000s of links ASAP thats it.
Now to din the right meaning of SEO in such a person’s head is a real challenge.
Thanks Bharati for reading and sharing your thoughts!
How about the client who wants to achieve results but lacks anything more than a paragraph of content for their site.
@Bharati Ahuja … can your client say ‘JC Penny’ … link farming not the way to go ..
TO EVERYONE … great comments … very much enjoyed the list Nick …
Regarding this sentence: “You contacted us for help not the other way around.” What’s to be said about the SEO companies that DO contact businesses and try to persuade them to use their services? Is that an indication of the quality of service you might receive?
My question is what if your business and web site developers don’t know how to position the business and don’t know which keywords would be the most applicable???? What next?
Yep – lots of companies view SEO as a silver bullet. Unfortunately a lot of firms I talk to think they have an SEO problem – but in fact they have a crappy website problem, among others. I recently wrote an article about how people should really think about SEO withing the context of a complete website development strategy – I have my potential clients read the following before I sit down with them.
http://marksprague.wordpress.com/about/its-easy-to-fail-at-seo/
Great post and some really helpful comments too. Thanks guys.
I like what Gary said about managing expectations and educating the client particularly. I too am quite new to this and sometimes what seems like common sense to me is seen rather differently by the client who is still using the traditional old outbound marketing methods and doesnt really understand how the ‘interweb’ works.
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for reading and your question.
In my opinion and from my experience any SEO firm that send unsolicited emails, phone calls, etc for SEO services might not provide the best quality of service. Great SEO people don’t need to cold call for their services, they can get business through referral and various inbound marketing efforts (SEO, social media, PPC, etc.)
Hi Mark,
Great resource, thanks for sharing it with our readers!
You are right on with this, Nick. When potential clients call me and complain about the last SEO company they dealt with, I DO NOT take them on.
The reason being is that I’m only hearing one side of the story, the complaining client. I never get to hear the side of the SEO company, which I’m sure differs from the complainer. My bet is the complainer was a complete a$$hole and made unreasonable demands.
SEO companies get a bad rap from these types of clients who don’t know SEO from a hole in the wall. I do not believe the old adage “The customer is always right.”
You are also correct about contacting people to sell optimization services. Admittedly, I’m not a salesman. I let them come to me! Then I can calmly explain my services. And the first time they utter the word “guarantee”, I immediately put that fire OUT!
It’s almost hilarious when they say “So you guarantee bla bla bla?” “Nope”, I say. “I don’t guarantee a thing.” I just show them clients listings and where they are positioned. This speaks volumes.
NO WHERE on my site is the word “guarantee” yet they have the nerve to ask about it as if it is there is big red block letters.
OH! And lets not mention the client who tried to do his own Google maps listing, screwed it up to high heaven (merged listing nightmare, duplicate listings. I don’t take them as clients either) then expect YOU to clean it up. That’s why I check EVERYTHING before accepting them as clients and taking their money.
Having been on both sides of the table I am always surprised at how short many SEO companies specification discussions are and how hard it is to get clients to pay attention to anything longer than twenty minutes.
Building solid content will get you ranked. Building links will get you ranked. Sitemaps, on-page optimization, clever key words and research will all help; but none of it happens overnight.
The web is a very big place. The site I am working on is spidered daily; but I don’t expect any significant effects for another couple of months. It is only six months old.
Hi Beamer,
Thanks for reading and sharing your great thoughts!
Here is a heated discussion that I wrote about SEO guarantees:
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2010/04/23/guarantees/
Take Care!
Nick
[...] And Business Great article by Nick Stamoulis of Brick [...]
We don’t mind clients who are relatively ignorant of SEO – or those who know a bit – as long as they are prepared to listen and hopefully take advice!
We feel we should be able to explain what we are doing simply so that clients feel still in command as well as getting good value.
But yes, we get our fair share of shall we say ‘challenging’ clients. I wonder how some of them treat doctors. (You WILL fix my son’s broken leg and he WILL win his football match at the weekend….?)
I could not agree more with this post! You have hit the nail on the head and will be referencing your material in a post of my own on this matter.