With the current economic situations that many businesses are facing, its a given that they are all looking to cut costs. What does this mean to the SEO industry? With all of the negativity, mistrust, and skepticism surrounding the industry – it quite simply means that we’re the first on the chopping block. Whether you like it or not, SEO’s are probably last in the line (whether it’s warranted or not) when it comes to cutting trust and cutting expenses.
I’m going to try help you stem the tide of client unhappiness by doing a few simple things.
1. Get Results
Hello, captain obvious! The best way to keep your clients happy is to get them positive results. This means getting them more traffic, more links, and more leads, and hopefully more money to line their pockets.
As an SEO, there are often a lot of obstacles that get in the way of getting positive results such as bad web design, bad programming, little or no access to the website, poor cooperation on the client’s part to implement your changes. If you’ve experienced these issues, (believe me) you’re preaching to the choir.
Nonetheless, nothing can make a client happier than helping them justify their investment with good results. However, good results don’t matter unless you…
2. Show Your Results
If you’re not showing your clients the results from your SEO campaign, then getting them doesn’t really matter. Not to be too cynical, but I recommend that you think of a client as a ticking time-bomb. Everything you do from the start of the campaign will be put on a countdown, and with every passing second their skepticism (and sometimes anger) will grow.
In fact, sometimes you can show a client positive results and they’ll still be skeptical. This is why you need to spend a decent amount with each client to…
3. Develop a Trusting Relationship
If you never talk to your client or convey the results (positive or negative), then your just a nameless, faceless expense from which they aren’t seeing any apparent return on their investment. Hence, the ticking time-bomb reference.
This is why you need to set an ample amount of time aside to work with each client, educate them on the processes of SEO, and develop their trust in your expertise. Chances are, many of these clients who’ve tried SEO before have been burned – which is why they’re so skeptical.
You can overcome this skepticism up front by…
4. Setting the Right Expectations
Every client comes into their campaign with a certain set of expectations – sometimes reasonable but many times not. As an SEO, it’s up to you to set appropriate expectations up front, and often times lower the bar a little bit. This way, your client has a realistic expectation of what kind of return to expect from their SEO campaign, how long it will take, how to measure success, etc.
Setting poor expectations up front often leads to the swift execution of your campaign.
5. Overcoming Myths & Misconceptions
Since we’re talking about setting the right expectations, it’s also important to know about some common SEO myths and misconceptions. Like I said above, clients come into the campaign with certain ideas about what SEO is, how it works, and what it can do for them. Now, this is not always the case – but 99% of the time it is.
It’s often up to your as the SEO pro to set them straight, and getting past these can be a chore. In my experience, the only way to overcome some of SEO’s grey areas is by…
6. Being An Educator
I can’t stress this point enough. If you educate your clients throughout the process, and have an honest and up-front approach with them, many of the steps above will fall into place. Your clients will be smarter, will have good expectations, won’t get hung up on their prior misconceptions, and will give you the TRUST that is so critical to making your SEO campaign successful.
Take every opportunity that you can to teach your clients and they will appreciate you a lot more. There’s no sense in hiding what or how you’re doing. SEO isn’t some black magic, and its usually that line of thinking when you begin to go over a client’s head that they start to mistrust you.
To my readers: I’d like this article to be a bit of an open forum. Lately, I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible about keeping clients happy, and I feel like I know the basics. As an SEO I consider myself to be successful. However, a customer happiness guru I am not.
Therefore, I’d love to hear your feedback on other potential ways that you keep your clients happy. Any contribution to this piece is greatly appreciated!
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