A recap of some valuable lesson I learned about dealing with SEO clients and managing their expectations from some fantastic articles from Patrick Moogan of Distilled. These articles truly helped me, and I hope they can help you too!
Yesterday was an emotionally draining and mentally exhausting day for me. If you’ve been in the SEO game for long enough, you’ll be sure to have more than a few of those.
While I won’t go into specifics, my frustrations came from a combination or reports, search engines, processes, did I say reports, and just the entire “rat race” that goes with every current and potential SEO campaign.
As I made the utterly defeated journey back up I-270 and arrived home – without a shred of confidence – I was ready to just call it quits, UNTIL I had one last little urge to log back on and mess around on the Twittersphere.
I’m not sure how it happened, but the tangled web of white noise and links led be to a couple of articles that hit me right between the eyes. I really recommend that every SEO reads these articles, as I’m sure they’ll find that they been in these situations before too. Maybe it can help you handle them a little better…
The first article, entitled “Why Knowing Everything About SEO Doesn’t Mean Shit” was written by Patrick Moogan of Distilled. This one was particularly useful for helping me understand the client perspective a little bit more, as I’ve spent a lot of time beating my head against the wall trying explain SEO strategies to clients.
From the post:
This post is more about getting SEO done rather than pure SEO. The point being (as the title of this post implies) that even if you are an SEO rockstar, it doesn’t mean you are good at getting shit done.
This probably applies even more if your job title has the word “consultant” in it. Yep, mine has it! I bet that loads of SEO Consultants read loads of great SEO blogs, follow loads of great SEO people on Twitter, go to loads of great conferences. Does it mean they can do SEO? Nope.
Does the client care that you do all this stuff? Nope.
Does the client care about the work you do for them and what their ROI is? Yes!
This part punched me right between the eyes! Understanding that the client doesn’t care about much of what you’re doing is an absolute must. This is an area where I’ve failed many, many times.
If I try to relate it to my life, I would go with the fact that I’m not a car guy. I don’t care how the engine works, I just want my car to take me places. Well, it’s the same situation here. The clients don’t care about my fancy-shmancy reports, etc. They just care about getting a return on their investment!
Patrick continues on to go into a little detail about moving from his old company to his new company and all that he learned:
Back in May this year I joined Distilled. I was super excited about going to a company that not only specialised in SEO, but were one of the leading UK companies. I was super excited about how much more I could learn about SEO. I couldn’t wait to get inside Distilled and learn all the “secrets”, oh and before you ask, I can’t tell you
Looking back over the last seven months, I have learnt LOADS. But to be honest, although I’ve learnt loads of SEO stuff, the more valuable stuff I’ve learnt has been more focused on getting shit done.
Before I joined Distilled, I worked for Pin Digital where I was in the enviable position of being in total control of client websites. If I wanted some development changes (within reason) I could usually get them done. It was just a case of walking next door to the developers and asking nicely.
I didn’t appreciate how valuable this was. We were also in the fortunate position of working with companies who were big enough to understand the value of SEO, but not so big that they did their own SEO. So we took pretty much 100% control over work and it was our job to get stuff done. This isn’t that difficult in SME companies where you have control of the development side of the site too.
What I Learnt (sometimes the hard way) at Distilled,
SEO means nothing unless it gets done
A lot of times, it can be very easy to pass off a strategy to the client then sit back and wait for them to implement it. As Patrick alluded to above, this is a BIG mistake.
Be proactive in making sure that stuff gets done. Take initiative. Don’t wait on clients to do it or it may never get done. However, you will be held to the results. Remember that!
A couple of really great points to help you get down the client interaction a little bit more (you should read his article for the long explanations as they really are some great ideas):
- Know your client – you can’t do this over email.
- Know who matters at your client’s company – who makes decisions and who pays your invoice.
- Take ownership of the problems.
- Don’t think that delivering a document is the job done.
Patrick does a great job of really bringing this one home:
Most good SEOs can deliver a document that is a comprehensive technical site audit – how many of them make sure it gets done? How many deliver it in a format that can be given straight to a developer to be implemented?
Not as many.
I’ll be honest – I’ve learnt this the hard way. It was one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learnt so far and it is now always in the back of my mind when I deliver anything to a client.
When you deliver something to a client, its your job to deliver change which gets done and gets them results. Thats it.
Seriously, thats it.
If you don’t influence change or make stuff happen, you’ve failed.
Point well taken. If you don’t ensure that things get done, that your awesome SEO strategy gets implemented, then you’ve failed. You won’t be getting any awesome results or testimonials, and you will have failed your client.
All of these were really great points and really helped me put it in perspective. Sometimes, I need to change the way I think about clients, campaigns, etc. to realize that it’s about making the client happy and helping them achieve their goals. And this doesn’t happen unless you get shit done!
This article was preceded by another article that Patrick wrote on the SEOMoz blog as a follow up piece entitled, “The Problem With Being An SEO Consultant – It’s Always Your Fault.”
If I had a nickle for every time I’ve been blamed for the world’s ills as they related to SEO! We’ve all been there (even those who claim to be successful SEO’s). We’ve all had to backtrack, make excuses, blame global warming or Y2K, etc for why a certain campaign isn’t performing. If you’ve never done this as an SEO, take a look in the mirror you big fat liar!
An awesome point of thought from Patrick’s article:
My previous post talked more about how knowing everything about SEO doesn’t matter if you don’t actually make sure the SEO gets done. In this post I want to address some of the excuses that SEO Consultants use when tasks don’t get done, specifically, why it is always your fault if these tasks don’t get done.
I could probably generalise this a bit and say that things not getting done is a common problem amongst consultants in many industries. Quite often we’re paid to consult and give expert advice, not necessarily do stuff. In my opinion though when it comes to SEO, if the SEO you recommend doesn’t get done – it’s your fault.
Yes it is. It isn’t the fault of -
- The client
- The developers
- The designers
- Your boss
- Your dog eating it
When I first heard this at a training session I went to a few months after I joined Distilled, I was ready to argue. Something like this was going around my head -
“But if the client doesn’t do what I tell them, thats their fault”
“But if the developers don’t have a clue what a title tag is and can’t change it, thats their fault”
It was my fault, I shouldn’t be pointing the finger and blaming someone else.
Why is it my fault?
Because the client is paying me to make a difference to their business and give them an ROI. They’re not paying me to tell them stuff and leave them to it. Whilst many consultants in other industries do work like this, I don’t think SEO Consultants should. SEO is still evolving and is still a relatively new concept to a lot of people and they need that extra bit of help to get it done. The best SEO consulting in the world doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t get done.
Holy shit I said to myself! So most of the problems I have with clients are of my own doing? It looks that way.
Patrick then goes into great detail about some possible instances where we as SEO’s might be failing the client. Again, this might be a little repetitive for what was above, but I know that it reinforced it for me.
I’ll just do the high-level bullet points – again, you should read his article for the long explanations.
- You Deliver a Report and Think Your Job is Done
- You Don’t Get Close Enough to the Client
- The Client Doesn’t Like You
- You Didn’t Own the Problems
- You Didn’t Work Closely Enough With Other Agencies
There were several good takeaway points from this section.
First, don’t bother to deliver a report document, instead deliver a strategy along with an actionable list of tasks and then make sure they get done.
Second, maintain good client relationships by keeping a healthy and open dialogue with the client to keep them in the loop with what you’re doing. Patrick’s recommendation is to keep emails minimal, but instead use more phone calls and potentially even spend a few hours a month at the client’s office.
Third, if there are a few situations that may arise that may lead to resistance on the client’s end. These may include Developers or designers are worried their already full workload is about to get bigger, and/or if there is already an in-house Marketing / SEO person who feels their position is threatened. The recommendations here are that you do whatever you can to make their team look good rather than throwing them under the bus. Work together with them. Also, show the development and web teams the fruits of their labor in the form of some positive reports. This will reinforce the idea that what you’re doing is working.
The big takeaway from the fourth point was to ensure that you don’t wait for someone else to take charge of problems. Instead, put any issues or problems that come up on your own to-do list or make sure it’s on someone elses.
The last point is that you need to ensure that you’re on the same page with all agencies who may be working on the same client. You’re all in the same boat of trying to make the client successful, so you need to be on the same page. Patrick recommends setting up regular calls with each agency to discuss campaign status and share ideas.
All in all, keeping to every one of these points should help you make your clients happier, and should give you less gray hair.
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To my readers. First, I apologize for really riding on the back of Patrick’s article as I pride myself on producing original content. However, I thought both of Patrick’s articles were so helpful and insightful that I wanted everyone else to be exposed to them. They were really tremendous, they found me at just the right time, and I really just want to help everyone else learn some of the hard lessons that his article has helped me learn.
Not sure if the article makes sense as it was a lot of rambling on my part, but hopefully it helped you in some way to understand the ramifications of how you’re working with your SEO clients and potentially help you correct problem behavoirs.
A big thanks to Patrick for writing such helpful and insightful articles in related to dealing with SEO clients, and for helping me realize that I might be the one behind some of my troubles and not the other way around as I might have previously thought.
