Client Content Strategy (or lack of)
-
Hey everyone,
I just finished pitching a client for some SEO work. He said he does not want to write any type of content. He also said his industry is so unique that he does not want anyone else writing content for him either. His site has about 25 pages of total content now.
I am going to get all of his onpage seo good to go but what would you do? Just build links?
I really prefer to have some sort of content strategy in place but find it can be challenging with clients.
-
If he answers those questions once on his website via an FAQ, then he doesn't have to go back and answer them time and time again in email and phone!
-
I would do some analytics (after your new SEO matures) and show him how each page of the site is pulling in visitors. Then explain if he gets pages up for new content each of them will pull in more visitors. That should make "chaching" in his brain and might motivate him into new content. Maybe you can suggest some topics in his industry where he does not have search presence?
I really enjoy hearing about people who don't want to write content. It allows me to take their money!
-
If it's a matter of not wanting to "write" any type of content, is he interested in any sort of content? The fact is that SEO and search is concerned with delivering content to searchers looking for it, so without content you won't have much to go on (25 pages can still work, though, it all depends on the quality of that content and the depth of the searcher's intent: do those 25 pages answer their query and satisfy their search, or will they bounce to a competitor's site?)...
I look at your question this way:
If your client is simply averse to writing, what sort of content is he more comfortable in delivering?
If your client is satisfied with his 25 pages, can you find keywords and examples where competitors are eating his lunch? Showing lost opportunity can help change his mind.
But at the end of the day, you need to ask your client what his goals are, and if this roadblock in content opinion is going to hinder your progress in helping meet the goals...if content is going to remain at 25 pages, you have to weigh that against the stated goal and deliver the reality check.
Other than that, it's hard to say what I'd do in your shoes apart from seeing the site and knowing the niche: knowing the opportunities at hand and knowing how deep you want to on this project is really up to you to determine. (That is, you have to know if you're actually able to even do your job given these limitations, and if not then you need to tell your client you can only deliver so much in terms of ROI and move accordingly.)
Another way to look at it is that you've just been given a defined boundary: making your job potentially much easier than it would be otherwise had there been more content to rank.
[I see a bit too late that there were 2 other responses above mine - whoops! I'm too lazy to edit other than making the observation.]
-
Good idea! This is actually what I have done in the past. The client was reluctant but is now writing his weekly content.
-
Thanks for the response! Yes, that does make sense. He said he does not want to spend time on things that do not directly make him money. He said he doesn't want to answer questions, be involved, etc. He just wants to do his craft. He said he tried it in the past and he was spending more time answering questions than actually making money.
-
Always tricky....
I'd set the client expectations first - let them know that in your professional opinion there needs to be a content strategy and without one they won't reach their desired goals - and then just let it be (for now). Move on to implementing the rest of your SEO strategy. During reporting time where rankings are slow or making no improvements you can just mention that it's due to lack of content and suggest a content strategy again but this time just trial one or two pages and track progress (rankings, conversions, bounce-rates perhaps....etc). After 2-3 months of the content (working alongside your link build and on-page optimization) the results should speak for themselves.
Good luck!
-
Perhaps one way to re-open the content discussion is to show him that content, aka "conversations" are taking place online about his topics/products. Those conversations are going to take place whether he writes content or not. Does he want those conversations to be able to define his business, without his participation? Or would he prefer to be part of the conversation? I think it might just be a matter of showing him that conversations are going to take place regardless of what he does or doesn't do, and that ultimately it would be much better for him to participate. Hope that makes sense!
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
-
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Link Building | | Stongex0 -
Duplicate content on site->citations? How important is it to change it?
Hi there, I recently realised that the citations and directories i was building used the same content than the one on my website. I know this is not best practice. I will for sure make sure it doesn't happen in the future, but I am affraid of the ones i built in the past. How much do you think this would affect my rankings, and do you think this is a priority to go through my citations and directories to modify it?
Link Building | | H.M.N.0 -
Duplicate content
Hi everyone, I have a wedding blog I submit posts to on a monthly basis for a link back. One of the staff said to change the first 200 character and I can post it on my own blog with no duplicate content penalty. Any thoughts? Best wishes. David.
Link Building | | WallerD0 -
How to create good SEO content for an essentially thin ecommerce site?
I have a retail website that in the past has been hit by a manual action for crappy backlinks (these were all done by a previous agency and up until the penalty providing very good results). We have since removed all of the rubbish backlinks and have come out of manual penalty and are looking in to our long term strategy in terms of content and link building. We have a blog within our site that does well with traffic and with an OK conversion to the products that feature within the posts, we are also putting together a strategy in terms of long term content plans and while this is all very good for the blog, the ecommerce part of the domain continues to suffer. I know that part of this is because we did remove all of these links that were giving it juice, but where do you start with SEO when what you are dealing with is essentially thin content? With around 7000 products, every page has unique descriptions and titles that have been updated to remove keyword stuffing and over optimisation that has occured in the past. We don't want to go down the route of getting an agency that is going to put us back in Googles bad books, but how do you go about getting a retail page juice without firing backlinks at it? Not looking for the holy grail here but just looking for some advice, I want a clear idea of a direction to go in before recruiting an agency to do this.
Link Building | | timsilver0 -
Do I have to be worried about listing my events on third-party sites with the same content?
Hello everyone, We run classes and we just released our 2014 schedule. I am thinking of manually posting each class on the various event sites on the web (zvents, eventbrite, yelp, etc.) Should I worry about any sort of penalty if the content of these events are exactly the same? Also, some allow links within the description, my plan was to have 1-3 links going back to my product page with varying anchor text. Is there anything I should worry about with this plan? Thanks in advance for any help
Link Building | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
In a post penguin world, what would be your widget rollout strategy?
We have some very useful calculators. Should the branded text link be follow or no follow? Is a genuine, value ad widget helpful in post penguin SEO world
Link Building | | stevanl0 -
Link Building Strategy - Please Give Feedback
Hi, I"m moving forward with link building for nlpca(dot)com and here's my plan I know my industry, keywords, and this site very well so I'll start by: Analyze Top content for top 10 competitors and see where the links are currently going. I'm assuming a competitor is someone similar to me and not sites like wikipedia in this case Make a spreadsheet for all of the worthwhile links that I find by using OSE and the top 10 competitors, places where if we're good enough we can get a link on that page. See what they're linking to Use (1) and (2) to discover what stelllar targeted content to build Use infographics, a blog, and articles to build targeted content to request a link from the people in (2) building out facebook, twitter, and Google +1 for the site is coming too. Your thoughts? I'm completely open to improvements via feedback.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Link Building Strategy
Hello Everyone, We have about 15 clients who we need to do link building for but I am at a loss on how to even begin. Does anybody have any tips or tricks to achieving quality back links in a short amount of time? Any help is appreciated!
Link Building | | imageworks-2612900