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
-
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Old domain still being crawled despite 301s to new domain
Hi there, We switched from the domain X.com to Y.com in late 2013 and for the most part, the transition was successful. We were able to 301 most of our content over without too much trouble. But when when I do a site:X.com in Google, I still see about 6240 URLs of X listed. But if you click on a link, you get 301d to Y. Maybe Google has not re-crawled those X pages to know of the 301 to Y, right? The home page of X.com is shown in the site:X.com results. But if I look at the cached version, the cached description will say :This is Google's cache of Y.com. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on July 31, 2014." So, Google has freshly crawled the page. It does know of the 301 to Y and is showing that page's content. But the X.com home page still shows up on site:X.com. How is the domain for X showing rather than Y when even Google's cache is showing the page content and URL for Y? There are some other similar examples. For instance, you would see a deep URL for X, but just looking at the <title>in the SERP, you can see it has crawled the Y equivalent. Clicking on the link gives you a 301 to the Y equivalent. The cached version of the deep URL to X also shows the content of Y.</p> <p>Any suggestions on how to fix this or if it's a problem. I'm concerned that some SEO equity is still being sequestered in the old domain.</p> <p>Thanks,</p> <p>Stephen</p></title>
Technical SEO | | fernandoRiveraZ1 -
Manual Actions tab advice on message
Ok so I have this message in manual actions (with no examples of links): Manual Actions
Technical SEO | | pauledwards
Site-wide matches None
Partial matches Some manual actions apply to specific pages, sections, or links
Reason Affects
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more. I am not surprised by this as an agency a few years ago did mass aritcle submissions for the same anchor text, I have manually removed 119 or so domains in the last year and a half and 4 weeks ago i disavowed the last 40ish domains left. Obviously the back-link profile can be seen to have an unnatural anchor-text distribution still but not as bad. In terms of rankings we lost some core terms on the homepage, not completely but most have gone from say page one to page 2/3/4 etc We are still getting good traffic to internal pages, so i am assuming action was taken to the homepage - where the mass of those links are pointing to. Where do you guys recommend I go from here, shall i go ahead and click the reconsideration request? or wait longer for the disavow. I am still also trying to remove bad links. Any advice much appreciated.0 -
Undo a 301 or Starting New Domain?
Hi Guys & Gals, I have a question I'd appreciate your input on. Quick History
Technical SEO | | Nobody1560986989723
When I first started in web design it was just me and a couple of clients. I had a website based on my name on the domain moxby.org.uk. The only 'SEO' work done on it was a bit of on-site work, various links based on forum and blog activity I was involved in (genuine involvement not crappy link building) and of course, building websites with a credit in the footer. When we got serious about the business we considered and finally put in place a new website, new branding and 301'd old URLs to their shiny new location on the new domain: _summitweb.net _(put in place about 12 months ago) Ranks were pretty much maintained and until recently we ranked well locally (still figuring the fallout from the last week or so's changes). The Question I would like to build a personal website, well I'm going to anyway. But as it's a personal/showcase website I need a personal URL for it and my natural choice would be my old url moxby.org.uk. However it is not that simple because summitweb.net is benefitting from redirected links and I don't want to harm our business' rankings just to reclaim a personal URL. So... is there benefit or would it be to my detriment to undo the 301 and build a website on moxby.org.uk or would it, in fact, just make more sense to buy a new domain and have a clean slate?0 -
Why is google webmaster tools ignoring my url parameter settings
I have set up several url parameters in webmaster tools that do things like select a specific products colour or size. I have set the parameter in google to "narrows" the page and selected to crawl no urls but in the duplicate content section each of these are still shown as being 2 pages with the same content. Is this just normal, i.e. showing me that they are the same anyway or is google deliberately ignoring my settings (which I assume it does when they are sure they know better or think I have made a mistake)?
Technical SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Have a client whose name is Scott Gable and his profession is photography
When I do a search for Scott Gable (just his name) google comes up like this (without the sitelinks): http://chrle.us/MGer When I add photography to the search query it comes up like this (with the sitelinks structured below) http://chrle.us/MHXy is his name that common that the full sitelinks wouldn't appear below it on the scott gable search? Would 301 redirecting scottgablephotography.com to scottgable.com help fix this?
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
Page crawling is only seeing a portion of the pages. Any Advice?
last couple of page crawls have returned 14 out of 35 pages. Is there any suggestions I can take.
Technical SEO | | cubetech0 -
Domain targeting advice needed please
I would be interested in hearing the views of other seomozers on this issue please. I have a web server hosted in The Netherlands which I currently host my sites on, it is super fast (16core 24gb ram) and in 8 months has had 4 mins of downtime! On this server I wish to build a couple of ecommerce stores. However this is where my issue lays The first store I launch will be targeted at the UK market, however the domain I wish to use for it is a .com domain which has a moz ranting of about 36 (better than most of my competitors, worse than a few so it's a good headstart). The problem I would then have is a .com domain hosted on a Dutch server targeting UK people. Even if I was to set the webmaster tools location to UK it would not be ideal. Also, when it comes to launching the US site I would then be looking at using a .us domain which is far from ideal The other option I have is to use the .co.uk domain for the UK site but this is new and lack any decent moz score. Given this I am now pondering the following set up....using the .com domain on the Dutch server but putting the UK store in domain.com/UK and the future usa store in domain.com/usa. Would this be the best work around? I could then set the location of folders in the webmaster tools? Also, I plan on using geo redirecting on the domain so if a uk page happens to rank in the USA listings the user gets automatically redirected to the nearest matching product available in their country in the /us/ folder. Would this be easiest to work with on just one domain as it wouldn't technically be redirecting people to another site as per using two domains. Any thoughts would be good. Not even sure I have managed to explain it very clearly hehe
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0