SEO’s and Clients, Part Two

When you have a client who is trying to tell you they are operating on a shoestring and only want the services they absolutely can’t do themselves, you need to be careful. Any promises you make could be hampered by misguided efforts on their part, so caution is necessary.

Let them know what you will actually DO, and the specific possible benefits of each move – but make sure you have it clear what moves on their part could negate all your hard work.

You could be hired to :
Optimize on-page elements (title tags, sitemap, headers, description tags, internal linking, content), introduce blogging, promote their blog, implement extensive social media marketing, obtain high quality links, utilize a design refresh, etc.

However, if they opt to do some of this themselves, you have to make the decision – cut your losses if they don’t seem to understand you can’t guarantee their success, or decide how to help them succeed without (A) doing a lot of work for free, or (B) giving away what amounts to trade secrets – the stuff you know that boils down to why you are able to market your knowledge to begin with.

You can increase a site’s traffic a thousand fold, but if they refuse to implement the needed changes for conversion or have bad content then whatever you do will not be enough. If you design a site for optimal conversion and they don’t know how to drive traffic, the site fails again – but believe me, they won’t blame themselves – they paid you money so they will first and foremost blame you.

This is why it is always wise to look a gift client in the mouth! Maybe they come to you saying ‘this is an easy job – we are doing everything ourselves except for (insert SEO service here) – well, if it is such an easy job why don’t they do it? They are paying for expertise, and they don’t realize sometimes that our expertise means something.

In this case, it is ‘Let the Seller beware’, and choosing your client base carefully is as important as having one at all!

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