What makes for a good SEO client?

I appreciate that most people reading this post would be more inclined to see an article relating to ‘what makes a good SEO firm’ rather than this opposite take on the situation, but I feel it is pretty important to highlight the impact that a good relationship between online marketer and client can have on the success of the SEO campaign. Here are a few of the traits we here at breaktheseal love to see in the clients we work with.

Faith in the SEO’s Advice

This should be a total no brainer. I mean, who would pay a company to do a job that they specialise in and go against their advice? “I just heard on this free SEO Podcast that you need to noindex half your site to boost the other half in the rankings, let’s try it”. This is just one example we have come across where the client is too eager to do everything themselves, overriding and completely hampering any progress that is being made. Our advice is, by all means take an interest in SEO, but focus your attention primarily on running your business and we’ll take care of your online advertising issues.

Good Communication & Proactive

Although we work externally, from our office in Bradford, the work we do requires a clear line of communication with the client. There’s also other stakeholders we need to be in contact with on a regular basis, such as your web developer along with any marketing strings you may have. Because our approach doesn’t revolve around purchasing spammy links on websites that don’t get any traffic, we need to know as much about your business to seek out all possible linking opportunities. Also, the fact that web marketing is an ever changing landscape, a good working relationship is crucial to ensure changes are made quickly allowing us to react as soon as possible and stay ahead of the competition.

Patience & Understanding

Your website isn’t going to go from page 27 to position 2 overnight. Search Engine Optimisation is a progressive art that requires time and attention to detail to generate the best results. If you’re in a situation whereby you need the campaign to repay itself after month 2 then SEO probably isn’t the right marketing option to take. Most clients and prospects are aware of the benefits that can be gained from having a strong online presence and appreciate the time and effort that goes into achieving this.

Gives Regular Feedback

A lot of the time (especially if your site isn’t ecommerce) analytics and conversion tracking doesn’t paint the full picture. It’s always beneficial to know how the website is performing from a bottom line perspective, i.e. does all this extra traffic result in positive leads? Have the new prospects turned into clients? Feedback is probably the most important aspect of the decision making loop, so a small amount of time to reflect on the performance of the site along with any queries you may have for us is definitely beneficial.

Summary

As your SEO partner we are effectively the SEO ‘extension’ of your company. The more we know about your business and industry, the more routes we have to go down to generate legitimate and authoritative links. The more knowledge we have about the performance of the site, the better informed our recommendations will be to your web developer. We always let our prospects know that to get the best out of any Search Engine Optimisation campaign we have to work as a team. It’s no coincidence that those who do always get awesome Search Engine results.