Failed SEO – Who’s To Blame? The Client or SEO?
This post is following a discussion that I started at Sphinn last week. We all know how the SEO story starts. A client signs up and gets excited by the potential that SEO can offer their website. After on page and the technical SEO is completed you reach the difficult part of SEO in content creation and link building. The SEO very rarely is an expert in the industry their client is in so we reach out to the client to talk about having them generate content. If the client isn’t willing or able to generate the quality content nor spend the money to support the resources needed, the SEO starts to get stale. The clients search rankings begin to stall and their sites traffic flat lines. Now who’s at fault for the failed SEO campaign? Let’s cover both sides of this argument.
The Clients Side
Let’s discuss the clients side first. The client met with the SEO and went over what it will take to make the site successful. On page optimization is discussed, link building is described as an ongoing service as well. In addition the SEO sets a precedence for realistic expectations in rankings, traffic and conversions. Both the SEO and the client understand they won’t rank number one for “baking supplies” but understand that more appropriate keywords may be something along the lines of “Non Stick Baking Supplies”. After this discussion the client is all in. After all the SEO is discussing better brand awareness, more traffic, and ideally more sales! What’s to lose?
The client signs over a check on a monthly basis and eventually gets contacted by the SEO. The SEO now in addition to the monthly check want them to write content for their site. The client starts to wonder what they are paying for if their expected to write all this content for their site. The client may also be annoyed by having to verify the 5 digit number for their Google local listing and the idea of spending any time on Twitter or Facebook is ridiculous. The routine thought is that they are writing a check on a monthly basis, “what is this SEO doing for me anyways?” they ask. During this uncomfortable and confusing time the client gets a phone call from a small yellow page like company promising them the world for a minimal $39.99 a month. The client then starts to think they may be getting ripped off and bails for the cheaper option.
The SEO’s Side
The contract has been signed and now the SEO is eager to share the wonders of search engine optimization with their newly acquired client. The SEO starts to do an in depth SEO audit for the customers site if they haven’t already done so. With this information the SEO determines what keywords they believe would be appropriate for their client to target. After a phone call with the client everyone is on the same page and a list of targeted keywords has been established. The SEO now works their magic and comes up with the best way to best optimize the clients website to integrate these keywords. New pages may be created, content optimized, title tags are properly written, meta descriptions re-written, internal linking completed, duplicate content issues dealt with in addition to many other on-page optimization tasks.
All the on page optimization has been completed and the client sees a nice jump in the search engines. Traffic even increases slightly as more visitors are finding them through long tail queries. The SEO now brainstorms some additional techniques/tactics in which this site could garner some links. The “easy” links such as topically related directory listings, BBB, and chamber of commerce links have now been acquired. The client made a great choice hiring this SEO as they won’t waste their time with spamming 1000 directories, nor comment spamming 500 blogs. The SEO has decided to take a content generated approach to generating links. Naturally the SEO isn’t a leader in the industry and knows only about the clients niche through the information on their site, research from competitor analysis and the process of determining appropriate keywords. The SEO decides to reach out to the client with some idea’s he came up with to blog about. If the client can generate some great content the SEO can leverage it to gain traffic and hopefully some links as well. The SEO and client talk about the concept and the client agrees that it’s a good idea. At this point the SEO receives two types of results:
- Client creates the content but it’s not of high quality. Either the content
is not well written or maybe it’s only 100-200 words in length. - The client promises to write the content “this week” but it never arrives.
95% of the time result number 2 occurs. At this point the SEO is getting frustrated as they don’t have any content to leverage links or to generate additional traffic to the site. The SEO reaches out to the client with a couple more options to support their SEO such as pay per click, Google local optimization, or even video optimization. These alternative options to support SEO is conveyed as an additional expense which the client isn’t always open to accepting.
An SEO Stalemate Has Been Reached
The client feels like they have been paying their SEO and not receiving the rankings, traffic, or conversion “promised”. Due to this they are hesitant or straight out refuse to invest more time/money into the project. The SEO is stuck because the client isn’t giving them any resources to acquire traffic or additional links. The SEO feels like they have painted a pretty clear picture when they talked to the client before signing the contract. Because of this conversation the SEO can’t afford or simply doesn’t want to take on the expense needed for the resources to be created.
The SEO may strictly focuses on making on page changes to warrant the monthly fee charged to their client. Other times an SEO simply waits and doesn’t do anything accept routinely badger the client for the resources they feel are necessary to move on. In the mean time, the clients site at best stays stagnant in the search engines.
Too many projects fall down this path but what can be done to avoid this situation?
Checklist To Avoid SEO Failure.
Below is a checklist that I have started to ensure that an SEO project goes as smoothly as possible. Of course you can’t prepare for every issue that may arrive but this will hopefully cover some of the more common issues.
- Who will be the point of contact that the SEO can reach? What’s their e-mail, phone number(s) and what times are best to reach them if by phone?
- What means can the client reach the SEO and what times are appropriate to contact them if by phone?
- What will the fee be for the SEO being offered? When will it be due and how long is the service being offered for?
- Who will generate the content for the website?
- Who will implement the technical changes for the website? This includes both code and server level.
- Does the monthly SEO fees include development of resources or is this the responsibility of the client?
- If social media will be used, will upkeep be the responsibility of the SEO or the client? Or both?
- If Pay Per Click will be utilized who will take ownership of setting it up/maintaining the account? The SEO or the client? Or Both?
- How often will results & SEO actions/statistics be reported to the client? And to what detail will these be reported?
- Can you clearly lay out the expectations of this partnership. Traffic? Rankings? Brand Awareness? Conversions?
- What freedom does the SEO have to initiate a proposed SEO technique? Should everything be ran through the client or can they implement on their own accord?
- Draw up a contract or scope agreement for all projects regardless of size. This will hopefully keep expectations in line. (Thanks Jill!)
- YOUR SUGGESTION HERE!
Can you think of additional tasks that should be on this check list? Please let me know in the comments and I will update this list so that we can create a fantastic resource available to everyone!
Nick LeRoy
Nick LeRoy is a Minneapolis SEO consultant offering custom SEO audits & monthly SEO services to clients in all niches. He also regularly blogs about SEO at NickLeRoy.com
RSS Feed
E-mail Feed
Follow Nick on Twitter!
Nick…..excellent quality content. Your SEO “magic” can only be realized by true collaboration and contribution from the client. I’m sure other SEO’s reading this can appreciate your various points. GREAT post!!
Diane
#12. a contract and/or scope of work doc should lay out all of the above including any additional costs that might be involved. Client must sign off on it before the work starts.
End of conflict!
Jill your absolutely correct. A contract/scope of work should be put in place. It’s hard to think one would be needed for “small” local projects but that’s how situations occur!
Excellent checklist…I’m bad about using the first month as a way to tighten things up. Sometimes that works brilliantly and sometimes it doesn’t. Some of my clients can’t really articulate exactly what guidelines they have, and due to the wide range of clients that we work with, there are occasional issues with us thinking “well that would work for X client, so it should be ok here too.” I also think that setting expectations is critical upfront but also critical to keep going over.
Julie – Unfortunately you are right. A single checklist can’t work for every scenario, however it can be a nice starting point. Just like SEO in general, each clients situation/expectations are unique. I 100% agree that expectations have to be set early!
One thing that sticks out to me is client participation: when the client doesn’t understand how crucial their involvement is, or doesn’t respond accordingly. It’s a misconception that investing in SEO (or any other aspect of online promotion) means not having to take an active role in the campaign nor keep adrift of SEO trends, major algorithm updates, etc.
I would also add to #11 that if an SEO doesn’t have the freedom to suggest new SEO tactics, whether or not they can utilize them without the client’s authorization, they’re being micro-managed (and insulted).
Thanks for the comment Rae! I do agree that client participation is key to a successful campaign. As for SEO freedom I do tend to agree with you but I do understand that some clients need to have a final say before execution. Note how I said I understand, I definitely DO NOT like!!! lol.
There are a number of good ideas being discussed here. A contract, expectations, etc. The client should certainly be involved and knowing that most clients do not provide sufficient content, we must have resources/solutions ready and specified in the agreement. Not every client is the best fit for us or, our particular domain of knowledge. It certainly takes two to make good SEO work.
Thanks Rob for the comment. You are right, when the client and SEO work together it makes SEO and achieving results a lot easier. I have seen in the past SEO work without the clients participation but it sure does take a lot of resources and it’s definitely not cheap.
Never rely on a client to produce high quality content. Even though they know their business better than the SEO ever could, they’re usually not writers. If the SEO isn’t a writer either, then hire one and work it into the cost.
Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree with Jill; a written agreement that clearly spells out the expectations and deliverables is a MUST.
Nice post Nick! Hope it creates some interesting conversation
Melanie, you are right. Content really shouldn’t be gambled on however its typically the small, local companies that don’t have the budget for both SEO and content development. It’s definitely an issue that has to be addressed before any contract or agreement is signed. Melanie wrote a great post about SEO Consulting contracts over at SEOmoz – check it out here http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/seo-contract-template-a-verbal-contract-isnt-worth-the-paper-its-written-on
You raise a valid point about the content generation. Why don’t you include the cost/effort of content generation in your SEO pricing? I write content for a couple of Internet marketing firms, and it has been my experience that the only way to ensure routine generation of content is to take the task out of the hands of the client. Determine a point of contact with the client, but then assign a writer who is responsible for getting topics each month.
Lorrie, I truly see the value in incorporating content creation into the cost of SEO services. However, to plays devils advocate – many small businesses simply don’t have a large marketing budget. To get them to be able to “afford” your fees is sometimes hard enough, let alone to budget in extra $$$ for content/resources sometimes stretches their budget. I suppose the counter argument is that you don’t want to work for a company that’s very budget conscious about SEO. They should be able to do that math and make a decision based off ROI etc.
Nick:
I’m going to echo the others here; it’s a great post that spells out each side of the “failure” accurately. I’ve definitely been in all the situations above. Here’s what I think that’s missing from this, falling under the “expectations” category.
What’s the real objective of the project? It’s easy to say, and almost every single client does, that WE WANT MORE. Whether it’s traffic, conversions, revenue, etcetera. But, it’s not until after you get things moving in the right direction that the “real” objectives come out.
I used to pin this on the client. I had a hard time believing that they didn’t know what they really wanted to accomplish with the search effort they’re investing in. But they don’t. They have a very difficult time seeing the forest through the trees as it were. I put this on the SEOs/SEMs shoulders, now.
It’s their responsibility to drill and question to get to the root. Because when it’s discovered, it will change the direction of the project totally. It may be that for what they really want, SEO and SEM strategy and tactics aren’t enough, and that it will only mask the systemic problem.
please-do yourslf a favor and stop playing with a foolish reports
this is a complete waste of time for you and your client
Hi Roey – thanks for dropping by and commenting. I’m not exactly sure where your going with this comment though. I haven’t had any issues with my clients in years. This post is echoing a common issue that is discussed as length within the SEM industry. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I’m complaining about any individuals specifically. I might make some crazy statements at times but im not stupid.