Forum Moderators: DixonJones
What would you do to provide each of your clients with a ranking report on a weekly basis for all their KWs in the main (top 10) SEs? Main ones being Google.com/.co.uk/de/it/ MSN, Yahoo, Lycos etc
Thats 50,000+ phrases weekly going to all the SEs.
Would you use a slimmed-down version of WPG, TopDog or a custom app - What would it need to do?
More importantly, how do you handle Google's displeasure at your IP putting a heavy load on them weekly? Could you hide your IP or would they ban you? Any workarounds?
All thoughts & ideas (technical or non) welcome
Thanks in advance
J
My directors made me change our business model.
Now we don't quote on rankings, we quote on traffic.
In hindsight, I think they were right. Rankings are devisive measurementsfor clients IMHO who cannot see a few rankings in perspective.
But that's just me.
I've been furiously trying to educate some of my clients that rankings don't mean jack. No matter what your ranking, it never guarantees clicks.
But I understand the mind set, it's definitely an ego boost to see your site riding high in the SERPS ;-)
Problem is, rankings are easy to guarantee which sells a service (good or bad) to naive clients.
We got #4 on Google for a 2-word search term which supposedly got 250K searches a month according to Ovt & WrdTrkr. We got 350 visits in 1 month. Strange but true. I heard of someone at PubCon who was apparently stunned with the lack of traffic on the same phrase despite being #1.
We want to give an excellent service to clients and can get them a lot of traffic (& business) but a sales pitch of a "lot of traffic" doesn't compete with a definite rankings guarantee.
"Top 10 rankings or your money back" sells a lot better than: "We'll give you, eh - lots of visitors"
Q - How many visitors can I expect?
A - Honestly, we've no clue. If you sell CDs - lots, shoes in Glasgow, not many...
I too believe selling traffic is much better than rankings but how do you package the sale of traffic mass-market so as it appeals to the CD guys and also the Glasgow shoe shop?
No SEO company can possibly know as many different industry niches as there are clients and so can't possibly estimate monthly traffic. The usual above suspects keyword research-wise are hopeless for answers here IMHO.
How do you attractively sell a cheap-ish but good service to an SME market without giving an easy-to-achieve rankings guarantee which is worthless?
Failing answers on that, any clues on the thread topic?
J
