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Many of our clients are small businesses with small web sites (10 pages or fewer). These clients are more than happy to sign up to our Marketing services as they are cheaper than typical yellow pages adds and have the potential to produce much more business.
However, I've been thinking about a possible problem: Once the work has been done, the site is optimised to perfection, the rankings are excellent for all key phrases and the business is coming in, what's to stop small businesses with tight budgets pulling the plug and not renewing at the end of the year?
Ok, I can argue that I'm a plate spinner and they need me to stop the plates falling off. I can tell them that algos change, new engines emerge and their competitors may take the top positions from them. But is this enough? If you stop your Yellow Pages advert the enquiries dry up. If you stop your Internet Marketing the enquiries possibly won't stop for quite some time. Particularly if the competetion haven't wised up.
In other words, "Thanks for your work over the last year, you've done a great job. We'll give you a ring if the quality traffic and referrals dry up. Maybe speak to you in a couple of years...."
Anybody got any thought on this?
2 - ensure that you control their high PR links for Google and slowly remove the links.
One way might be to only work on stuff that you have control of and can just turn off.
I was doing 10 page or under sites and incorporating the design and the promotion, so it was all right on the site.
A lot can depend on a particular niche and target market. In one field, there's someone who does hosting, and will switch people's sites over with a package that's offered including hosting, shopping cart, re-doing the site a tiny bit with a change to new graphics, and unlimited monthly maintenance and/or product additions. All for $30 a month. In the case of sites that have been well optimized to begin with that aren't very competitive, yes, they'll keep the rankings, too.
Thing is, once someone has done enough research and gotten a "feel" for a certain area, it's a shame to let it go to waste. So it's sure not enough, and like shuffler, doorways sure are food for thought.
On the other hand, it can be thought of as offering a service, and once it's done and paid for, let them do what they want with it and just forget it. It can depend on how much work has gone into it, too.
