Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
As one said don't give or lead to any false hope. What a good thing to do is take maybe a 100 or 2 of the money they are paying you get them some long tail searches set up in google, yahoo or msn in ppc.
This will do a couple things. Mke them feel better and give you a little time to get the job done.
You could get 300 to 500 hits or more for some 3 term searches and 200 would last quite a while. At least this way they could show some friends and most people still don't know the difference between natural or ppc...
Course higher paying clients would require more but that is business...
The owner of the company, though, was a real piece of work. She'd complain to the owner of the hosting company about everything. She told him she didn't think I was doing any work, to which he tried to explain that SEO work is usually not visible.
Last February she dumped us, and went with another company. I've heard through a designer who works with the new company that they're also pulling their hair out because of the owner.
Some clients just aren't worth the aggravation.
Client calls me up a couple of weeks ago, "Hey Edward, we dropped from #8 to #11 for our primary single keyword phrase, what should we do?"
"Nothing. Check again in a week or so. And then check again a week later. Do that until you can definitely confirm with me that there has been a significant drop."
"Meanwhile, back at the ranch, did you realize that there were over 45,000 search phrases used this month to find the site? Did you realize that orders are off the charts right now? Did you realize that your bursting at the seams with new business and you're freakin ridin me about a slip of a few positions for a single term? I oughta fire you right now... ;)"
Definitely focus their attention elsewhere like the bottom line. Have their profits increased? If not, then something is wrong somewhere in the process. It may not be because you are not ranking either. The client may have a failed business model for the web, its that simple and we surely can't change that. :)
Most of the bad clients will simply do neither and then complain that I am not helping them. Meanwhile they let another huckster come in and promise the moon for less or the same money. Now I know I could simply let them go find out the hard way about the huckster with his snake oil, but the objective for me is to actually keep clients and cash flow coming in. Therefore, I get angry when I lose clients to others that simply lie to clients. Most of the these clients will never do better, but in most cases they will never come back to me when solution number 2 or 5 fails.
Now mind you this was all caused by the client not listening to my first set of recommendations, but at the end of the day if my bank account takes a hit, then watching their rankings slide into the toilet is really not much of a comfort.
[edited by: FlexAjaxSEO at 12:30 am (utc) on Oct. 24, 2007]
being number 3 was good enough
good enough for what?
unrealistic expectationsneed to be handled from the beginning. With SEO you cannot promise any results; just describe what you intend to do and why you intend to do it.
Wrong: We're going to get you more links to increase your rankings.
Better: Incoming links are known as one important factor in search rankings. We're going to get you more incoming links.
Wrong: We are going to put keywords in your titles because that will make you show up for your chosen keywords
Better: Keywords which are clearly identifiable in the title can help search engines determine your page topic, so we are going to carefully rewrite titles to make sure they keyworsd are in them.
Wrong: We will add lots of content so that you get more hits, the more content you pay for the more hits you will get.
Better: Unique and interesting content is favoured by search engines which perceive it as adding value; in addition it helps to add additional keyword groups to the traffic. We will help prepare more content for your website, ensuring it is unique, and aiming to be interesting.
Wrong: We will get you in the number one spot.
Better: Search engine optimisation uses methods designed to increase website rankings. We will use best-in-class SEO techniques throughout your website.
