Every day millions of articles are published on the web and we all hope to get some kind of benefits from our content. We all want to be on the first page of search engines for our keywords but unfortunately there are only 10 spots and so many candidates.
Doing SEO is a combination of technical rules combined with consistency, patience, human intuition, human analysis, knowing what you really sell and what problems your product solves, competition analysis and so much more. The tasks are extremely complex so you need to know the project really well before you start working on it.
Questions to ask the client
Before you start working on a project and before you make your first offer, you should know exactly what the project is about. If you ignore this step it’s possible to encounter all sorts of issues along the way. So, take your time and ask your questions: it will not only help you understand the project better but also what the client expectations are.
- Why do you think you need SEO services?
- What do you hope to obtain/improve with SEO? How do you think I can help you?
- How do you see SEO: short term results, or mid and long term results?
- Do you see SEO as a constant job, directly connected to creation of new content in a constant way? If not, please explain.
- SEO involves many tasks and the client might not want all. Explain what these tasks are and ask what he is interested in.
- Do you have analytic software installed on your website?
- Do you have a keyword list for your website?
- Do you already target some keywords in your content? If yes, what are those keywords? If yes, do you know the stats for those keywords, like competition, number of monthly searches and so on?
- Do you analyze your competition for certain keywords?
- Are you looking for consultancy SEO services? Do you also need implementation?
- What is your knowledge of metrics? What metrics do you think may need more attention? What metrics do you hope to improve?
- Are we talking about a one-time SEO analysis or the project will go on for 6 or more months?
- What SEO efforts have you already made? How did you measure the results? Have you tried to adjust your approach?
- How many pages your website has? Are all indexed by search engines, or you don’t know?
- When the website was built, did you discussed about the link architecture? Have you planned certain link architecture?
- Name the top places where you use your keywords on a page.
- Do you use Google Webmaster Tools?
- Where your potential clients are located? Did you made something to target those locations?
- How often do you produce new content? The new content is created based on a plan, a keyword list, to serve a certain article structure?
Establishing goals
Establish very clear what the client wants, what the client expects to get and in what time frame. SEO is not a magic thing that in a month will turn their website in a money making machine. If the client expects fast results think 10 times before you accept him as a client.
More than this: if the client wants fast results and his website has only 30, 50 pages and the keywords he’s after have competition more than 5 millions you should thing again. Identify what the client really wants: improve the bounce rates for certain pages, or improve overall traffic, or improve the flow to their conversion page and so on.
Targets like: “I want to be number 1 for keyword1” are not that important. Search is evolving. The same search will provide different results depending on your location, what you searched before, what your account settings are, and what time of day are you searching.
It’s our job as providers of SEO services to explain all these things to our clients. If you are afraid to speak the truth and you prefer to hide behind SEO myths then you contribute to all the bad things people talk about SEO services.
Key analysis points
Here are things that are extremely important in the evaluation process:
- The project is about a website that already exists or a new one?
- If you have a website, do you also have analytics software installed?
- It’s important to know if the client wants a one-time SEO-analysis or we are talking about a project on 6 months or more.
- The client is willing to develop new content based on my suggestions?
- The client is willing to start a blog to market his products/services?
- What type of website is it: static, dynamic, with just few pages, more than 100, 300, 500 pages?
- Analyze the already made efforts to optimize the website.
- Know the real expectations of the client, including the time frame.
Your turn
What do you think of all this? How do you evaluate your projects? What are the things any SEO provider should watch for? What questions do you ask your clients?
And you, as a client, what is your experience? What questions would you like an answer from an SEO provider? What questions do you think an SEO should ask you? What are your expectations? What do you hope to get from an SEO?
The SEO industry has changed alot over the past few months, what used to work before, won’t work anymore. You obviously know what the deal is, but I can’t wait to see the changes in Google in the next few months.
SEO changed alot over the past few months, what used to work before, won’t work anymore. You obviously know what your doing.
Great information…anyone could provide which information has required to start it before project