5 Tips for Managing SEO Client Expectations

Keep your SEO clients in the picture-manage their exectations!

Set Realistic Deliverables!

SEO is one of those areas where, typically, deliverables can be open to interpretation, perception and yes, question. If SEO consultants don’t manage client expectations well, this can lead to dissappointment and bad feeling that may even end with the client jettisoning all SEO efforts as a ‘waste of time.’

This is a pity. Due to mismanaged expectations many companies confine themselves to, at best, mediocre success online because they weren’t given the information they needed initially that would have given them the encouragement to give the process time.

Create a Deliverables Timetable

First and foremost, SEO is not a process where you just snap your fingers and the results are there, plain to see. So as an SEO you have obligations to help your client envision how things will develop: and you need to take care of it at the outset.

1. Before you even think of approaching a client, design a monitoring system. Most decent web hosting companies nowadays include analytics, but it’s best to never rely on anyone else. Take the analytics available to you for the period before your work begins, and keep it for later reference. Than get yourself an account with a good traffic monitoring application such as Mint. This will allow you to do two things: reassure your client periodically that you are progressing in the right direction, and enable you to make decisions about how your strategy is delivering.
2. When you discuss your SEO strategy initially with your client, do not gloss over deliverables. It is vital that you get expectations down in black and white at the outset, before you do a thing. Make sure you are clear about the changes your client can expect to see, and try and give at least rough time estimates. SEO is not a speedy process, and if a client is expecting to see magical results from the first week, by week two disillusionment is going to be setting in, making unlikely that you’ll proceed together.
3. Be sure that you not only track results, but that you point out to your client on a regular basis how traffic is improving and how the benefits of SEO are slow to become apparent, but that the positive results begin to manifest dramatically after the ‘tipping point’ has been reached. <strong>Be sure to own your results-or someone else will!</strong>
4. If increased traffic does not manifest in the way that you both envisioned, it is essential that you schedule a meeting and discuss realistic expectations, and ways that you can improve on results.
5. Set up a way to interract with your client, if not on a daily basis, at least a couple of times a week. Lack of communication is always a major factor in client dissatisfaction. While you may or may not want to invite clients to join you on your regular Twitter account, you might find that a second account just for clients will help you to keep them all happy and satisfied, by feeding relevant articles, clients successes and anything else that will help to give them that warm and fuzzy feeling. Think of other social media channels that might serve your purpose here. All the while you’re talking to clients, you are allaying their fears and encouraging confidence. Long periods of silence give way to suspicion and doubt and this should be avoided at all costs.