SEO Clients to Avoid - Bad Attitudes
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Sometimes, you might get a client with some strange ideas about SEO. Many articles tell clients to steer clear of SEO firms that make ridiculous promises; this client is their brother under the skin. Eric Enge, writing in January for Ramblings About SEO, talked about one variation of this type of client he encountered at a company that wanted to hire his services. “Where the problem started was that one of the founders kept referring to SEO as a game, and believed that the focus was on tricking the search engines into giving you traffic.” Enge was unable to convince him otherwise, despite correcting him every time he said something that reflected that attitude. “Needless to say the opportunity exploration ended with the first call,” Enge explained.
You might also encounter another kind of client with strange ideas about SEO. This client really doesn’t want to be involved in the SEO process. They show little to no interest in what you need to do. All they want you to do is get high rankings for them in the search engines, or increased traffic, or whatever. They may show impatience with the many questions you need to ask, or get surly when you try to explain what you’ll need to do and why.
This kind of client might not answer emails. They might even throw up obstacles in your path, refusing to make more than the most minor changes to their web site. Or you might find yourself dealing with multiple people to get changes made to the client’s site – someone who maintains the client’s content management system, perhaps, or the web designer, the site’s host, maybe even the copy writer for the site. This may be the kind of problem you’re more likely to have with a larger company, but then again even smaller firms can be reluctant to change, clinging to one particular design they’ve had since the beginning.
And then there is the cheap client. I don’t mean someone like the client I mentioned in the first part, who may or may not benefit from SEO because of the expense and the return on investment. A client that says “I need to do this as cheap as possible” should be told your price – and don’t offer a discount. If they try to pick your price apart, you need to think about whether you’re willing to work on the site piecemeal. A client who is that worried about cost up front is likely to quibble with you over every single invoice, and will probably complain about how long the work is taking and how much it’s costing him. You don’t need this kind of headache.
Next: Bad Expectations >>
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