Taking on SEO clients can be tricky, especially at the
start. Usually, you meet a client, prepare a questionnaire and ask important
questions about what they’re looking for and what kind of a SEO campaign you
would be able to design for them in order to achieve what they want to achieve.
Experienced SEO professionals usually know how to initiate
things, but often times, inexperienced or new SEOs and SEMs fail to ask the
right set of questions and get all the information that they need in order to
design a SEO campaign for their clients. As a result, they end up being overly
reliant on follow-up correspondence and at times, are unable to help the client
with their SEO in the best possible way.
It is essential to go in prepared when meeting a client for
SEO. For this purpose, here is a list of important questions to ask them in
that first meeting, that will allow you to assess what sort of a SEO campaign
you should design for them, and leave a positive impression on the client as
well!
1. What do you want to achieve by putting your business
online? Does the client have a specific objective(s) – a specific purpose or
perhaps something that he intends to achieve from this project – such as more
sales, increased revenue, offering a new product or service, or simply more
exposure?
2. Do you have a website? Or better yet, what kind of a
presence do you have on the internet – including (but not limited to) a webite,
or a blog, Facebook page, etc.?
It is essential to know what kind of presence your client
already has on the internet. If he doesn’t already have a website or a blog,
will you be responsible for designing it? Designing a website is a whole new
task in itself, so make sure you communicate this to your client, and make this
as clear as possible.
3. Structure of the website: It is essential to understand
the structure of the website. Does it use a popular CMS (such as Wordpress, for
instance), or is based on custom-designed HTML pages? Knowing this will allow
you to assess whether you or your organization would be a good fit for
designing an SEO campaign for this sort of website or not, and how exactly will
you go about doing it.
4. Niche and competition: In addition, it is also essential
to understand the niche or the industry the website targets. Start off with a
general niche, such as weight loss, technology, etc. and narrow this down to a
sub-niche. This will allow you to better judge the client’s requirements,
devise a SEO strategy, as well as determine the keywords relevant to the client
(see below) and what kind of a competition exists for those keywords.
5. Assuming that the client does in fact have a website or a
blog already, ask about what kind of SEO has already been used on the site in
the past. This is an important question: it lets you know whether any SEO has
been performed on the website – either by an organization, or by the client
himself.
For instance if a website has been affected by Panda or
Penguin – due to, say, abused tags, spun content or low-quality backlinks –
what steps you’ll need to take as far as recovery is concerned. Doing so will
also allow you to provide this information to the client, and tell them how
much work will needed to be done in order to clean up the mess. Speaking of
which…
6. Has the website been penalized by Google in the past? Did
the client notice a drop in visitors, rankings and sales all of a sudden or
out-of-the-blue?
Helping a website recover from a penalty can be extremely
difficult – and at times, near impossible – but in certain cases, do-able. A
lot of websites and blogs have recovered from Google’s search engine algorithm
changes, namely the Panda and Penguin updates, however it is anything but a
walk in the park!
Knowing this lets you determine the number of things you
will need to do in order to start the process of recovery, as well as let the
client know about the extra work required.
7. What set of keywords are valuable to the client, and will
want to target and rank well for? This is related to point no. 3 above. Once
you have a fair idea of what the niche/industry is that you will be targeting,
it is essential to ask your client (or help them come up with) keywords which
they thing are valuable to them and/or their business.
Playing with keywords is a bit of guess-work, as well as
some good old marketing intelligence. Use tools available at your disposal in
order to come up with a set of keywords that will be valuable to your client.
Determining the keywords your client wants to rank for, as
well as their competitiveness will also help you determine how much you would
charge your clients for it. For instance first page rankings for weight loss
means you’re playing a whole different ball-game than, say, ranking on the
first page for iPhone apps or any less-competitive keyword.
8. What is your unique selling proposition? Ask your client
what sets them apart from their competition. While most clients might already
have a clearly-defined USP, a lot might not, and it will be a great challenge
for you to come up with a USP for you client. Remember that this USP could very
well be one of the focus keywords of the campaign, and your SEO might revolve
around this.
9. What kind of visitors does the client intend on bringing
in? What visitors do they want to attract and generally speaking, what is their
target audience? The answer to these questions will let any SEO design a
laser-targeted SEO campaign that brings targeted visitors and readership to the
blog. In addition, it will also allow him/her to develop a reference line in
terms of how to marketing and promote the client’s online presence, as well as
their business/organization in general.
10. Would the client want a social media marketing campaign
as well? Social media is now a big part of SEO, and a very important SEO
ranking factor as well. Let the client know that a strong presence on social
media is a great way to engage with (potential and existing) clients and
customers, get more exposure, build backlinks, get traffic and build authority.
If there is a social media campaign in place, you could
offer your services to improve upon it. If not, you could offer to launch a
social media campaign from scratch, and making it an integral part of your
client’s overall SEO campaign.
11. Finally, ask the client what their expectations are from
this SEO campaign. After all’s been said and done, what does the client expect
to achieve from the project? Make sure that the client’s expectations remain
realistic and achievable. As you would know, a campaign could take months, if
not more, to start showing results and any expectations of ranking on top of
the SERP overnight are utterly unrealistic; make sure the client knows this as
well! Lay down the possibilities, along with the impossibilities as clearly as
you can, so that the expectations are clear right off the bat.
Define your own KPIs, and make sure that the client is
onboard as well!
Any questions or comments are more than welcome!
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