Explaining SEO to a Client

Hi All,

How would you explain SEO to a client in a short summary? MY site has great positioning for many different terms related to my client’s services.

I have a new client however, and since they ARE new, I don't have any keywords in place for their concept. They want to know what plan of action I have in place to guarantee leads. More specifically, they want to know exactly how SEO works. I've never had a client interested in this information.

Any advice on how I can explain SEO to a client without giving them too much unnecessary information...just something that will assure them we can perform.

Thanks,
-D

Hi! Not sure if this would help but I tend to lay it all on the line. The way I look at it is this:

A) They know what needs to be done and don't have the time to do it themselves.

B) They have no knowledge of how it works and proving you know what you're talking about should get you the deal.

By appearing knowledgeable and honest you will most likely get a better crop of clients with a higher retention rate.

If you never before had a client who wanted to know "How SEO works" and what you will do to "guarantee leads" you've either been very lucky or very quiet

The answer is quite simple though:
First you explain the basics of SEO/SEM, how you tackle it and - basically - what you will do for them.
Next you show them examples of sites you have successfully optimised (or give them contact numbers for satisfied clients).
The last is to tell them that you can't guarantee anything!

I do have knowledge in SEO practices. However, it’s rare that I talk to a client about SEO. Rather, one of my sales people wants to know how to explain SEO to his client.

That in itself is the problem. SEO has a steep learning curve. MY sales guy wants to know what I'm going to do from an SEO perspective so he can then tell his client. For me personally, that's hard to summarize in a short sentence. I will mention your advice to my sales person, thanks.

-D

Hi ClickyB,

Thanks for your reply as well. I will actually pass all this information to my salesperson.

Thanks,
-D

Hey what happened to SEO_AMs post? It disappeared lol

I didn't notice SEO_AM posted... Do you know what his post said?

-D

Nope - I saw your thread from the home page and it said the last poster was Seo_AM unless I am imagining things.

Gotcha

I've had the same problem in hiring sales people to sell seo. People want to know what specifically has to be done and since it's never really the same thing the company person should know what they are talking about. After going through a lot of useless sales people I finally convinced the company to get a higher end guy on the payscale who knows his stuff and it has paid off tremendously ever since.

We have handful of salespeople who know a thing or two about SEO. Most are clueless. But I think that's good advice, nadnutz. If it were up to me, I'd make it company policy that all salespeople take a class or two on basic SEO techniques.

-D

The biggest challenge to explaining SEO is making the client understand the importance of SEO from a profits point of view. This in most cases is what they are interested in. Having a couple of case studies will help, for example the % traffic that a site had before ranking and after ranking.

You also need to add benefits like the value of SE referrals. Improved conversions and quality traffic is by far the greatest benefit for them, their return on investment is therefor very good. It is important that they understand the importance of SEO in a broader sense inline with the other online marketing functions. So here goes my opinion on this hopefully offering a new and fresh approach that can assist you in getting your own explanation going.

SEO to a large extend is a central part of online marketing. Online marketing strategies contribute to a large extend to the success of SEO campaigns. News releases are natural ways of obtaining high quality relevant back links to a site contributing to the rankings of a site in the SERPS. Therefore if they do make use of news articles, which they should from a branding and marketing perspective, they can automatically benefit from the services of an SEO to ensure that they also get benefits from Search Engines.

There are marketing strategies that also contribute to a successful campaign of obtaining natural back links. Email marketing, Viral campaigns, Affiliate programs and community marketing. These should all be done with the assistance of an SEO to ensure that they benefit from obtaining natural back links which will if themed correctly and done in a right way obtain a flood of natural back links and added publicity.

Explaining that there are on-page factors and off-page factors involved in the success of an SEO campaign can also help allot.

Finally do some research into the success of SEO. For example I am doing SEO for a company that has a marketing budget for banner adds and other online advertising campaigns in access of $500k a month. SEO delivers 70% of their traffic and conversion ratio is 3 times that of any other online marketing strategy they are using. It is also most notable that the retention and loyalty of SE referred customers are a great deal more than other customers. Although this is my example you should do your own research and be able to show it if called for.

Remember you do not wish to teach the prospective client how to do SEO but show him the benefits in a way that makes sense to them. After all this, the customer can ask questions about how SEO is done, and obviously this should be easy for you to answer

Just my 5 Cents...

Chatmaster- I appreciate your take on this, very helpful!

Thanks,
-D

Truly a pleasure!

I try it like this:



If the client needs more information or is still unsure I'll be pointing them to this blog entry and the SEO Primer and Web Site barriers to entry have both been very helpful so far.