SEO is an intricate organic search enhancement campaign. Much of its inner working is restricted to a handful of people in Google. Hence, it becomes difficult to make clients understand why we are doing what we are doing in SEO. Additionally, with growing algorithm updates, things do get a bit blurry about how organic search is influenced. One crucial aspect of getting the SEO objective to meet with the end result is client education.
The need for client education
It is pertinent to note that as digital marketers, our in-depth domain view of SEO is radically different from the superficial view of our clients. That is why they hire us in the first place! So it is important to make them understand why specific target keywords will work and other keywords won’t work or might delay in bringing the expected yields from organic search. We strongly feel that if the clients do not know how Google works, or how keywords are needed to their business success, the partnership of the client with the SEO vendor will be a shaky one.
The need to match expectations with the SEO functioning
We see a lot of clients coming with a general query “My competitor is ranking for xxx keyword, make my brand rank too for the same”. It simply doesn’t work that way. The competitor may have employed some other online visibility boost technique which might be different from what we may be doing in-house.
For instance, in one case we saw that the competitor was ranking high on a particular keyword simply because he had employed PPC to grow using paid search. It would have been impossible to replicate the same outcome using the organic search objectives of SEO. Also while some keywords may land impressions, it may not generate leads or business. Hence, the client and SEO agency needs to sit together and brainstorm about the objective of the entire campaign and then target keywords based on the goals set.
What to cover in client education?
- The first few sessions of brainstorming need the SEO agency to explain the difference between transactional, informational, or local search queries.
- Explain how the key intention would not be to simply bring in traffic. A better-worded objective would be to bring in quality traffic that actually converts to better business online for the client
- Share the process of narrowing down keyword based on performance and competition and how you would be going after a particular set of keywords
- Based on the keywords targeted provide information on what is the expected timeline for the campaign to start delivering results.
It is obvious that a bit of effort is needed at the beginning of the relationship to make the client understand what can be achieved and what cannot be achieved when you go after a handful of carefully chosen keywords. This way, there will be almost no scope for disappointment later on.