7 Difficult Client Expectations You WILL Encounter in SEO (And How to Fix Them)

In the course of doing SEO work for clients, a portion of my time is inevitably spent correcting misconceptions and skewed expectations that many clients have. In some cases, these are slight misconceptions based on outdated practices and can be corrected with an authoritative article or two.

Sometimes, the problem is more serious.

If the client’s expectations are so high that they can never be met, then they should never be taken on as a client, regardless of the money involved. Your reputation is at stake. More often, though, clients fail to divulge their expectations during the contracting process and hear only what conforms to their preconceptions. On the other hand, the salesperson may be so anxious to sell that they never see the signs of an impending disconnect.

There are several erroneous expectations of search engine optimization and SEO companies that, if left unidentified and untreated, will ultimately lead to communication breakdowns between SEO and client, distrust, disappointment, and inevitable failure of the campaign. Ideally, these should be identified and rooted out during the sales process — ideally.

Difficult Expectation #1: Speed of Ranking Increases

When SEO is done right, rankings will increase. The speed of the increase is something that the SEO specialist only has so much control over. There are many factors at work that it’s difficult to make good judgments on how long it will take for a keyword to hit a certain page or position, given that there may be others going after similar keywords with more resources to devote.

As a general rule, it’s much easier to jump 10 positions when you’re starting on the 10^th page than it is to jump 10 positions when you’re on the 2^nd page of results. What’s problematic is when you E-mail to tell a client that some of their main keywords have reached the first page and they respond with expectations of getting those same keywords to the top position within a week. It happens.

There is a timing factor that must be accounted for in SEO and can’t be circumvented. If timing were irrelevant, companies would shovel enough money into SEO during month 1 to get the rankings they want. That’s not how it works.

Difficult Expectation #2: Number of Keywords Targeted

Clients want to rank for everything, but most clients aren’t willing to pay to rank for everything at once. And even when they recognize that their SEO budget leaves them shy of being able to tackle some highly competitive terms, they’ll inevitably try to get them onto the keyword research list.

You have to communicate that increasing the volume of keywords only dilutes the amount of work being done on each keyword. I’ve seen campaigns die a painful, drawn-out death because the keyword list was too broad initially for the amount of time budgeted to spend on the campaign. The end of the initial contract came and all of the keywords were sitting on page 2 or 3, on the cusp of success, but unable to drive the traffic, leads, and revenues needed to justify the expense. Don’t make that mistake. When in doubt, side with a narrow list.

If a client wants you to track and report on keywords (even related terms) that aren’t part of the link-building focus, just say no. It’s hard when they claim to fully recognize that you won’t be working on those keywords, but trust me when I say that you won’t be able to keep a client from becoming emotionally invested in the terms. You’re better off introducing them to ways to track their own rankings using something like the Rank Checker plugin.

Difficult Expectation #3: Quantity of Backlinks

SEO companies should be reporting on the backlinks they’re requesting and successfully building. Clients have come to expect this. But when clients start calculating their “cost per link” and talk about quitting in favor of “cheaper links” from another country, you know there’s a disconnect.

One of the most commonly screwed up expectations is that of link quantity. If SEO success were based solely on the quantity of links built, you can bet that SEO would have a much different look and feel to it – a very robotic, automated look and feel. Search engines would also have a very difficult time trying to serve up relevant content, which is why it doesn’t work like that. Search engines want a natural-looking backlink portfolio, which means a necessary influx of both quantity and quality-driven backlinks.

Also keep in mind that the volume of links built in any given period is likely to fluctuate based on the distribution of link building techniques being used as well as what the site needs at any given time.

Difficult Expectation #4: Quality of Backlinks

If they’re not concerned about quantity, clients are concerned about the quality of backlinks (or most certainly both). This is more than understandable. After all, after the initial on-page optimization, the effort moves almost entirely to the off-page efforts.

What’s not understandable is a client whose SEO campaign is progressing well, who claims that they could have hired someone else who could get them lots of PR 8 and PR 9 .edu and .gov links and wants to know when we’re going to start doing that. I used to think that the reports of this type of client were exaggerated — if only.

The problems with this mentality are several. PageRank is a quality indicator, but not the end goal. SEO companies should be aiming to get as many high-quality, relevant links as possible for the client, but in many cases, the industry is not competitive and doesn’t need those links and the campaign is much more efficient when targeting relevant links with greater flexibility in determining the anchor text. Clients should remember that they’re paying for efficiency and ROI, not links.

Difficult Expectation #5: Amount of Traffic

Clients really like to see site traffic increases that correspond to ranking increases, and as an SEO, this is one of the easiest things to guarantee. Where clients get disappointed is when they’ve gone through the trouble to make projections about how much traffic will come from their rankings based on search volumes and calculate click-through and it doesn’t happen. Very rarely will a client’s own projected traffic be exceeded by the actual results. The truth is that whether you’re at #1 or #21, it just doesn’t happen. Charts like those shown below (2006 data from AOL) create an opiate-like sense of secure predictability for SEO clients that inevitably turns into a pipe dream.

Posted originally: 2010-10-14 09:00:10