Negosentro.com | A Step by Step Guide on Explaining SEO to Clients | SEO in the Philippines has come a long way in the past decade. From SMEs to multinational brands, companies are beginning to understand the low-cost, high-quality revenue that SEO can provide. With over 73 million internet users in the country who frequent Google to search for products or services, it’s the SEO company’s job to help businesses get right in front of their target customers – no matter how small or niche their audience.
But if you work as an SEO specialist, chances are you’ll have some trouble, at one point or another, explaining exactly what you do. A quick version would be, “I help my clients rank better on Google.” A more detailed one goes, “I make clients’ websites more visible so that they will appear more often when people search for whatever they sell.”
SEO is a broad topic that covers a lot of ground. You have content, backlinks, codes, keywords, site optimization, and other complex tactics. As an SEO company, it’s your job to not only create and implement successful digital marketing campaigns but to also explain SEO to your clients in such a way that it doesn’t come off as a foreign language.
Why do I need to explain how SEO works to my clients?
When some clients hire you, they do it because they need a specialist who can do the work for them. After all, they are businesspeople and have many areas of marketing to take care of. SEO is just another box to tick.
Even so, many brands continue to be cynical when it comes to SEO and digital marketing as a whole. They just don’t know how it works. If they don’t know how it works, they won’t fully understand how it can impact their ROI, they won’t see the inherent value of SEO. However, if you educate them on what goes on behind-the-scenes, you not only get to flex your expertise, but you also demonstrate what SEO can do for their business. When clients trust that you know what you’re doing and how it benefits them, closing the deal and retaining them long-term becomes easier.
Explaining SEO to Clients: A Step by Step Guide
Your credibility and competence as an SEO company depend on your ability to explain and demonstrate value. Scroll along for some tips on how to explain SEO to your clients so they understand how SEO can help them reach their business goals.
1. Assess their level of SEO knowledge
Knowing whether your client is an SEO guru or novice helps you determine the level of communication you should provide. If they’re already well-versed in SEO, you can just provide a brief refresher on the technical terms and focus more on the unique selling points of your services and packages.
But if it’s their first dip into the world of SEO, lay out the framework like how authors describe the setting of their stories in detail at the beginning of novels. Explain concepts such as site audit, keyword research, backlinks, and more. When you’re immersed in those things every day, it can be easy to forget that those jargons are not part of your client’s vocabulary. Don’t expect them to know what you know.
Begin the discussion with a list of questions that assess their overall SEO knowledge and needs. From there, you can begin clearly defining the necessary KPIs and frame your communications in a way that articulates your work.
2. Set expectations early
Setting expectations early reduces confusion for your client and will increase your chances of hitting goals or deadlines. Everyone wants a quick fix. Some clients assume that as soon as you implement the optimized content and generate backlinks, they will instantly rank #1 for their keywords and their phone will be ringing nonstop. While we would all love for that to be a reality, that’s just not the case.
Tell them the truth – that good quality SEO takes time. According to a study by Ahrefs, it takes 61-182 days (roughly two to six months) for sites to rank on the first page of Google. This is because it takes time to produce relevant and engaging content, build backlinks, and push down competitors with the same keywords.
Additionally, discuss the plan and the goals you’re trying to achieve. The client may see changes to website health and traffic, but significant improvements will take months. Ensure them that you’ll give weekly updates and monthly reports to discuss the changes. Let them know where their money will go and how it will generate results.
Most importantly, tell them that SEO is not a one and done activity. If they want to stay competitive, SEO shouldn’t stop once they start seeing results. It takes as long as they want to keep improving their visibility online.
3. Inform them of industry best practices
As an SEO expert, you serve as a type of teacher for your clients. When explaining SEO to them, provide a brief overview of the best industry practices. Let them know what search engines are looking for and how you will provide those for them. This is a good way to sell the unique selling points of your services.
For instance, it’s vital to discuss the importance of on-site SEO activities such as optimizing site structure, improving page speed, and posting quality content. But on-site SEO isn’t enough to build a great internet presence. Your clients also need off-site SEO such as backlinking or guest blogging to complement on-site activities. Tell them about the off-page services you provide in your package, and how previous efforts have helped your past clients rank faster on Google.
4. Give them real-life analogies they can relate to
A good way to explain the technical terms in SEO is by breaking down professional jargon into real-life analogies. For example, you want to discuss the importance of external links. You can let them imagine external links as votes for their website. Google crawls through millions of webpages. When the crawler bots find a link on a website that points to a page on your site, they count that link as a vote. It means you’re an authoritative source for information. More votes also mean more people are talking about your content, which means more power. Your website will pop up more often than Google because the search engine trusts your site more than others.
However, it’s keen to note that not all votes are equal. Look at it from this angle: if a chef tells you that your ramen restaurant is great, his opinion is important. If he’s Japanese or trained in Japan, it probably matters more. It’s the same with external links. Links from pages that are relevant to your industry are more valuable.
Sell your SEO services with analogies like the one listed above! It will help distill SEO down and keep your clients engaged. They will also understand the inherent value of SEO when technical terms are explained in a context that they’re familiar with.
5. Tell them Google is still the Final Boss
If you work in SEO, you can attest that despite your best efforts, Google runs the show. At the end of the day, the search engine decides whether a website succeeds or not. They also constantly release new updates that impact website rankings and traffic – which also emphasizes the need for continual SEO hygiene.
The best approach here is transparency and to follow white-hat SEO tactics. Assure them that if ever there’s a major algorithm update, like the Google Penguin, you’ll let them know right away, even if their site is not directly impacted. Additionally, as long as you’re following best industry practices, they can take confidence in the fact that they won’t experience major position changes as much as those who do not. This is also a great leeway into explaining why your SEO company’s services are superior.
Earn Your Clients’ Trust by Educating Them About SEO
As an SEO company, providing SEO results isn’t the end-all and be-all, although that’s a big part of it. It’s important to give your clients credit for what they know and educate them on tactics they’re not familiar with. SEO is a results-driven strategy and when you help your clients understand it better, the more they can see its value.
Explaining SEO to decision-makers and business owners can prove to be difficult.. But getting eye-level with your clients and prospects can really win them over.
Use the language of your clients, build off what they already know, and include examples and analogies from their industry. The end results will be high rankings, more traffic, and more leads for their company.
