The Problem With Being An SEO Consultant – It’s Always Your Fault

Quick disclaimer – this post contains advice on getting SEO done whether it be within your company or for a client as opposed to hands-on SEO tips.

Just before the start of 2011 I published a post on my personal blog titled – “Why Knowing Everything About SEO Doesn’t Mean $#!^“.  I genuinely didn’t expect the type of response the post got. I thought it may annoy a bunch of people, in particular SEO Consultants!  However the reaction has been great and as a result, I wanted to write a follow on for you guys which contains more of an actionable list of items as opposed to me just having a rant.

Also in this post I wanted to take a different angle.  My previous post talked more about how knowing everything about SEO doesn’t matter if you don’t actually make sure the SEO gets done.  In this post I want to address some of the excuses that SEO Consultants use when tasks don’t get done, specifically, why it is always your fault if these tasks don’t get done.

I could probably generalise this a bit and say that things not getting done is a common problem amongst consultants in many industries.  Quite often we’re paid to consult and give expert advice, not necessarily do stuff.  In my opinion though when it comes to SEO, if the SEO you recommend doesn’t get done – it’s your fault.

Yes it is.  It isn’t the fault of –

• The client
• The developers
• The designers
• Your boss
• Your dog eating it

When I first heard this at a training session I went to a few months after I joined Distilled, I was ready to argue.  Something like this was going around my head –

“But if the client doesn’t do what I tell them, thats their fault”

“But if the developers don’t have a clue what a title tag is and can’t change it, thats their fault”

It was my fault, I shouldn’t be pointing the finger and blaming someone else.

Why is it my fault?

Because the client is paying me to make a difference to their business and give them an ROI.  They’re not paying me to tell them stuff and leave them to it.  Whilst many consultants in other industries do work like this, I don’t think SEO Consultants should.  SEO is still evolving and is still a relatively new concept to a lot of people and they need that extra bit of help to get it done.  The best SEO consulting in the world doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t get done.

To try and explain this further, I’ve got some examples below of scenarios which are quite common in the world of SEO consulting, these also apply just as much to in-house SEOs.  Each one of these is a case of where you think you have done your job, but in reality, you haven’t.

1) You Deliver a Report and Think Your Job is Done

I’ve made this mistake.  I’ve spent hours upon hours producing a report for a client.  At the time, I didn’t realise it was a report, I thought it was a strategy.  Here are a few examples of the types of reports –

• Technical site audits
• Competitor analysis
• Link building strategies

Within these reports was loads of great information, SEO tips and recommendations for the client.  I was totally confident that all of the stuff I recommended would give the clients website long term SEO benefit.  Sometimes these would be 30 pages long!  Wow – tons of info!

Did the client read it?  Nope.

They didn’t want a 30 page report from me, all they wanted to know was what they had to do.  What would have been better, would be to deliver them a small, actionable list of items that if done, will do x, y and z for their business.  It can be as simple as –

1. Submit your website to local business directories in the attached spreadsheet
2. Add a call to action to your website to get people to leave reviews on your Google Places account
3. Create an XML sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster Tools

All of these things are tasks that can go onto the clients to-do list.  The simplicity makes it much more likely that they’d get done.  This is much better than writing a long paragraph explaining how having more reviews on their Google Places account can help their rankings and how they should add a call to action to get them.

I also deliver a document which elaborates on each of the actions, this is still necessary in order to give some context to what you’re saying.  This can include things such as links to help files on Google on how to do stuff like XML sitemaps etc.  But the to-do list is the focus and what becomes the deliverable, it is then your job to get this list of jobs done.

Action –

• Don’t deliver a report document, deliver a strategy along with an actionable list of tasks – then make sure they get done

Leading onto my next reason why it is your fault, this style of delivering advice would work for most clients but not all of them.  It depends on the type of client they are and how well you know them.

2) You Don’t Get Close Enough to the Client

Again, I’ll hold my hand up to this one.  I’ve never been a fan of using the phone and probably never will be, but I’ve got better in the last few months.  The point of what I’m saying here is that you can’t rely on email alone to keep up-to-date with your clients and expect to know what is going on in their business.  Only face to face conversations and chats on the phone can do this for you.

If you work in-house, hey you don’t get away with this one! 🙂

Working in-house, you should still be trying to get close to the people who you need to help you get stuff done.  This could be developers, designers or writers, you need to know how they like to work so that you can get them to do stuff for you.  If the Senior Developer in your company isn’t a morning person, then don’t go and ask them to rewrite 3000 URLs for you at 9am!  They’ll probably look at you like this –

Whoever it is that matters in your company or client, you need to be getting close to them.  Find out who it is that matters and who makes the decisions further up the ladder.  A great way of doing this is by working from a client’s office for a day or even a few hours.  Getting to see how they work and sitting in on meetings can be very valuable in working out how best to get stuff done.

The thing that amazed me on this one was that just being around (even if you’re doing other client work) has a lot of value to the client.  It can help staff in knowing you are there and can answer questions instantly rather than over email.  Also just being in meetings where SEO is discussed can help get SEO shifted up the agenda a little bit and you have the perfect opportunity to argue your point.  You can also be there when developers start on SEO tasks so you can answer questions straight away and make sure changes are implemented properly.

Actions –

• Talk to your client either on the phone or in person at least once a week
• Work from your client’s office once every few weeks

3) The Client Doesn’t Like You

Yep this is your fault too 🙂

I think this is a rare one, but it can happen.  Afterall the client has come to you for help with their SEO so they should be quite welcoming and like having you on board.  However there are instances where there may be some resistance to your presence –

• There is already an in-house Marketing / SEO person who feels their position is threatened
• Developers or designers are worried their already full workload is about to get bigger because of you

There are a couple of ways of overcoming resistance from these people.

In-house SEO or Marketing People – Make them look good 

If there is an in-house person already, then it is totally understandable that they may feel threatened by you.  So try and reassure them that you’re not looking to get rid of them and enforce the fact that for an SEO campaign to be successful, you need their help more than anyone.  Keep them involved right from the start and work with them as much as you can, this is a classic example of where working at a clients office can reward you.

Another tip here – make them look good in front of their boss.  Get them to work on something which you can then show to their boss which can get them a pat on the back.  This can really help their morale too.  Asking for their help on a task can also make them like you.

Developers, Writers etc – Demonstrate the results of the work they did

In terms of other members of the team such as developers, designers or writers, the approach is similar.  With developers, don’t drop a huge list of jobs on their desk in one go unless they ask for it.  They are busy people so it can be best just to give them a few small jobs initially and let them see the results, when they can see the value of what they are doing and see that “hey this SEO stuff really works” then it is easier to give them bigger jobs to do.

When it comes to writers, it can be very easy to demonstrate the value of their work.  Just show them Analytics stats on the traffic that their content pulls in, tweets about their content or the links that it generated.  These stats can be a great motivator to get them on-board with your efforts.

Action –

• Make your client look good in front of their boss to get them on-side with you
• Tell people when they do work that results in an increase in traffic or links etc.  CC in their boss on an email too.

4) You Didn’t Own the Problems

This is a huge one for any project.  It is nice and somewhat easy to take ownership of solutions.  We all love coming up with a great new idea for a client then managing that idea through to completion.  But what happens when something goes wrong?  Do you take ownership of that too?  There aren’t many SEO projects that don’t hit problems at some point, so taking ownership of the problems and making sure they get solved is important.

The last thing you should be doing is seeing a problem and just assuming that someone else will take care of it.

When a problem arises, make sure that the solution is on someones to-do list.  This should ensure that the problem gets solved.

Action –

• Don’t wait for someone else to take charge of problems, put it on your own to-do list or make sure it’s on someone elses

5) You Didn’t Work Closely Enough With Other Agencies

It’s quite common for multiple agencies to be working for one of your clients.  You could have the following –

• SEO
• PPC
• PR
• Developers
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate Management

Sometimes you can make recommendations that may lead to tasks for another agency to implement.  The common one above has been to developers.  But lets take another example.  Perhaps you are working with another PR agency who are being employed by your client.

As I’m sure many of you are aware, PR work can result in some fantastic high quality links.  But not all PR agencies are aware of SEO and the value of links.  So they may be getting lots of online brand mentions of your URL but not thinking to follow this up with a call to see if it can be made a live link.  This is where you need to be proactive in working with them to ensure that the client is getting as much SEO benefit as possible from all agencies they work with.

Working well with other agencies and getting to know them is just as important as getting to know the client.  Again, you should be making an effort to get close to them and see how they work.  A good idea here is to setup regular “all agency” calls where you can keep each other updated on your work and get status updates on things that you have asked for.  Work closely with them so that you don’t end up like this guy:

Action –

• Have a weekly status update with the agencies that you work with to check on tasks you’ve given them

Conclusion

All of this isn’t easy, I’m by no means perfect at it.  So it takes time to change the way you work and get yourself into the mindset of delivering change to a client rather than a report.  But once you get it, you’ll notice a huge difference in the way you approach problems and try to solve them.  In particular with SEO where the clients are relying on you as the expert, you need to make sure you’re delivering change.  Otherwise no SEO is going to get done and ultimiately they’ll blame you.