There is nothing more frustrating than dealing with a client who refuses to wait for results. Just this morning, I received an email from a client that I did very brief work for (keyword research and wrote some tags for them). They made the recommended changes to their site, and after waiting 24 hours, emailed me back wondering why their rankings hadn’t change. In fact, they were quite upset that they hadn’t.

I’m not sure if they were concerned that I was some sort of snake oil salesman, or if they really are that impatient. After reviewing the report I gave them, I hardly believe it is even remotely possible for them to think of me as a scammer, so I decided it must have been that latter. I’m actually not sure which is worse.

So how do you handle this? The first thing you need to do is go through all the recommended changes you gave them, and make sure they implemented them. In my case they hadn’t. Even if they had, you can still mention it in the email and it will show them that you are looking into the issue. You could start the email off like:

Implemented Incorrectly:

I took a look at the changes we recommended you make to your site, and noticed that only a handful of them were implemented. I apologize for not stressing this before, but it is very important that you make all of the changes we recommend, and make them exactly as we described.

Implemented Correctly:

I took a look at the changes we recommended for your site and noticed that they were all implemented successfully.

The next step involves explaining how the Search Engines work and why changes that you made 24 hours ago might not have changed your ranking position yet. This is a problem I see very often, and I think it can be avoidable if you do a good job explaining how Search Engines and SEO works in your preliminary meetings. I remember when I had a potential client who wanted to rank organically with his new site for the keyword “clothes” by the next day. After explaining that it was damn near impossible to make that happen, he kindly decided to not proceed with the organic SEO work. Did I lose the account? Yes, but I avoided wasted work that would eventually lead to an unhappy customer.

Once you’re ready to send out that email, make sure you have someone read it over to make sure you don’t sound irritated (which you probably are right now.) The tone of your email has to sound calm, and reassuring that you know what you are doing. At this point, it is really important that you don’t use industry jargon and that you really dumb it down and tell them like it is.

Now that we’ve hopefully diffused this bomb, I think it is important to bring up a different question: Should you agree to only do part of an SEO project? For example, the client I was referring to above only had keyword research and meta tags written for them. But what about building links and fixing architectural issues that are also holding their site back in the SERPs? Shouldn’t those also be addressed? You might say, “but what if the client can’t afford it?” or “some help is better than no help at all!” I’m really torn as to what the right answer is. What do you think?

Take the poll below and explain in the comments why you think you should or shouldn’t have to do a full SEO project.

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

The Secret to Handling Impatient Clients

Gather around my fellow Internet marketers, I’m about to reveal a BIG secret of mine…

Your clients don’t know as much about Internet marketing as you do.

Shocking, eh? Apparently this comes as a surprise to many marketers in our industry. I’ve had the privilege of reading many monthly reports that Internet marketing professionals send their clients, and I have to say…it’s embarrassing. I’ve seen everything from reports filled with nothing but ranking reports to a printout of each page of their client’s Google Analytics.

Listen up, folks: there is a reason your clients hired you for this job – it’s because they aren’t experts or don’t have time to become one. So when you report to them weekly, monthly, or both, keep that in mind. To be blunt, you need to dumb it down.

I often refer to this as professional blindness. It occurs when you assume a client is an expert or very knowledgeable in your field. While I’m sure they are flattered that you give them so much credit, they would be even more appreciative of a report they can actually understand.

So what’s the magic formula when it comes to reporting? Well it really depends on what type of reporting you’ll be doing. This guide will focus on weekly/monthly project progress reports. We can detail the others at a later time.

When writing the report, remember to include:

1. Current project status. How far along are we with the project, and how well are we doing? You’ll need to include some analytics data, but keep it short and sweet. I usually give my results as (and yes, I do explain what I mean by “organic searches”):

During January, we had XXXX organic searches that ended in visits to the site, not including [company name]. (We never include [company name] in those numbers because we don’t feel like we get credit for those. You would get those searchers anyway.) In February we saw a XX% increased in unbranded searches (XXXX organic searches total in February).

2. Conversions. Did you see an increase or decrease in conversions, why? This should be even more important to the client. Don’t go into too much detail, but demonstrate to them that you know why it happened.
3. Goals for the next month. Some clients are more hands off than others, and because of that, I make an effort to describe what our goals are for the upcoming month. What mini projects we hope to complete and the expected result.

You should also keep the following guidelines in mind:

Keep it short. This is especially true when reporting to high executives. Many clients prefer to be on a ‘need to know’ basis. I shoot for a one page monthly report, or two pages at the longest. I also like to break the report into two sections. The first section is non-detailed important information outlined above. The second section is titled: “Below are the details on the SEO work we completed for you, in case you are interested.” It lets them know that if they don’t have time (or if they don’t care) to read on, they don’t have to. It is just the details.

Avoid industry jargon. Make sure to explain any industry terms if you need to include them. When mentioning an idea for link bait, explain is exactly what link bait is and how it will benefit their site. Remember to also spell out any acronyms.

Anyone without any Internet marketing experience should be able to understand your report. I’ve often heard it described as keeping it at a “high executive level.” You can always compile a more detailed report at their request, but this will keep them from sitting back in there chair and mumbling, “WTF?”

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

Writing a Report that Makes Your Client Scream, “I GET IT!”

We’ve all been in the situation before:

You have at least a 12 month contract with a client, where you charge them monthly. This month, however, you spent the whole time waiting for them to approve things for you before you could implement them and move on to the next step. Because of their holdup, you didn’t do any work for them. The time has come to do your invoicing, do you charge them?

I’m really torn on what the best practice is for this situation, and I think there are arguments for whether or not you should charge them for that month.

3 Reasons Why You Should Charge Them

It’s their fault. You were in a perfect position to do a bunch of work for them, but they didn’t take advantage of it. Assuming you made it clear that they need to be able to turn things around quickly in order for everything to work well, you shouldn’t feel like you are being unethical by charging them. Especially if you frequently tried to get their attention.

You have a contract. In your contract it explains that they will be invoiced monthly for however long the contract is. It shouldn’t come to any surprise that they received another one.

You have a business to look out for. You have to be careful when you decide not to charge clients. You need to keep yourself in a position where you can be picky with who your clients are, and to do that, you need to collect the money that people owe you.

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Charge Them

You didn’t do any work. What are you charging them for? They didn’t take up any extra time of yours (except for the nagging), so should you be able to charge them for work that wasn’t completed?

Your reputation. You have a reputation to protect. How will it look if you charge them and they get very upset and start spreading word that your business practices are unethical?

Keeping the customer satisfied. What’s worse than missing out on one payment? Missing out on all of the others. If the customer feels ripped off because you charged them, there is a chance they might cancel the contract all together.

This is a really important decision you need to make. On the one hand, you can always extend their contract an extra month. On the other hand, you have expenses that month that need to be taken care of, and it isn’t always as easy as it sounds to not collect a couple thousand dollars.

Whether or not you agree a web marketing contract should be laid out like this, which do you think is the right answer?

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

To Charge or Not to Charge?

Is there anything more frustrating than coming up with a great piece of link bait or a really cool web application, and it going right over your client’s head? They don’t get it at all, and in fact they become very defensive. Worried that you all of a sudden don’t understand their business model and what their objectives are with the website, they respond to your idea with criticism and fear.

I found myself in the same situation just the other day. What made it more frustrating was the fact that this had happened before with the client. Maybe it was a case of the Mondays or maybe I have a shorter fuse than I realize, but I was really irritated. I was really excited about my idea/strategy, and now I’m being forced to defend it over and over again. I don’t think it was the fact that I had to justify my idea that made me mad; it was the way the email was written to me. I hate dealing with clients that talk down to you, and I was dealing with that very thing.

I instantly started writing my reply to him, but was interrupted (thankfully) half way into it. When I went back to finish my email I read where I had left off and couldn’t believe my tone. You could easily tell how irritated I was, and I knew that would only make things worse. Lesson one: never write back right away to an email that pisses you off. I decided to get up and go for a quick walk. It is amazing what a ten minute stroll can do.

I got back to my desk and scrapped my original response. The first thing I did was skim through the belittling comments made, and get right to the questions. I pulled them out one by one, and just focused on them. It made it a lot easier not to get worked up again. I wrote out my responses and proofread them after they were all written to see if I had injected any rude tone or comments myself. I didn’t notice anything wrong, so the next task was crafting the opening.

Writing the opening sentence to an irritating/rude email is probably one of the hardest things to do. Try and keep your cool and keep it as brief as possible. I wrote out a short sentence and sent it off. I had copied a few of my coworkers on the email and they instantly said, “Wow, you sound really degrading in this email!”

I started panicking. “What do you mean? Which part?”

“The first sentence. It sounds like you are saying to him, ‘Ok, here are the answers but try and keep up.’ But the rest of it looks great.”

Just that one sentence opening can ruin it all, though. Lesson two: have someone proofread your email response when you are pissed off. Luckily, the client didn’t seem to upset about my response.

There are going to be many times when you get frustrated with your clients. You’re in the fast lane because you’re an expert in this field, but your client can’t always see the picture as clearly (even if you have trained them.) Take a deep breath, take a walk, and have someone proofread your email for you before you send it out. You might not be as lucky as me if you don’t.

This is a post from Taylor Pratt's blog: Awesome SEO

How to Answer that Frustrating Email