What to say to clients who are obsessed with keyword ranking?

[RachelEm]

This post is deleted!

[jlane9]

Hello Rachel,

1st off, do some research on the websites your clients and the comp websites, so you can see the differences.

Based on that research you can let the client know how long and how much it will take to beat those competitors so they are not expecting too much too soon. Tell them you don't want to over promise the moon and have them dissappointed. As well not to believe other companies that are willing to promise the moon so quickly. That's a red flag to watch out for.

If website of the competitor is spammy you can point out that short term the other website may be ranking now but not for long. Ask your client do they want long term results and build a solid search engine ranking profile of keywords done the right way ? Or would they rather risk their website getting banned all together from Google just to get some quicker rankings today. Tell them that you do things correct and for the long term.

Once you have the above research done you can sit down with the client and point out the problems with the other website as well as the strengths. Give them a methodical and logical game plan of what you are doing to beat them in the long run.  You can also show the traffic and how long tail keywords bring in more traffic. More importantly, more targeted traffic further down the buying cycle that are more likely to convert.

Set up conversion tracking on your client website and focus on conversions and lead generations rather than specific keyword rankings. More traffic if they don't relate to more sales is really pointless. That's the overall gameplan without having all the specific data at my hands.

I would also run the pages that are ranking for on page optimization and back links and see where you can improve your clients pages to make them better.

Do the research and the steps and that should ease your clients concerns.

I hope that helps,

Joe

[Lumina]

Hi Rachel,

For the first, I'd suggest telling her that the methods by which the other company is ranking is not only dying, but is something that Google consistently and vehemently disapproves of. Keyword stuffing works well until you're caught, and then you're basically done. Good SEO is like getting fit - the longer it takes to do, and the more focused the work, the more permanent the results (more or less).

For the second, I'd say that they need to understand not everyone can rank #1 for every keyword. Moreso for short, non-specific ones. The good news is that more specific keywords are not only less competitive, they tend to garner higher conversion rates. Basically, tough cookies.

For you, I think you just had a coincidental collision of melt-down customers. I'd prescribe tea and a good book.

[KingRosales]

Hey Rachel,

Great customer management questions!

Customers are always first priority and in their eyes, they many not know you have other clients you're working on. Sure, they signed up with you immediately right after the first she's had a recent bad experience and your competitors aren't helping. The firs thing to do is to keep calm and be confident in your skills.

Here's the answer to your first question:

Your question actually is very valuable. What I've done in the past with customer objections and long winded answers where I find myself answering over and over again, is to:

1. Have Your Answer Prepared:

create a page or blog about it and add it to your "Customer Support" or "FAQ" or your "Why Work with Us" page. Tell your customers, "Thanks for your question and its a very common question customers have, whether they ask it out loud or not. Every niche is different and I undersatnd that the results you are looking for may not be exactly where they are today, but I can assure you my team are accomplished Search Engine Marketers.", then add that to the page.

2. Reinforce Your Answer with a Customer Review/Testimonial

Follow it up with a customer testimonial. Nothing builds confidence like a real review. Why do you think people make/made/lost money on Yelp ($YELP), Trip Advisor ($TRIP), etc. Google Business Reviews, Facebook Reviews, etc. Leverage your past and existing customers by always asking for a review even if they don't give you one until 2 years later like one of mine did. You really never know what you'll get and they're priceless.

3. Answering by Phone then Email Immediately After

Be prepared to answer the question and that your customer will forget everything you just said because it may sound like an excuse to them afterwards. Write an email that outlines exactly what you covered in your phone conversation and add links to the page I suggested to write up AND videos by Matt Cutts and reinforce in the email that these videos are from Head of Spam at Google (former or not). Matt has tons of videos about spam, naturally. I mean there's videos done by the Moz team, Rand specificially about spam and links vs quality content.

4. Reinfornce Your Answers AGAIN

Sometimes, I've had to tell a few of my customers/potential customers to, "Call any of my past customers; go to my website and look through my portfolio and call any of them"... depends how confident you are and hopefully none of your customers projects turned out badly. But if you can show your customers you have more confidence than your competitors whilst calming their minds and adressing their concerns you will be golden.

5. Show them Proof!

Nothing says, "I'm doing my job" like a nice chart. Google Analyitcs charts, whatever charts. An Excel spreadsheet with numbers and an embedded chart? why yes. Proof is in the pudding. Show them that the work you are doing is producing results and compare the metrics with your competitive research data, from the beginning to present. Show them numbers. Sometimes people aren't sold just by what you tell them. At the end of the day, they're just looking at numbers, so getting numbers from you is part of the status quo.

Here's the answer to your second question in four words:

Google Adwords Preview Tool

With that tool you can show your customers how they rank even when their in a different state. Make sure you tell them that Google's ranking system have changed over the years and local SEO is the reason. For example, It doesn't make sense to show results of a business that shares the same name but located in a different state B to someone searching from a state A. If its a very general keyword, let your customers know that Google is smart haha.

My final note is to just ask yourself, are you doing everything you can in your power/abilities to show them results they are expecting from you? If you are then great. You know what your capabilities are and what you can achieve especially if you've done this countless times before.

Don't forget to build great content for your business that reinforces all your customer questions especially if you know you're gonna get them over and over again. At the same time, you will have made great content for your site and Google will reward you for it too - BONUS!

I hope this helps you.

[Linda-Vassily]

To add, the other thing as far as point two, you mentioned that they checked Google on their own computers. Have you talked about how Google tailors search results to particular users? You could send them a Moz keyword ranking result, with personalization removed.

[RachelEm]

I want to hug you and send you cookies.

Thanks for the ideas - we're going to implement the "why work with us" page immediately. I'm super confident in what we do, and that we do a great, honest job. We show results and reports and most of the time, everyone is happy. This week has just been unreal, so I started wondering if maybe I'm totally missing something important.

[RachelEm]

Thanks for your feedback, Joe.

Where we have a really difficult time is proving the "conversions" as we're a boutique medical marketing company, so it's all lead-gen and patient volume for us to prove any kind of ROI. Plus, doctors are notoriously competitive (aren't we all, though?! :)) and if they see a competitor ranking above them for anything at all, they tend toward panic.

Thanks for the advice of showing them our plan, though, that might be a good tactic in this situation.

[KingRosales]

Awe thanks Rachael!

nom nom nom! . .. . . . . . .. (cookie crumbs)

Why Buy from Us pages can be in many forms. On the ecommerce sites I manage, they all have one. Some have it entitled "Why Buy from Us" and other catalog sites I've put some great content on a "Need Lights?" page and at the top there's a video I made with the owner talking rather than icons or images and reasons why.

On my personal consulting site https://www.kingrosales.com/about/ which I'm still putting together (it is never done!) has text about me and reviews and testimonials from customers and colleagues. Just reinforcing everything I've done over the years.

As a former Yelp Elite, I was on Yelp ALOT! lol. And to become a Yelp Elite, I actually analyzed their system to figure out what I could do to make myself get noticed and been seen as "Yelp Elite" quality material lol. But my point is, If you look at how Yelp, Trip Advisor and other review sites structure their page content with business information and reviews, it should give you a pretty good idea about what customers are looking for and what is setting their expectations online.

You'll be just fine!

[EGOL]

What do I tell her to alleviate her fear that she's not ranking for a ton of keywords and that this other guy is creating crap content?

Keep these in mind....

**1) It is important to stay focused.   **

If client hired you to focus on valuable keywords such as (A) and (B) then they call you because they are not ranking for (F) and (G), which are not valuable keywords, then you need to revisit the original plan withe client (chase valuable keywords).   They need to know that putting work into (F) and (G) are less likely to move their income needed and going after them in addition would not be as valuable as putting MORE work into (A) and (B).

2) Promising rankings vs Promising a work agenda

Clients need to know that when you quote them a price that you will do specific work for them.  The results of that work might produce certain rankings, however, you have no control over what work competitors are putting in or will start putting in after they realize that you are on the attack  --  then the work that you "thought" would produce certain results will not achieve them because competitors have raised the bar.  Every time you raise your clients income or rankings that was done at the expense of a competitor and some of them will respond vigorously.

So I would always go into any project with educating the client that the work you do might be offset or more than offset by work done by the competition.   The client is paying you to compete, the client is not paying you to assume all competitive risks that are in their industry.   That should fall fully on them - not on you.

If a webmaster in my niche decides he wants to overtake me and hires an SEO to add more fuel to his fire the result might be a decrease in rankings for HIM.  Why?  He needs to be adding fuel at the same rate as me just to keep up and faster than me if he expects to get ahead.

3) Chase rankings or chase keyword reach?

At my office two people work all day, every day, trying to increase the keyword reach of the website.  (KW reach = getting great content, best-on-the-web or close to it, out there for more and more keywords)   We might "watch" rankings, but we don't "work on rankings".   Working on keyword reach is a guaranteed success almost every time because you pickup new traffic for new keywords.  And as you get more and more great, best-on-the-web, content out there your site starts earning a bigger and bigger fan base and more and more sharing.  The result of that generally, over time, results in an increase in rankings.

So, we are running a factory for quality content.  Instead of working on rankings we are putting everything into "reach".  And that is where I am betting all of my money.

(This will work for you if you are working in a niche with great keyword breadth... but if you are working where keyword breadth is really narrow you can run through the reach in a couple of years.  But some industries can keep two people busy for decades.)