Sitting down to talk with a client or potential client about SEO can be a daunting task. There are so many obstacles to overcome. You’ll need to explain to clients what SEO is on simple terms, and why it is so important for their business. You’ll also need to show them that they will need to hire you to help them with their SEO. They may come with a whole list of reservations and concerns you’ll need to address. With this potential in mind, it’s always a great idea to plan how you are going to talk to your clients. Here is a simple guide on how to effectively bring up SEO to your clients in a way that will make them jump on board that day.
Help clients catch the SEO vision.
Some small businesses don’t see why SEO is a necessary part of their marketing strategy. So, while using their particular niche or field as the drawing board, you’ll need to show them what a drastic difference focusing on SEO can make. You can do that by helping them understand consumer behavior, the practices of their competition and the general capabilities of SEO.
Consumers love search engines.
There are 100 BILLION searches online every month. So if your client has a great product or service, you can bet that someone is looking for it online. Consumers love using search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to meet their needs and around 81% of shoppers research a product online before making an initial purchase. When consumers are searching for local products or services, 50% of online searches lead to store visits within one day. Immediate purchases from online local searches are a whopping 28%. (Source)
When consumers search for something online, they are going get a whole page of results filled with websites related to the keywords they typed in. These results will come from paid advertising and organic results, which are the product of SEO. The paid advertising results aren’t as effective as one might think, as 84% of Google users skip over them completely and go straight to the organic results. And if your client isn’t on the first page of results they are likely to get skipped over completely. (Source)
Businesses love SEO.
When talking to your client about SEO, it’s a good idea to help them get a grasp on what their competition is doing in terms of SEO. While with your client, you might want to Google certain keywords and show where they fall on the SERPs compared to top competitors.
For 61% of marketers, improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. (Source.) Help clients understand that using SEO is necessary for keeping a competitive edge in today’s digital world.
SEO actually works.
When a business invests in SEO they begin to build their brand image and rank higher on SERPs. The higher a business is on a SERP, the more likely people are to click on their website.
These “clicks” equate to website traffic, and if you are doing SEO right this won’t be random traffic, but people who are actually interested in your product or service.
Good SEO practices not only help consumers find a company’s website, but help them stay on it. This includes having an easy-to-navigate website, engaging content and making sure your website is optimized to work on mobile devices. These things allow traffic to become leads, and leads can become customers.
Check out a helpful infographic on how rankings can become revenue here.
Outline the benefits of hiring experts.
Alongside the group of clients who don’t understand why SEO is important, there is another common group. This group includes business owners who know SEO is crucial for getting found online, but don’t have a large budget and so try and handle SEO on their own. This can be a big mistake, and here’s why.
Experts save time and money.
SEO is definitely cheaper than paid advertising, and in the long run it can be cheaper than trying to train staff to do it. Assigning internal staff to suddenly work on SEO oftentimes results in having to pull them from other responsibilities. An SEO company allows small businesses to focus on what they do best instead of worrying about SEO.
SEO is constantly changing; experts are constantly adapting.
Whether it’s marketing trends or Google’s algorithms, the SEO game is never the same for long. Experts are able stay on top of these changes that smaller companies who try and do SEO themselves might miss. Additionally, to deal with these changes and stay ahead of the market, SEO experts are constantly adding new products and best practices for their clients.
Set expectations and speak realistically.
Somewhere in the middle of you explaining what SEO can do for small businesses, your client might start daydreaming of being listed at the top of Google page results in a week with thousands of new clients generating sales each day. You don’t want to “pop their bubble” exactly but you will need to set up some expectations and avoid empty promises.
SEO takes time.
There is no such thing as “to the top in a day” with SEO. Getting ranked on one of the first two pages in a search engine generally takes around 3-4 months. They should be able to see a steady rise in their position over time, but it will take time. Clients also need to understand that SEO is a continual process. While they may see their organic traffic and conversions rise within a span of a couple months, if do they not continually work on SEO, those numbers may go down again.
Transparency is the norm.
Clients should never need to be worried about where their investment is going. Assure them of the frequent reporting you will share with them regarding their SEO tactics. If you have a specific platform or technology that they will easily be able to access, share with them the basics of how this technology works and what specific information they will be able to see there.
Hopefully with this information, you can smoothly bring up SEO with clients. Together with your clients you can see results as their great business is found online, thanks to your great digital marketing services.