What is SEO?

If you are a Web Designer, or Online Marketer, then this is sure to be a question you hear a LOT. Our industry is plagued with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), and SEO is one of those which for some reason often goes unexplained. So very often I’ll be looking at a website, or receive an email detailing an agencies abilities, and it will list SEO as a service, but not details what it is at all. While the world catches up with the fast moving world of the web, the average client can range from either all trusting, to extremely dubious about the services that we offer. I’ve found that the best way to come at this is a face to face meeting if possible. Schedule an hour or 2 at their office, or a cafe, and detail some of the concepts surrounding what these terms mean, and why they are relevant to what the client is trying to achieve. It also doesn’t help that, here in Australia at least, we get plagued with overseas sales calls about SEO Optimization! A family is sitting down to dinner at 7pm at night, the phone rings, and it’s some guy throwing around terms which the average man doesn’t understand, only then to offer this mysterious service at a ‘very competitive rate’. Another thing to consider is offer to teach the clients the basics of off and on page optimization. This can be very easily done, and establishes a bond of trust with the client. This is of course presuming that you have a tidy enough profit margin that you won’t rely on them constantly coming back for further SEO, or offer monthly payment and management packages. Think about it though, if you get the client and their website setup initially, and them show them how to do ‘supplementary’ SEO such as properly tagging documents, sharing slideshows, how to create well written copy for SEO, tag images with ALT text, posting comments on forums with link backs to the site etc. These are easy, and perhaps even billable time to teach. I’m from the school of make friends with clients, soo much work comes in from refferals, that it would be a rookie mistake to fleece a business for all they have. It is a cost vs reward system. try and offer all you can, whilst still making it profitable. But please, let me know how you go with this or any issues you have with clients and SEO.

Tagged business, emarketing, marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO