NEVER walk into a new SEO client’s kickoff meeting without The Ultimate SEO Questionnaire. This two page document includes every question you’ll need to ask your new SEO client before starting their SEO campaign. You can download a PDF or Word Document format so you can easily edit it online, or email it to your new client.
Every SEO professional dreads this seemingly unpreventable conversation. It’s about 3-4 months into your client’s SEO campaign, and deep down inside you can sense it coming. Then, the phone rings. It’s your client and they want to “talk”. They are worried, and overly anxious about the campaign’s progress. They’ve already forgotten everything you’ve told them about time and progress. They want results, and they want them today!
First of all, don’t get thrown off by this title. Just because I’m saying SEO is only 20% technical does NOT mean that technical SEO is not important. After all, SEO is a formula or recipe, and when one element or ingredient is removed the results are never as good. So, technical SEO is very important but it should never take more than 20% of your time when optimizing your website, blog post or landing page.
Fact: The better you explain SEO, the more likely your prospective clients will sign with you. Humans don’t like overly complicated things. We love everything to be simple. So, the more clear and simple your explanation and views on SEO are, the more comfortable your prospective clients will feel about working with you.
I’d like to share with you who I think the most influential SEO people are in 2014. These are the people I follow and look to for the best advice in the SEO world. The commonality these people share is their expertise in the field, innovative ideas, and most importantly, their willingness to share their vast knowledge of SEO information.
Web pages and websites are not the same thing. They are very different. Some of you maybe thinking, “ya, we know”. But many of you aren’t. I constantly hear “web pages” and “websites” used interchangeably in this industry and it drives me so crazy that I decided to write an article about it. Not only is it wrong, but thinking this will severely hurt your SEO strategies.
This is my 11th year selling SEO, and my skills have evolved and gotten so much better each year. But, I’m only as good as my experience. So instead of waiting 11 years to get my level of experience, read my 7 Super Secrets of Selling SEO. These are the things I do every day to make sure my prospects choose my team, and not my competitors.
You may want to investigate the history of a used domain before spending big bucks on it. Getting that “perfect” domain can cost thousands of dollars, so why wouldn’t you do some investigating before you make that kind of investment. You’d look under the hood before you bought a used car, right? Then do the same thing for a used domain, especially if it’s going to cost you a pretty penny. Otherwise you could be pouring thousands of dollars down the drain.
Humans have an innate desire to want to group objects we see in the world together. This makes the information far easier to process and understand. Therefore, when website content is visually grouped for us, it becomes much easier to process and understand. The Law of Proximity (one of Gestalt Laws of Grouping) states that humans perceive objects that are closer together as related objects. The reasoning is that the human brain would rather process fewer sets of objects rather than a much larger number of individual objects. Therefore, abiding by the Law of Proximity on your website will allow your visitors to more easily process and understand your information. This will most certainly leads to a better user experience, more conversions, and more sales.
This post discusses how and why your agency should perform agile SEO. I wrote this post because I don’t see enough SEO professionals performing agile SEO. I was guilty in my early years of not performing agile SEO; however, the day my agency started implementing an agile SEO, was the day we started signing and keeping more clients.