1. For SEO Professionals and Agencies – Ensuring SEO
Success Goes Beyond the Internet
Since the practice of search engine optimization was invented, a lot of things have
been said about how businesses can benefit from hiring a professional SEO agency or
tips on how to find the best SEO company to work with. However, very few have
been published about the glitches an SEO company could face operations or client-
servicing wise. It’s either no one has attempted or no one has the balls to admit that
providing third-party internet marketing services is not a walk in the park.
Starting Out on the Right Foot (or with the right price)
Of course, every SEO agency would boast about how they take pride with what they
do. How the fulfillment of seeing their client’s site traffic rise because of their hard
work. How their clients emerged to be Google superstars from a not-known web
entity. But frankly speaking, the trigger of every SEO project or firm is fueled by one
thing: to make money through these services.
Without this admission, an SEO company can easily feel under-compensated, burnt
out, delivering a lot of things that is not commensurate to the fees it’s getting, etc. It
becomes as vicious cycle that can breed resentment both from the agency’s end and
from the client’s end. And it’s all because you did not map out the business and
financial side of things. Other issues could include:
1. Not having the best resources or misallocating your resources (manpower)
2. The client seemingly underutilizing the agency’s capacities by asking it to
perform menial, non-strategic tasks
3. The agency gets frustrated because the client does not understand where it’s
coming from and interpreting this as a lack of technical SEO knowledge on the
part of the client
4. The agency feels it’s not doing what it originally set out for and doing these
things for less profits that it envisioned
Kicking Off an SEO Project with a Bang
Remember, while an SEO company still operates under the client-servicing industry
(such as advertising firms, PR agencies, etc.), the client hired you for a reason and
that is for SEO consulting and execution. This means you can do something they can’t
and rather than being a passive receiver of directions from them, you have to show

2. them that you are a thinking consultant and not just an implementer of what they
tell you.
Here are a few things your SEO agency can do to start off a project with a bang:
1. Throw in a number of questions to help you understand your client’s business.
Do your due diligence to enable you to put out intelligent and deep queries.
Be sure to repeat your client’s answers in a recap just to make sure you’re on
the same page.
2. Request for recent SEO initiatives that were carried out and their results. Ask
your client what they think are the best practices. This way, you are creating a
benchmark for your own performance.
3. Do a quick audit of their site even before meeting with them for the first time.
This will allow you to identify quick wins and opportunities and set the tone
on what level of consultancy you are willing to provide.
4. Don’t hesitate to get their budget and don’t label your own services. Also,
take a look into timelines and if the results they want are commensurate to
the budget and schedule they are proposing.
5. Always recap the next steps.
At the end of the day, no SEO agency is perfect, but it’s also not bad to aspire to
become the best SEO company you can.
Author is working in an Internet Marketing company as a San Francisco SEO
professional. He likes to write informative articles on various topics related to
Internet Marketing. Through this article, he wants to share his knowledge with
people who are about to hire an Internet marketing firm for their businesses.