4 Simple Tricks to Get Anything Done in SEO
All businesses small or big understand the language of £££ and profit more than anything else. So if you tell them how your strategy/suggestion is going to help them in generating revenue, they will listen. But if you tell them how your strategy will help them in their SEO, they may listen. Getting things done is a very important part of SEO process. It doesn’t matter how much you know about SEO, if you can’t get it implemented on your clients’ site then your knowledge is of no commercial use.
Talk and Think like a Business Man
In my consulting business the one thing which has helped me more than anything else is that I call ‘spade a spade’. I don’t do sales talk or bombard my clients with tons of recommendations just because they are industry best practices. No business has the time and resources to implement every best SEO/CRO tip you have ever read. So you need to be very selective with your recommendations.
Whenever I come up with a strategy or suggestion, I try to align it with the business goals with a focus on immediate gains before I present it to my clients. If the alignment is not proper than may be something is wrong with my suggestion and I should not pass it on to my client. For example:
Site speed optimization helps in improving the conversion rate but it also require lot of developer’s time. So I need to make a decision here. Should I pass the best Site Speed optimization practices to my client? If yes then will it help my client in increasing his sales in the immediate future? I know that my client’s website has a decent speed and it is very big. So if I put his developers to work on the site speed optimization task then they won’t be available on other and more important tasks like making changes to the title tags of the product pages.
So at this point it will be more profitable for the client if I use his limited resources (like web developers) in making changes to the title tags than optimizing the site speed.
Focus on Low hanging fruits and immediate gains
When you think like a business man you think of sales and profit. How can I make more money next month instead of how can I make more money after 6 months or next year? SEO is a long and time consuming process and results may take several months to a year to come. I want my client to make money as quickly as possible. Now I have 6000+ products to optimize and sell. What should I do? Where I should start?
When you think like a businessman, you first think of products which are selling at present and try to sell them even more. So I select few top selling products of my client and push them through SEO. I don’t push the products which are not selling at this point. This is something I will do in the near future. It is not my top priority right now. My top priority is to sell. This practice is even more valid if your client is a start up. In the first few months you need to help him to survive in the business. If his business tanked, so will be your earnings.
Present SEO suggestions with the promise of gain or fear of loss in revenue
Businesses respond well to suggestion which give them the promise of gain in revenue or which show them the fear of loss in sales. For example: if you want your client to take ‘title tag’ best practices seriously and enforce them throughout his company with iron fist, then tie your title tags suggestions with revenue something like this:
Why it is important for your business?
Title Tag <title>………</title>
Keep length of your title tag less than 68 characters.
Google display maximum 70 characters of the title tag of a web page. So if your title tag is longer than 70 characters, Google may truncate a part of your title tag. This may make your title tag looks ugly and your prospects may not wish to click on it in the search result page which will eventually result in loss of potential sale.
Note the wording here. The task is important for the client’s business and not for SEO. Also I have highlighted the words ‘loss of potential sales’. If you are a business man than nothing can be worse than loosing potential revenue and you have no choice but to show urgency.
Use Case Studies and Client’s competitors as examples
Whenever I send suggestions to my clients I send it with the assumption that my client doesn’t believe a single word I say. So when I work with this mindset I have to back up my suggestions with strong case studies or use client’s competitors as examples.
Case studies give a strong hint that your strategy/suggestion has been tried and tested and it is not something which you have just read somewhere and put it on their table. In these tough economic times, businesses have to think twice before implementing any strategy which demands considerable resources esp. money. So back up your suggestions with case studies wherever possible. Businesses also show great interest in what their competitors are doing and if you can prove that the competitors are monetizing a particular strategy then I see no reason why your client will refuse to leverage that strategy.
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All businesses small or big understand the language of £££ and profit more than anything else. So if you tell them how your strategy/suggestion is going to help them in generating revenue, they will listen. But if you tell them how your strategy will help them in their SEO, they may listen. Getting things done is a very important part of SEO process. It doesn’t matter how much you know about SEO, if you can’t get it implemented on your clients’ site then your knowledge is of no commercial use.
Talk and Think like a Business Man
In my consulting business the one thing which has helped me more than anything else is that I call ‘spade a spade’. I don’t do sales talk or bombard my clients with tons of recommendations just because they are industry best practices. No business has the time and resources to implement every best SEO/CRO tip you have ever read. So you need to be very selective with your recommendations.
Whenever I come up with a strategy or suggestion, I try to align it with the business goals with a focus on immediate gains before I present it to my clients. If the alignment is not proper than may be something is wrong with my suggestion and I should not pass it on to my client. For example:
Site speed optimization helps in improving the conversion rate but it also require lot of developer’s time. So I need to make a decision here. Should I pass the best Site Speed optimization practices to my client? If yes then will it help my client in increasing his sales in the immediate future? I know that my client’s website has a decent speed and it is very big. So if I put his developers to work on the site speed optimization task then they won’t be available on other and more important tasks like making changes to the title tags of the product pages.
So at this point it will be more profitable for the client if I use his limited resources (like web developers) in making changes to the title tags than optimizing the site speed.
Focus on Low hanging fruits and immediate gains
When you think like a business man you think of sales and profit. How can I make more money next month instead of how can I make more money after 6 months or next year? SEO is a long and time consuming process and results may take several months to a year to come. I want my client to make money as quickly as possible. Now I have 6000+ products to optimize and sell. What should I do? Where I should start?
When you think like a businessman, you first think of products which are selling at present and try to sell them even more. So I select few top selling products of my client and push them through SEO. I don’t push the products which are not selling at this point. This is something I will do in the near future. It is not my top priority right now. My top priority is to sell. This practice is even more valid if your client is a start up. In the first few months you need to help him to survive in the business. If his business tanked, so will be your earnings.
Present SEO suggestions with the promise of gain or fear of loss in revenue
Businesses respond well to suggestion which give them the promise of gain in revenue or which show them the fear of loss in sales. For example: if you want your client to take ‘title tag’ best practices seriously and enforce them throughout his company with iron fist, then tie your title tags suggestions with revenue something like this:
|
|
|
Why it is important for your business? |
|
Title Tag <title>………</title> |
Keep length of your title tag less than 68 characters. |
Google display maximum 70 characters of the title tag of a web page. So if your title tag is longer than 70 characters, Google may truncate a part of your title tag. This may make your title tag looks ugly and your prospects may not wish to click on it in the search result page which will eventually result in loss of potential sale. |
Note the wording here. The task is important for the client’s business and not for SEO. Also I have highlighted the words ‘loss of potential sales’. If you are a business man than nothing can be worse than loosing potential revenue and you have no choice but to show urgency.
Use Case Studies and Client’s competitors as examples
Whenever I send suggestions to my clients I send it with the assumption that my client doesn’t believe a single word I say. So when I work with this mindset I have to back up my suggestions with strong case studies or use client’s competitors as examples.
Case studies give a strong hint that your strategy/suggestion has been tried and tested and it is not something which you have just read somewhere and put it on their table. In these tough economic times, businesses have to think twice before implementing any strategy which demands considerable resources esp. money. So back up your suggestions with case studies wherever possible. Businesses also show great interest in what their competitors are doing and if you can prove that the competitors are monetizing a particular strategy then I see no reason why your client will refuse to leverage that strategy.
If you like this post then you should subscribe to my blog and follow me on twitter.
About the Author: Himanshu Sharma is the founder of seotakeaways.com which provides SEO Consulting, PPC Management and Analytics Consulting services to medium and large size businesses. He holds a bachelors degree in ‘Internet Science’, is a member of 'Digital Analytics Association', a Google Analytics Certified Individual and a Certified Web Analyst. He is also the founder of EventEducation.com and EventPlanningForum.net.
My business thrives on referrals, so I really appreciate recommendations to people who would benefit from my help. Please feel free to endorse/forward my LinkedIn Profile to your clients, colleagues, friends and others you feel would benefit from SEO, PPC or Web Analytics.
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