SEO

[Haze]

Hi All,

had a customer drop me a line to say he had been contacted by an SEO company. He forwarded me their message, now it looks like I will be losing a site and perhaps a customer. Anyone got any advice...? I'm raging....

As per telephone conversation earlier I am writing to confirm today we can offer your company either a four month trial period. This means you still pay the set-up fee of £295 but instead of committing to 12 months of £49 it is only 4 months of £49. After that period you can either continue on a month to month rolling agreement or cancel keeping all the work we have done.

 

Or I can discount the setup fee by £50 and the monthly by £10 so its £245 setup fee and £39 a month for 12 months.

 

Also here are some client success stories which are on a website you can read:

 

http://their site/customer-success-stories.htm

 

And a recent newspaper article about our company.

 

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

 

Once we have identified the changes that need to be made to your website. We can make the changes ourselves once approved by yourself, all we would need is FTP access. Alternatively we can submit all the recommended changes to your website designer and he can implement the changes himself. We have very good working relationship with web designers up and down the country. We in no way shape and form want to take business away from him.

[Charisma Bypass]

Based on the basic questions that you ask in here sometimes, its probable and possible that these guys would do a better job.  </devils advocate>

[Haze]

Aye I know.... it's just a knee jerk reaction most of the time.
In all honesty the site is about 6 years old, if not older, and I have advised him over the years to have the site code overhauled, but I wasn't going to do it for nothing though, and it wasn't going to be for a lot either. It is a fair few pages. There are a few deprecated tags in there too, but he was not prepared to have ANYTHING done to it all, saying it was ok as it was..... I wasn't even charging that for a redesign....

[Charisma Bypass]

He wasn't willing to pay you, someone he's known for 6 years.  But is willing to pay this bunch.

Best shot I would say, Andy.

[Chris H]

As said, let him go. And don't go back to the old arrangement when he comes back.

[Haze]

It just narks me that you give free info every now and then, advise that the site needs an overhaul and it is all for nothing. I find this a good environment to vent my frustration, but perhaps I should set up a domain especially for this purpose... vents are us.com perhaps. Sorry about the moan. I've told him for a few years that the site would need an overhaul and I am sure they will tell him this. In fact I think the site is over 6 years old... but I think it is time to part, if this is the way you're treated.

[net-curtains]

My pet hate, SEO companies contacting my clients.

I think you just have to let it go.

I lost a client a few weeks back. I did a lovely site for them, worked really well. Despite being slightly scary people I bent over backwards to keep them sweet, giving hours of free advice and fixes to their site which continued to perform well in the search engines despite it's increasing age.

A few weeks back they told me they'd been contacted by various SEO 'experts' and that the site could be doing better in the rankings. I agreed it could, but rather than spend the money on dubious SEO techniques I recommended updating the CMS, content and layout so they could update more areas of the site, benefit from social networking etc etc. and gave them a nice cheap quote for the job.

Despite all that they informed me a few weeks later that they were using company x to build a new site for them as they were also 'seo experts'. I checked company x's performance in the listings, being 'seo experts' they should be performing well, and of course their table based, framed and hideously designed company website was nowhere to be seen as they hadn't added any keywords, or description to their metatags. The website examples (all hacked table template jobs with the aesthetic credentials of a pile of splat) in their portfolio also made me gag slightly.

I checked to see if I'd done anything wrong - 'no Mr Curtains, your service has always been excellent, really helpful, wonderful support, we love the design of the website and you're much cheaper thanthe other companies'. So why are you getting this other lot to build your new website then? 'Well they were recommended to us by ...dodgy business advisory centre link here... and they also do seo'.

My advice? F### em, they'll be back once they've realised they were onto a good thing. And when they do return, put your prices up.

[Haze]

Well Mr Curtains that all sounds a bit too familiar for my liking.... This guy has been contacted by SEOs over the last few years and I have always been in agreement that something needs to be done. His original site is tables based and I was going to do all the conversion and optimisation - as I understand it and have read on SEOmoz articles - for a reasonably cheap price (just found my quote today while mulling all this over) and cheaper than what he'd have to pay for the set-up with the SEO company too!
Over the last couple of weeks I have indeed had one customer come back to me.... after straying away, being displeased with his new designer, and probably having to pay way over what he had with me.... stupid sod.

[sponna]

We get this all the time - just about to write to an existing client who has been bamboozled by "SEO Expert" crap. If they go then feck em - in our experience they tend to come crawling back six months later having been burned. Categorise your customers - don't spend time on t-ssers who waste your time.

[Haze]

It would be nice to have an apt rebuttal to fire back at customers when they are being poached by seo experts.... think I'll need to get a book on How to be a DIY Expert oooops SEO Expert. Anyone know where I can get a book....? * I am only kidding, no one needs to offer a reply *

[Rosco]

To be fair though... if a provider of electricity services contacted you and offered a better deal, wouldn't you consider it?

Assuming they didn't need to ask other folk how to change a plug, that is.

[Mike@TheWhippinpost]

SEO is a selling point these days. A lot of business bosses with a presence on the net know, in broad terms, of SEO and realise a good ranking is important. That's not to say they know what's involved in SEO, however.

Point I'm making here is that SEO should feature high in your pitches, so that if you bag the client, and others try to swoop for their custom later, your client is more likely to stick with you because you've covered that base (assuming you deliver).

Difficulty is, if you've had a client for several years, and in your wisdom back then, you said nowt about SEO thinking he wouldn't understand (or perhaps you didn't know so much yourself), he may still consider you "just" a site-designer, whereas the cheeky upstart pissing up your lamp-post may be seen as a specialist SEO expert promising a flood a sales.

It can be difficult to change peoples' perception of your services and abilities once fixed in the mind: if they associate you as a site-designer who's served their purpose "back then", but now time's have changed and now we need results, it may be time to launch a new PR campaign amongst long-term clients.

Easier said than done, I know; there's an increasingly fine-line between being an online marketing expert/consultant, and a web-dev / designer. If you build-in SEO services, you have to deliver results; and that requires a medium term committment from the client, and a significant change to your business model.

It's not enough to just design a SEO-friendly site; it's about strategies to gain links; writing content; making connections with other related sites; using social mejya; regular monitoring of traffic and its sources etc... all take time and resources. It can be difficult to explain all that to a non-web-savvy client looking for a £500 website.

[net-curtains]

It can be difficult to change peoples' perception of your services and abilities once fixed in the mind: if they associate you as a site-designer who's served their purpose "back then", but now time's have changed and now we need results, it may be time to launch a new PR campaign amongst long-term clients.

I think you've got it pretty spot on there. Previously I concentrated my business towards creating high quality websites, graphically and technically, and although I made sure they were fully optimised and added some SEO services blurb to my quotes, it wasn't very prominent on my company website. I took a look at some of the local competition and they were very focused on promoting their marketing and SEO services. They weren't actually providing anything extra, but I could see visitors to the site might think they were getting more for their money.

I rebuilt my company website over Xmas and have stuffed it full with marketing and SEO blurb. It's offering nothing I wasn't doing already, I just needed to publicise those services more effectively.

I'm not buying a shiny suit though.



 

[Haze]

To be fair though... if a provider of electricity services contacted you and offered a better deal, wouldn't you consider it?

Assuming they didn't need to ask other folk how to change a plug, that is.

Well I can change a plug at least.... mops brow, maybe I should get a job in a call centre, bet they can't change one... I do need to brush up on the seo stuff and find seomoz a good source of info, have even been tempted - although not enough to part with the dosh, I'm Scottish after all - to invest in their services.

[Mr Anderson]

Well I can change a plug at least..

Maybe, but you have a tendency to ask advice on the best way to do it, and then when given it to ask for any other opinions, before going off to a dozen other forums to explain what you've learned so far and to see if they have any thoughts on it. Perhaps all that indecisiveness, the obvious lack of confidence in your own abilities, and lack of trust in your peers is a bit too obvious to your clients? It's certainly obvious to everyone else, and doesn't inspire confidence in your plug changing services.

[Haze]

A dozen....? Maybe 11.
I do hate my habit of asking too many questions. Generally I google, read a number of varying methods of doing something, then post a question on here, which I should do less of. Basically only use ddn these days as a public forum, used to go on .net. But not been using it of late. I certainly don't mean it to appear that there is a lack of trust in any way or form, and make apology for that if this is how it appears.

[Ben]

Going back to the SEO Bastards, I know a couple of guys who do this full-time and are fantastic at what they do, neither of them do much client-chasing/selling as they are have been developed into working with a small trusted handful of clients that pay decent money for the results they are proven to get... i.e. increasing their business.

I always have a bit a suspicious of the SEO salesmen. I recently stopped a client from signing a contract with a very slick salesman, worked out at almost £2,000 a year even though their business was running at near capacity and couldn't take any more work on... "so what the f*** are you paying them for" was my measured-reply.

[Haze]

I've been reading about SEO all day today, and  my head is buzzing. It looks even from the different articles and sites I have read that there is even conflicting views on a number of things. But then again that probably is a measure of the efficiency/efficacy of the different companies at seo. One local company's site I am read is quite informative, and they charge £100 a month for their most basic package.

[Mike@TheWhippinpost]

If I could write all I know/understand about SEO (WRT Google), this would be the article I'd write: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-101-common-mistakes.html

Forget the rest, that is the best definitive out there ATM, IMO - now you just need to execute.

[Haze]

execute....? Whom....?
Bookmarked with thanks, a number of very interesting articles. And thanks to all for their input and comments.

[Matt]

Ive got a meeting with a client on Wednesday and did a quote at the weekend with SEO as my main sales point - still everything I normally offer, but a quick show at how good Mattian is in rankings locally and can really help close the sale.

Its all about being a salesman, if this person wants to leave you, and you can afford that then fine - but Id pick up the phone and explain to them what you can do (if you can do it) before losing them.

[Haze]

Thanks Matt.
I sent him some info yesterday but still not heard from him. Usually chat to him on Skype, but he's not on the last couple of days... or it would appear so.

[sarahA]

Why don't you speak to your client and offer to work with the SEOs? The email itself says that they would be willing to work with your client's current developer. Don't suddenly assume it's all doom and gloom unless the client has already said to you "I'm off".

One of my clients hired an SEO who just emails us with any changes to the site and we do the work. He's not even allowed FTP access (then again his spelling is appalling and they don't trust him not to break things!).

SEO is a full time job. You need to constantly monitor websites, but also continually research and keep on top of how the search engines are working, if there's any change etc. As the article that Mike linked to says, one common mistake is to do it all once and not expect to do it again (or something like that).

If you've got the time to continually run SEO on this client's site, keep abreast of any new changes, and still do your own job then great and tell the client this, offer your own SEO solution and monthly costs. However, if nothing else, at least compromise and say you're happy to work with them, make the changes that they suggest. Just keep a record of what they recommend you do so that if something goes wrong in the rankings you can point out what they asked to be changed.

We don't offer SEO. It's too much of a headache when you're not a specialised SEO. We just pass on details of SEOs that we know and just tell the client we'll do any changes requested, however we also inform the client if the changes break the accessibility of the website as it's our responsibility.

[net-curtains]

however we also inform the client if the changes break the accessibility of the website as it's our responsibility.

One of the SEO companies that 'optimised' one of my clients websites 'improved' the menu titles for search engine performance. Instead of (for example)

'Gardening Services'

and

'About Company X'

they changed them to to

'Welsh gardening hedge cutting wales powys gardeners services service'

and

'Welsh gardening gardeners lawn mowing lawnmowing Company X wales powys mid wales'

etc.

Obviously that didn't fit in the topbar any more so they added a new style (directly into the page code, not the stylesheet) for the menu, breaking it completely onto three lines.

I'm not messing about, they really did add titles like that. They also rewrote most of the content in a similar fashion, turning it to keyword gibberish. They're one of the biggest SEO companies in Wales too.

The client had been approached by them and went with their services as the site 'wasn't doing well' in the search engines. I tried to explain the site had only been online for a week and a half so it would take time to get picked up. She ignored me, as they do, and paid these idiots to wreck the site. Checking the site one day I noticed the menu was broken, and fixed it for her free of charge, for no thanks.

When the site continued to perform badly in the rankings (it didn't have a hope now it'd been destroyed by the SEO kings) the SEO shiny suit boy told her it was due to my hosting services and the bad way I'd built the site (yes I guess I should have used frames and tables for layout just the way they did with the sites they built for their clients). They even blamed me for the menu problem so she moved the site to their hosting service (Fasthosts, naturally) and got their friend to build her a new one for 4 times the cost using a really crap Joomla template with no metatags.

Result.

[sarahA]

I bet you wanted to just send her an email saying "told you so"

[net-curtains]

I bet you wanted to just send her an email saying "told you so"

I've moaned about this one to Dave before, so apologies for rehashing the old thing again, but the way that one ended was with her giving the ftp details to a rival company, who grabbed the website files including the bespoke CMS I'd built. The new company pocketed that, uploaded the old site to their server (minus the ability for the client to be able to update it herself) after removing my name from the footer credits and replacing it with their own. They then added a screengrab of my design to their portfolio page claiming it as their own work.

They put a lot of effort into claiming the work as their own, but neglected to set up the dynamic pages for her (or replace them with static content), and the content was on a database on my server. Completely unaware all this had been going on I then received an email from her saying she no longer required my services so could I please remove all traces of her website from my system, so I did. Her hosting was about two months overdue anyway.

Of course as it was no longer linked to my database some of her pages were now blank. When she finally noticed this (the new web company hadn't) she sent me an email accusing me of 'theft' and if I didn't immediately send her the content I'd 'stolen' from her she'd call the police. I responded, calmly, explaining that she hadn't asked me to transfer her website, in fact she had given access to an unauthorised third party to do this who had also stolen my CMS files, and had then told me to delete her 'property' off my server, which I did. I said that if her new developer had spent as much time checking he'd set her website up properly as he had nicking my content and claiming credit for the work then there wouldn't be a problem.

I didn't hear back from her after that, and eventually my site was replaced by the Joomla thing. I contacted the design company using my work on their portfolio and very politely asked them to remove it and the owner responded saying maybe he should come and 'pay me a visit with his brothers'. I love this job.

But I'm not bitter.

[Ben]

We don't offer SEO. It's too much of a headache when you're not a specialised SEO. We just pass on details of SEOs that we know and just tell the client we'll do any changes requested, however we also inform the client if the changes break the accessibility of the website as it's our responsibility.

That's pretty much how I work, re-reading that email, it does sound like you could work alongside the SEO guy easily.

[Haze]

The joys of this business... so sorry to hear about all that net.

Sarah, I did say I would collaborate at the outset, so the ball is very much in his court. So just waiting to see what happens.

[net-curtains]

I lost a client a few weeks back. I did a lovely site for them, worked really well. Despite being slightly scary people I bent over backwards to keep them sweet, giving hours of free advice and fixes to their site which continued to perform well in the search engines despite it's increasing age.

A few weeks back they told me they'd been contacted by various SEO 'experts' and that the site could be doing better in the rankings. I agreed it could, but rather than spend the money on dubious SEO techniques I recommended updating the CMS, content and layout so they could update more areas of the site, benefit from social networking etc etc. and gave them a nice cheap quote for the job.

Despite all that they informed me a few weeks later that they were using company x to build a new site for them as they were also 'seo experts'. I checked company x's performance in the listings, being 'seo experts' they should be performing well, and of course their table based, framed and hideously designed company website was nowhere to be seen as they hadn't added any keywords, or description to their metatags. The website examples (all hacked table template jobs with the aesthetic credentials of a pile of splat) in their portfolio also made me gag slightly.

I checked to see if I'd done anything wrong - 'no Mr Curtains, your service has always been excellent, really helpful, wonderful support, we love the design of the website and you're much cheaper thanthe other companies'. So why are you getting this other lot to build your new website then? 'Well they were recommended to us by ...dodgy business advisory centre link here... and they also do seo'.

My advice? F### em, they'll be back once they've realised they were onto a good thing. And when they do return, put your prices up.

Just an update to this post, they've now asked me to rebuild their new website as they 'weren't getting anywhere' with the new company. Ho hum.

[Mr Anderson]

Just an update to this post, they've now asked me to rebuild their new website as they 'weren't getting anywhere' with the new company. Ho hum.

Charge them double and get 50% up-front