I have had many clients in my time, and not all of them have been 110% “happy” with their previous Louisville SEO/Internet marketer.
Some of these unhappy clients just had unrealistic expectations no matter what anyone told them (i.e. wanting to rank for an ultra-competitive term in less than 10 days for less than the price of a nice dinner and a movie). Others just didn’t give their SEO campaign enough time to “set in” and work, and some clients just cannot be pleased.
If you are paying for SEO and not getting the results you want, here are some thoughts on why you might not be…
You are not listening to your SEO consultant:
Lots of times you are being told what we can and cannot do and in what time frame. You, however, insist on it being sooner, better, and easier than what we are telling you. If you know so much more than us (who you are paying), then why not take a crack at it yourself? We as consultants are up against not only all your competitors trying to rank for the same niche, but lots of times your competitors have more than one active SEO consultant, a longer history at being ranked higher than you, and just an outright better website than you. Also, we are trying to convince Google to change THEIR logic to favor your site over another site, all the while constantly tweaking and changing the standards we need to learn and follow at the drop of a dime.
You are not willing to work/help:
I get it. You hired a consultant to do this work and rank you higher. You do not want to do this or do not know how to do what you hired us for. That’s fine, but when we ask you for things we cannot do (maybe things like, changing your site navigation, adding more content, changing the URLs, etc.), we really need you to comply. I have one client I have worked with off and on for years and EVERY single time I ask them to make a change to their site, their answer is always, “Can’t”. You really limit what kind of results I can get you if you have a site that is not editable.
It is also not helpful when I have goals and tasks that are waiting on things for you to complete, but it takes you three to four months to complete them.
You wanted to be cheap:
Trying to cut corners when it comes to paying is always a bad tactic. If I give you multiple options for different packages that I can offer you and you pick the lowest one (which means I give your site less attention/time than if you picked a higher-end package), then you need to expect lower results. Sure, we talked about getting you to X position on Google and getting you X amount of leads, but when I give you the price for those results and the time frame involved and you balk and say you cannot afford that amount and decide to choose the package that is 50 percent less, then you should expect 50% less work from me every month. This also means that since I am working less hours for you per motnh, it will take longer to get the results we originally talked about. When I also present to you that we should purchase some paid links from other sites and you flat out reject the idea, then expect the results you wanted to take longer as well.
When I then see you on Facebook going to Disney World for two weeks, then buying a second million dollar vacation home, and have five new IT hires in your office when I come in to meet with you, I really have a hard time believing your excuse for “being a small company” that cannot afford the original price I gave you.
You forgot what my role was:
I am here to bring you traffic. Unless I agree to personally redesign your site or help you code a new ecommerce cart by hand, do not ask me to do that. If I do agree to help you with those tasks, realize that I will charge you for the new work and that the new work is also taking away time from me getting traffic to your site.
Also, you cannot expect your online marketer to “generate more sales” for you. We are here to get you more traffic and more leads. How you handle that traffic and those leads is entirely up to you. I brought the traffic to you; I filled up your lead cart, but I cannot make your customers love your product and spend three times more money on your product than what your competitor charges just to buy from you. I cannot RUN your business for you, and I cannot make your customers love everything about you. If you need that type of help, then I want to be a 50-percent partner and we can talk shop then.
Just because I got you number one in Google and raised your traffic eightfold, doesn’t mean the people actually like your products or that your business model is financially sound.
You just didn’t give it enough time:
Too many times, you expect results way too soon. Your competitors are trying to maintain the positions they are in, and many of them are trying to outrank you anyways. Google is also constantly changing their methods and ranking factors ( averaging 2x a day ). It is going to take time to correctly rank your site and also help you KEEP that position.
Also, every keyword and every niche is different. What it takes to rank first page for “blue widgets” is totally different than what it takes to rank for “red widgets”. None of us know what it takes off the bat. It takes research, testing, and data to find out what it is going to take to rank you for your keyword.
Finally, you got the result you wanted, and then didn’t want to maintain it:
Yep, I got you there when you wanted and where you wanted, and you thought to yourself, “Great! Thanks for the help, and I will call you if I need anything else,” and ended our relationship. That’s cool, I understand that once you got ranked you thought it was magically just going to stay there forever. I guess you didn’t listen to me when I told you that after you get ranked, you will need help to maintain that ranking so that when Google changes their algo or when your competitors get pissed and hire two or three SEOs to get their rankings back, you do not slip back to the third page of results again.
Your competitors are going to hire help to get their results back, and once you drop off, you are going to want to call me again to get you back to the first page. This time the work will be 10 times harder because I will have an uphill climb trying to now catch up to your competitors that have active SEOs working on their campaigns and building links like mad. Thanks for that!
Conclusion:
Next time you are not getting the results you are wanting from your Internet marketing consultant, think about what problems YOU are causing that are affecting your marketing efforts instead of thinking that your SEO consultant is at fault.