Unfortunately for us SEO’ers, our industry is both generally misunderstood by the majority of the public and bursting at the seams with “crafty so and sos” who are seemingly intent on exploiting this!

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Like many subjects, if somebody is not particularly knowledgeable of it, they tend to entrust those who appear to be experts in the field, which is why there were and still are so many people offering services who really shouldn’t be!  With so many shady SEO services around, workers in the industry are often met with the same level of caution and doubt as stereotypical car sales people are!   

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However due to the hard work by those offering legitimate Search Engine services, the perception of SEOs being underhanded, shady characters is slowly beginning to fade away.  However our industry still needs our help to improve how its perceived.  So how can we do this? The simple answer: Educate!

Educating clients about the work we perform may seems like a strange concept, after all, we don’t tend to harass a car mechanic for the ins and outs of how they fixed their engine, we just take their word for it they have and (hopefully) drive away – so shouldn’t our clients just be satisfied with the great results we can achieve?

Granted there are two sides to that argument, by only showing results, we are essentially keeping our work secret, eliminating the possibility of our clients potentially feeling that they can (potentially) save money by performing the work in house.  On the other hand though, by being open and honest, you could in turn build a positive, long lasting relationship.

The Benefits Of Educating:

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Managing Expectations:

We’ve all had clients who want to rank at the top for an extremely competitive key phrase and within an unrealistic timescale.  This may not be due to them being aggressive in their expectations, they may just not understand how true SEO works, or have been approached by a shady company in the past and were simply told what they wanted to hear in order to hand over their money!

Setting Realistic Targets and Goals:

This may not necessarily just relate to rankings, this could simply be the amount of pages that get your attention each month.  For example, if the client understands that a few pages need attention and why, you’re far more likely to be able to focus on those instead of being requested to look at “the whole website today”!

Get The Client Creating!

This may not always happen, but should a client know the fundamentals of SEO, they can greatly assist you in some of the areas that they could be the most help, such as content creation on subjects that they do indeed specialise in.

Free Up Your Time!

Many SEOs have big problems when it comes to time management, largely due to the amount of e-mails that are received from clients, who are continually asking questions about what you are doing and why you are doing it!  Although answering these questions will eventually educate in the long run, the short term effects on your time management can be pretty damaging.

How To Educate!

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There are different ways that you can educate your search engine optimisation clients aside from answering e-mails continually, here are some to consider:

Host A Training Day In Your Office!

Although one to one SEO Training sessions may not be ideal from a budget perspective, if possible, why not invite a few clients to your premises at a time and go through the fundamentals of SEO and what are (and what are not) recommended practises.  Doing this in a (hopefully) fun and positive environment can go a long way in educating your clients and building your relationship.

Host or Speak At Seminars

There may not be dedicated SEO Training Seminars in your area, but it is likely to be Website related sessions, which could really benefit from an attendees perspective by having an expert in the field discussing how their websites can get and benefit from more traffic.  It’s also a great way of making new contacts, if there are none of these seminars in your community, it could be a great time for you (and potentially some like minded individuals or companies) in your area to run one!  

Create An Essentials Guide

Although there are plenty of SEO resources available online, much of it is unfortunately mis-guided and at times out right wrong!  By creating your own guide which covers the fundamentals and outlines the work you will be carrying out and why – your client should have a first point of call for their questions.

Have FAQS and Information On Your Website

In addition to your essentials guide, hosting information, such as FAQS on your website can also help your clients to learn at their own pace.

Create Quizzes

Although not every client will be willing to spend their time on what could be considered to be homework, by getting clients to pro-actively research elements of what they are paying for, they can enhance their knowledge.  Just make sure you check their answers though – you don’t want them getting mislead!

Summary

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Just think of the outcomes of what these could achieve for you and your business.  Imagine working with a number of happy, long-term, educated clients who are working with you to reach their goals – this can be achieved.  I’m sure you would much rather this scenario than working a revolving set of clients who struggle to grasp what you are indeed doing for their website and why, even if you providing a superb ROI!

So don’t be put off from educating your clients about SEO, it can be good for you and can also help remove the dark cloud which is still lingering over the industries head.  

This article is written by Jonathan Walker, a Search Engine Optimisation Specalist From Cardiff, Wales