The Zen of SEO – Check out this article!

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Hey all,

I posted this to our blog/newsletter recently and wanted to share with other designers as far as feedback or discussion. Let me know what you think and feel free to share/tweet it if you find it useful! :)

http://goodchee.com/newsletter/the-zen-of-seo-part-1/

[TechStudio]

I love you guys!

[TechStudio]

I got lost in you guys’ site for a bit. I am really a fan of the way your content is delivered to my brain. The content of the article is great, but I’m curious as to who it’s written for. I think it would be most useful to someone who is performing SEO work themselves. It might also be meaningful to more clever, analytical and micromanaging types of clients. I don’t see it address the concerns of a customer. This brings me around to a question I have for a fellow SEO firm. What is your biggest hurdle with customers and how to you address it? Mine is trust.

I explain until I am blue in the face that I cannot predict how long it will take to get results. It’s the absolute truth. The problem is that anyone can say this. It’s frustrating when a client gets cold feet midway through a campaign and never sees the day that their traffic spikes. I’ve even had someone come back to thank me after they had been gone for months thinking I had scammed them.

Anyway, there are two sides to this issue: you could give advice to someone else who deals with the same thing or you could address this concern with the customer in an article. Either way that’s the big issue on my mind. I hope I didn’t hijack the thread. ;)

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Interesting notion, @Habbakuk, at least for you to say that you won’t get rankings or results in the long run. Would you want to elaborate a bit?

I’m not sure if it that idea is in opposition to what I feel or not. I find that if you don’t develop a quality website that offers something of value, any off-site SEO you do (such as social networking or link building) is a waste of time, since the site won’t have user retention. At least, I would hope one would first focus on the quality of the website (product or service) before trying to drive traffic to it. Otherwise, you’re doing a great disservice to users and the web community as a whole.

We’ve achieved high, long lasting rank with our clients by focusing purely on the quality of the content and website design, and many times a lot of the off-site SEO took care of itself, because it was naturally shared and linked to by its users.

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@TechStudio, thanks so much for your awesome compliments! To answer your questions, the article is written for the web community as a whole, as well as any clients that are as you described and basically interested in being educated more about this field. As you said, trust is the hardest thing to address with clients and that is because it comes from a lack of understanding. I find that if we educate our clients (and prospective clients), we have an easier time showing the value of what we can do for them. I think other firms and web developers might feel they are giving away their secrets, so they try and not divulge too much to their clients. We don’t feel that ultimately helps move the industry forward as a whole and produce educated clients that are willing to invest in this aspect of their marketing.

To answer your other question, I actually am going to address that in part two, so make sure to sign up for our newsletter! I’ll be posting that one next month. :)

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Whew…there was a longer delay than I wanted due to the Holidays, but finally got Part Two written and sent out! Open to any feedback or discussion. :)

http://goodchee.com/newsletter/the-zen-of-seo-part-2/

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