clients never understand that SEO cant be done over night
they dont have patience
they want to rank in one week
and want sale in very first month
I dont think anyone can rank a site for a competetive keyword within 1 week

You should pay $400 a month for a long term view, or $400 an hour for immediate results. There is no middle ground.

I agree all customers come to us asking for first page for more then 100 keywords that too in just one month.

Even today SEO is known to fraction of people and to even those people want to see their own websites on first page as soon as possible

Regards

It’s hard enough convincing clients to stay the course of a SEM campaign. Now the marketplace is awash with SEO fakes that the client feels the need to squeeze our consultants whilst still expecting great results. Savvy client’s realise it’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the service your SEM consultant is incapable of getting measurable results. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it’s as well to add something for the risk you run.

And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better

Surely educating clients is one of the main prerequisites to building an strong SEO business. A well structured competitive market analysis that clearly shows the prospective client who their competition is, what they rank for, how they have achieved it, what they need to do to compete at the same level etc etc.

Any client serious about their business is happy to pay for concrete market analysis, and for those that can’t justify the cost of researching their own market….. well no matter your left with happy clients who know the costs and timescales… not empty promises

Or is the problem that the majority of SEO over promise and under deliver?

@Guest (SEO Client) – Please realize that not all SEO firms are as unprofessional as what you experienced. the response following yours obviously does not have a leg to stand on or else they would have used a name. You are right, you were scammed. Maybe the person had good intentions but could “learn fast enough” or was just a poor excuse for a human being and monetized on your good will.

In the future you should ask for past work examples, rankings, and testimonials.

“Sounds to me like you’re the typical client. You wanted it cheap cause your business is failing, so, you used what little money you could scrounge up hoping to see results overnight and when that didn’t work you blamed the seo guy.”

Kid: are you trying ruin the image of SEO? There is no doubt that you have some growing up to do.

Client’s can make or break your success on a project. At times, you will have to adapt your campaigns to their wants & needs, target words that don’t pull in traffic, and sometimes you don’t get adequate access to everything. Even with local search, you can have competitors with thousands of pages, a bunch of links, keyword-rich URLs, and hefty PPC campaigns set up. When it is that competitive it is very difficult explaining your motivations to the client and can be very time consuming! & Good luck trying to get the majority to go after your link bait ideas =)

On the other hand, I have had clients who are an absolute pleasure to work with and were very motivational.

Evolve or get left behind.

SEO techniques need to change with the chameleon that is google.

You are right, SEO is getting hard, we are facing problem to maintain same rankings. This is clear either, we would have to change according to Google or would be out of market.

But Future going hard.

I’ve read a lot of negative comments from clients regarding SEO companies and vice versa on this page. It strikes me that there is oftern a lack or understanding, or communication between the two. Sure, there are bad SEO companies out there, and there are unreasonable clients, but don’t let the bad apples spoil it for the rest. For the most part, I’ve found that clients have usually done a bit of research before approaching our company. They might have had quotes from other companies and done a bit of homework. What I’ve found is that the clients with the worst record for unrealistic expectations have more often than not received this from bad SEO sources – be it cold calling SEO hawkers, or spam emails offering page 1 results within 1 week.

The problem with SEO today is that the market place is changing faster than ever before. No longer can you tweek a few metatags, fiddle with the H1 tags, then go out and force loads of links in forums, blogs, directories and css sites and end up at the top. You need to think about your target audience, your loci of control and your future growth strategy. I think with the way google personalised search and social search is going, SEO companies are going to find it more labour intensive that ever before to get good rankings on decent keywords.

As the guy above says, evolve to die. We are undergoing a survival of the fittest competition now, and the companies that cannabalise thier own reputation in pursuit of a quick buck are soon going to die out, and those SEO companies that can innovate and respond to rapid change will be the ones that are still here in 5 years time.

Be prepared to accept the changes, that is the best way to deal with the constantly changing SEO landscape. At that’s what I am doing now, posts like yours help, as does this other one I read recently http://blog.directorymaximizer.com/2010/01/12/why-does-google-hate-my-site/, to remain up-to-date and current.
Thanks, Chris.

I give my website clients an outline for how I want the content to be written. Although I am very specific with my instructions, by the time they actually get all of the information together, they’ve forgotten to follow the outline. This usually results in them having to rewrite some of the content.