Yesterday I was reading a list of frustrations among SEOs, and encountered one I could relate to: clients who don’t take action on recommendations, but still expect results.
This is one of those things that causes people to tell (anonymous) stories about you over beers.
But there are indeed clients who really seem to feel that receiving the list of changes that need to be made onsite is tantamount to having optimized the site.
A colleague once expressed this really well in a committee meeting. “She,” said my friend, “is the kind of person who decides she needs to get organized, so she buys shelves.”
Expecting improvement to follow from being given advice is like thinking you’ll become organized just because you bought the shelves.
Find the starting point
You can’t count from when you get the advice. I had that conversation with a client recently. I had advised him to take an action, and he did take that action, but it was two months after our initial discussion. He’s concerned about the results he’s getting. He felt that he should have seen more progress by now. But he was counting from when we met, not when he actually took action.
I think part of this problem is that it’s easy to feel, once you make up your mind to do something, as though it has essentially already been done. It’s the thought that counts, right? Not in SEO, though. Maybe this would be a good day to look back at your SEO plan and see what you haven’t yet implemented. You might be surprised.
Where’s the follow through?
One solution is to have a firm like Haden Interactive take care of the follow through. Your SEO strategy document tells you what needs to be done. Prioritize the items and delegate them to specialists. That way you can be sure they get done.
Whoever you delegate the tasks to, make sure that they note in your analytics when the actions were taken so you can track the results.
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