We just met with a prospective SEO client yesterday. They've been using another Utah-based SEO firm who shall remain nameless. The client actually didn't want to tell us who they had been using, but we ended up finding out anyway in the course of doing research in preparation for our meeting. During the meeting we found out that the alleged SEO firm was not providing two things I would consider to be among the most basic of deliverables--monthly reports and an analytics tool.

What does it take to install a website analytics tool on a client's website? About two minutes in most cases. You can get Google Analytics for free and if the client's site has a footer include file you just put it in one file, save it, and you're done. It's free, it's fast, and it's easy. There is no reason I can fathom as to why an SEO firm would not install analytics code on a client's website unless the client wouldn't let them, which isn't the case in this situation.

Without analytics installed, an SEO firm doesn't know how much traffic a client's website is getting. They don't know where the traffic is coming from. They don't know which pages are the most popular. They don't know which pages are the entry points and which pages are the exit points. Without analytics all an SEO firm knows about the performance of their campaign is whether or not a client is ranking well in the search engines. Granted, getting a good ranking for a client is the primary function of SEO, but if an SEO firm isn't helping their client make more money or get more leads what good are they? I consider conversion analysis (i.e. helping clients convert traffic into revenue) to be an essential part of providing SEO services and I can't figure out why this nameless SEO company wouldn't be doing that for this client. Maybe it's because they have them locked into a 12-month contract and don't need to in order to keep making money?

But on top of not having an analytics package installed, they don't even provide the client with monthly reports. In fact, they don't give the client any reports unless hassled repeatedly. There are only two reasons to not provide a client with reports--you're lazy, or you don't want them to know what a poor job you're doing.

We provide all our clients with monthly reports that include their rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the keywords we're focusing on, which pages are being indexed by which search engines, how they compare to competitors, as well as details about what we've been doing the past month to achieve the results shown in the reports. I'm probably forgetting some other information we provide.

In other words, the only clue this client has if their SEO company is doing a good job is if they go out and check search engines themselves, or if they get people contacting them and telling them they found them on a search engine. In this case, as you might expect, the SEO company was in fact not doing a very good job. They were doing some work, but not much. It was pretty obvious why they weren't forthcoming with reports.

So, if you're looking for an SEO firm, make sure they include monthly reporting and implementation of a website analytics package as standard services. If they don't, you're probably getting ripped off.

digg it!

Add to del.icio.us

Comments

Post a comment