3 Things Not To Say To An SEO Client

By Duncan Heath

1. “I Don’t Know”

Let me just caveat this straight away and say that telling your client “I don’t know” is not a bad thing to do. It becomes very bad, however, when you use this phase in isolation and don’t follow it up with anything helpful. SEO clients tend to believe that you should know anything and everything about websites, the Internet and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Whether they expect more of their consultants than in other industries…I can’t say…but it sure feels like it sometimes.

When you are asked an SEO question that you don’t know the answer to, you should of course not try to wing it and make out like you do. This technique usually has two different variations:

1.)    Make out like the client is an idiot for not knowing the answer themselves as it’s so obvious, and shame them into never asking again.

2.)    Start talking gobbledygook about CSS, viewstate, algorithms and noindex commands until the client loses the will to live and moves on.

The best thing to do is admit that you’re unsure of the answer but you will find out for them and let them know as soon as you can. This will not only let them know you are honest, but that you want to help and you know how to find the answer. What more could a client want?

2. “That’s Just Google”

Most SEOs know that Google is heavily relied upon to provide traffic, often more heavily than is comfortable to be honest. Unfortunately, due to Google’s dominant market share we have to play the game and hedge our bets by focusing a lot of our time optimising for this search engine.

Whilst the Big G can be the provider great wealth, it can also take this away in a fell swoop with one or more changes to its algorithm. Largely speaking, if you play by the rules you should be okay, but we’ve all experienced in the past some drops in rankings or traffic that have come as a surprise and need investigating.

When this happens, possibly the worst (and most patronising) thing you can say to a client is “that’s just Google, sometimes it does that”. This is not helpful in the least and does not instill confidence in the client. They know that every effect has a cause, and if you don’t understand the cause then you will not be able to alter the effect. If you don’t know the answer, offer some possible solutions, but again tell the client that you will research the problem, get to the bottom of it, and work to put it right.

3. “But look at the traffic!”

Believe it or not clients aren’t interested in rankings. They’re not interested in links, and they aren’t even interested in traffic. So what are they interested in?

…Money…

A client pays you to do a job and they expect that job to provide more money to them in return. It’s very simple, and yet lots of SEO’s forget this, instead getting hung up on ranking number 1 for a big term or delivering 100 percent more traffic each month. If you are not making your clients a positive return on investment (ROI), there are no metrics in the world you can throw at them that will make them happy.

Author Information

Duncan Heath is a marketing expert working for a Tanda client, who specialises in offering solicitar credito (loan applications) in Mexico. He writes about all things web and client management.

Cuil Is Cool But Not Yet Hot

Cuil is the "coolest" new search engine available.

Challengers to Google’s search dominance seem to spring up from time to time with each promising something different from what the Mountain View, California company delivers. Mahalo has tried to present a fresh alternative to the Big G as have Wikiseek, Gigiblast, and a handful of others, but none have seriously threatened Google’s leadership.

Now, a new search engine by the name of Cuil (pronounced Cool) promises to do what others have failed to do, claiming to have three times as many indexed pages as Google. Moreover, unlike Google, Cuil promises to make users’ search private, a subject of increasing concern for people who value confidential web surfing.

Promising to deliver a fresh approach to search with new algorithms based on an entirely new architecture, Cuil claims to index the entire internet, not just a part of it. The company says on their info page:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

My first attempts at using Cuil this morning were rebuffed as I encountered numerous error messages and found broken links on the navigation bar. When I returned later, I was able to successfully enter a few keywords and observe the results. Unlike Google which lists Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) in successive order, the results on Cuil were in three columns, making it easy to scan what was returned. In many cases, related photographs were included, something Google does not provide.

Cuil also promises to drill down into the content on a web page, apparently with less emphasis on title tags when returning search results. Of course, you’ll have to experiment with this new search tool to grasp just how differently it works from Google.

Cuil management is made up of former Google employees underscoring that a career with the Big G isn’t for everyone. The husband and wife team of Anna Patterson and Tom Costello head up Cuil who, along with Louse Monier and Russell Power built the application. Cuil is backed by $33 million in venture capital and is based in San Francisco.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge and, interestingly, when you search for the word “cuil” on Cuil the results do not include a link to the search engine.

(Soure: Cuil.com and wire service reports)