If you are a search engine optimization company or have or currently employee an SEO company then you probably are aware of the expectations that come along with it. If you are a company that is hiring an SEO company it is logical for you to have some type of expectations as to what you will see for the money that you are paying each month. If you are an SEO company you understand that you have to provide results but at the same time you have to keep the customers expectations realistic. This can be tricky because their are a lot of expectations that are unrealistic. This can create customers who are upset as well as give the search engine optimization industry a bad name. Let’s take a closer look at some of the unrealistic expectations that are usually encountered during a search engine optimization campaign.
- Speed of Rankings – If you are paying thousands of dollars to be ranked on the search engines then you expect to begin to see those rankings fairly quickly. This is something that SEO companies only have so much control over. They should explain to you up front that their is no guarantee on how long it will take to rank your keywords however, a lot of SEO companies make the mistake of giving them a time frame say 6 months or a year. They generally make an educated guess based upon keyword research among other things but there is just no way of guaranteeing this which is why they get themselves in trouble with their client. If you found a company that is guaranteeing you ranking within a month or two I would suggest you run far far away from them. They are likely one of the many companies out their that is using unethical ways to rank a website. In the end you will either be left with no return on investment or you will end up getting penalized from the search engines.
- Number of Keywords – Many people think that when they go to start a search engine optimization campaign that they will be able to rank for all the keywords under the sun. However, this is not the case. What keywords you will be able to rank for will largely depend upon your budget. Just because you are running an SEO campaign doesn’t mean that it will rank you for all keywords unfortunately. You will need to work with your SEO company to determine which keywords you should attempt to rank for based upon your budget and their keyword research that they should of provided. Generally this will have a mix of competition level keywords.
- Quantity of Back Links – After seeing these reports many clients begin looking at them and wondering why they are getting more back links for the cost of their campaign. Then they start looking into cheaper companies that offer them cheaper cost per link average. This generally occurs because their current SEO company has not explained the process very well to the client. The SEO company should explain to their clients that it is not just about how many links you can build but instead it is about the quality of the links.
- Amount of Traffic – Clients expect to see an increase in traffic and this is something that most SEO companies can guarantee with confidence. So where does this hit the fan? Well, it hits the fan when clients begin building their own projections and charts based upon click through rates and time spent on pages. Most of the time an SEO company will not surpass the projections that the client had. This will create issues between the client and the SEO company. There are numerous reasons as to why this could be. You will need to sit down with the client go over some of the reasons as to why this could be occurring.
- Number of Leads – Now if everything goes as planned then yes the client should end up getting leads which should then turn into sales. This will ultimately lead to a high return on investment which will allow the client to justify working with you. However, there are a lot of variables on the clients side. An SEO company will get the traffic to the website but if the visitor doesn’t want to enter their information or convert to a sale it is not the SEO companies fault. It could be that your website is not setup to convert visitors coming from that particular keyword. That is why it is always advisable that you run a pay per click campaign prior to see if your website will even convert the traffic for that particular keyword.
- Clients Contribution – Many times a client thinks that they hired an SEO company so their marketing work is done and the success is now on the shoulders of the search engine optimization company. This is not at all true, in fact, a campaign that is run where the client doesn’t keep up their end of the bargain is almost never successful. As the SEO company there may be things that you know of that the client can do and it is your duty to guide the client in these areas. Some of these things may include things such as blogging, content creation and social media. While this rarely encompasses the scope of work of a search engine optimization company it definitely will help out your campaign. Make sure that you are working to help make the campaign a success and not relying strictly on the SEO company.
As a client there is no way that you will want to invest money into something that you do not know if it will work or not. Unfortunately, when it comes to search engine optimization there is just no guarantees but if you hire the right SEO company they will give you realistic expectations based upon keyword research and your budget. Then over time you will begin reaping the benefits of the campaign. SEO is extremely important to all online businesses but if you go into it with unrealistic expectations you are setting yourself as well as the SEO company up for failure. Do your research, hire a reputable company and give it time because in the long run you will reap the rewards if it is done right.