Search engine optimization is a complex, constantly evolving, challenging process. Even those who have worked in the digital marketing industry for years don’t always have all the answers.
Explaining SEO to a client who may have little to no experience with it can thus be quite the challenge.
Clients are often aware of the benefits of SEO. They may understand it can help bring in more qualified, organic traffic. They may know it can help them raise brand awareness and build trust with their target audience.
But how exactly this is achieved will most often remain an absolute mystery to them.
In order to offer the best SEO services, a part of your job as an SEO agency or SEO professional will be to explain SEO to clients in a way they can easily understand.
Here are the 6 steps you can take to explain SEO to customers.
What you will learn
- How to teach your clients the basic principles of SEO
- How to provide simple explanations of complex SEO strategies
- How to keep your client informed and the importance of regular communication
Assess their SEO understanding
The first step you need to take is learn how well your clients already understand what SEO stands for, what it is and how search engines work.
If they are a complete novice to digital marketing and SEO, it would be good to give them a crash course on the subject.
- Explain how search engines work.
- Explain what an algorithm is.
- Explain the basics of Google's ranking factors.
- Explain what it takes to show up at the top of search engine results.
Go into a bit of detail about the various SEO strategies you will use.
On the other hand, if they understand the fundamental concepts of SEO, you can skip the basics. Talk about the specific steps you will be taking to help them achieve their goals.
If your client is proficient in SEO and has hired you because they don’t at the moment have the resources to run their own campaigns, treat them as an equal in knowledge, if not expertise.
Take a client’s level of SEO understanding into account when writing your client reports.
Clients who still struggle with the basic concepts will benefit from seeing them explained every time. More proficient clients won’t need this courtesy.
Make sure to gauge the SEO knowledge of both your point of contact in the company and their supervisor.
If the person you are communicating with has a high level of SEO knowledge, but their manager does not, write reports tailored to the higherup.
A good way to gauge the SEO understanding of your clients is via an onboarding questionnaire.
Ask specific questions using industry terms and see how they respond.
Ask them how much they know about SEO during your onboarding calls too.
Note that some clients may pretend to be more knowledgeable than they really are. This is often because they want to prevent an agency from taking advantage of their lack of understanding.
Make sure to clearly communicate the importance of being honest. Underline that you will use their level of understanding to tailor future communication.
Do your level best to reassure them and establish trust during the onboarding process.
Let them know how SEO works
Unless someone is in the business of SEO, it’s highly unlikely they’ll know how a search engine algorithm works. Some of your clients may not even know there is one.
And while you will be used to the constant algorithm changes, your clients will neither be aware of them, nor understand how they may impact their website.
Don't wait for a client to ask you, how does SEO work?
It is up to you to explain to your clients how the indexing and ranking process works.
The better they understand this, the better they will be able to judge the results of your work.
As an SEO professional, it will be part of your job to stay on top of the latest algorithm updates. You’ll need to know how they impact each of your clients.
If you are doing SEO well, it’s unlikely a client will suffer a penalty. Their rankings can however fluctuate. They may see a drop or an increase in traffic.
When Google releases an algorithm update, notify your clients about it. Send out an email explaining what the update is and what they may personally expect.
Notify all clients, even the ones who are highly unlikely to see any of the update’s effects.
Explaining both specific algorithm changes as they arise and indexing and ranking in general will not only educate your clients. It will ensure they don’t assume their lost ranking or sudden surge in traffic is due to your SEO efforts.
This will prevent any misunderstanding and deepen the trust between you.
Explain SEO is for people first
A lot of people mistakenly believe that SEO is only about optimizing for crawlers and search algorithms. Could be something to do with the term search engine optimization.
Modern search engine marketing is actually about creating human-friendly experiences and content that people will enjoy and find useful. It’s important to clearly explain this to your clients.
Explain that SEO is not just about inserting a certain number of keywords into a piece of content a certain number of times.
While the use of keywords will help search engines understand what the page is about, its quality is ultimately what will determine its success.
Search engines like Google are in the business of serving humans. They want to show readers the most appropriate answers in Google search results.
The purpose of SEO is to provide a well-written, well-optimized page that is user-friendly, matches search intent and gives people what they are looking for. Discuss this concept with your clients.
The goal of SEO is for content to be found and enjoyed. It can help improve customer experience, build trust and raise brand awareness when pages are easy to understand, easy to digest and easy on the eyes.
The clearer a client is about these points, the higher the chances your collaboration will be a successful one.
Provide simple examples of SEO techniques
One of the main challenges of explaining SEO to clients is breaking down complex concepts into simpler ones.
If you bombard them with terms they don’t understand, like keyword difficulty, search intent and domain rating, they won’t understand you.
Provide simple explanations and examples for basic SEO techniques.
Talk about keywords and their role and why SEO is about more than keyword stuffing.
Explain the use of content maps and topic clusters and why they are important. Talk about the importance of backlinks and their quality.
Make sure to discuss all aspects of SEO and content marketing you will be working on for the client.
For example, if you are only doing a technical and on-page audit, you don’t need to explain what backlinks are. Don’t overwhelm your client with too much irrelevant information.
You may understand how all of these elements are interconnected, but they may not.
Avoid using jargon as much as possible. Use simpler, everyday terms instead.
For example, instead of saying
“we want to rank this web page for relevant long-tail keywords with a high monthly search volume from your target audience”,
say,
“we want this page to show up when people type relevant questions into the search bar”.
Don’t overexplain either. Try to come up with explanations for the most common SEO terms in advance and use them when talking to clients.
It helps if you don’t have to come up with a simple definition on the spot. Try grouping them together too.
If you are doing local SEO for a client, come up with easy definitions for business listings, review sites and Google maps.
You can also try using analogies.
You can describe off site SEO and the websites linking to them as recommendations.
You can describe the search engine index as a library.
Remember that a business owner cares very little about digital marketing. What they really care about is growing their business.
Don’t just explain what an SEO technique is. Explain why it works and what its expected results are. Tie it directly to the client’s business.
You don’t need to go into too much detail. More importantly, don’t promise specific results.
Instead of saying “ranking in the top position will bring in 30% more traffic”, say “improving the rankings of this page will help more relevant people see and visit it”.
Explain that SEO is a long-term process
A lot of clients will mistakenly believe SEO results are quick.
This is why they will often feel dissatisfied with the SEO services they’ve been provided.
To avoid any miscommunication and frustration, make it clear to clients early on that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.
Underline that it is a long-term strategy that will require months to get results.
Underestimate the potential results and overestimate the time it will take to achieve them. If a client wants to hear specific timeframes, add a couple of months to your estimates.
You will often get asked why SEO is worth it, when it takes so long and is so expensive.
Explain to clients that SEO adds up and sticks. Every good bit of SEO they do today will keep paying dividends in a couple of years’ time.
Since all SEO work is such a long-term process, it’s important to provide clients with regular updates. Set up a reporting schedule depending on the nature of your services.
Use the reports to explain to clients not only what has been done, but why this is important, and how it will impact their website in the long run.
Keep them informed
A lot of agencies miss out on the opportunity to keep their clients informed about their work. This leaves clients dissatisfied and confused.
If they don’t understand what is being done, why this is important and how it impacts their growth, they may end up feeling taken advantage of.
Clients want to know what they are paying for.
They don’t care tuppence about fancy SEO terms.
They care about results.
If you keep your clients informed about all relevant changes in the SEO industry, they will come to trust you more. When anything important like an algorithm update happens, let them know.
Explain in easy-to-understand terms what has happened and how this will impact them.
Set up a regular personalized reporting schedule for each client.
Make sure to include the most relevant metrics for the project in your reports. For example, if you are doing on-page optimization, list metrics like keyword difficulty, monthly search volume, keyword relevance, optimal word count, etc.
You can use Surfer Keyword Research to find the most relevant keywords, and demonstrate to clients how including them in your content raises their Content Score.
If your client is new to SEO, include an explanation of all these metrics in the report.
Explain why they are important and how they impact results.
Don’t include too much information in your reports.
You may need dozens of rows of data to make an SEO decision. Your client will only be overwhelmed by it. Stick to the most relevant and impactful metrics.
By keeping your client in the loop every step of the way, it will help them better understand the SEO process. It will make them more trusting and forthcoming.
You will be able to collaborate better, and you will ultimately deliver better results.
Key takeaways
- Explaining a process as complex and time-consuming as SEO to clients is complicated and challenging
- Ask your clients how much they already know about SEO when onboarding them
- Teach them about basic SEO concepts and terms, and explain how they impact their business
- Teach your clients how search engines work and how they index and rank websites
- Explain to clients that SEO is about optimizing for humans, not bots
- Teach them that SEO is not a quick fix and that they can’t expect results overnight
- Use simple terms when explaining complex SEO techniques to clients
- Keep them informed and involved every step of the way to establish trust
Conclusion
Explaining SEO to clients can be quite demanding.
The more you are able to educate them about the SEO tactics you will be using, the better they will understand the expected impact on their business.
If you tailor your explanations to your client’s knowledge level and speak in terms they are familiar with, they will appreciate and trust you more.
What aspect of SEO do you find the most difficult to explain? What terms do you find most clients have trouble understanding?
