Can Clients Help Agencies With SEO Strategies? Why Input from The Buyer Is Vital

Marketing and digital agencies get a lot of flak; maybe it’s because it’s a new niche – and most of our customers know they need our services – but they don’t understand what we do. On boarding a client should be a full spectrum brief – from the agency. Once you’ve established exactly what it is the client wants, your immediate job is to explain what your plan is., how it will work, what they can expect, when they can expect it – but an aspect we ignore far too often is garnering input from the client.

Just as recruiters filter and rework CV’s from hundreds of job types, they understand the format; just as we as marketers do. What recruiters and marketers have in commo0n is the promotion of a product (for recruiters – their candidates, for us – our services) without an in-depth knowledge of it.

We really should be getting more input from our clients before delving into SEO campaigns and strategies!

Practical Steps For Clients to Help Agencies with SEO Strategies

1. Image names: The search engines use all of the underlying code that makes a web page to determine which visitors it directs to that page for certain searches. One item that is often overlooked prior to launch is the name of the product image. Are you selling a corkscrew? A great name for that image would be a descriptive word or brand and then the word corkscrew such as “electric-corkscrew.jpg” instead of “image43.jpg.”
2. Category names: Every ecommerce web site has categories which determine what a visitor will find in each section. When naming a category avoid using industry jargon, broad terms, or a word the average search engine user would not use as a search term. Does the category offer car tyres? It would not be a good idea to name it “vehicle wheels.”
3. Product / Page names: Similar to category naming is choosing the product name. The product name is turned in to the name of the link to the product so when choosing the product page name try to be descriptive with what the name of the page is. Once again, use words someone would use to find that product. Name the product page “black-and-decker-cordless-screwdriver.html” instead of “b-and-d-model-23465.html.”
4. Category and product descriptions: Every category and product has a place in the administration section of the web site to enter a description. You do not have to write a novel, but a paragraph or two describing the product or category with 2 or 3 keywords thrown in to the mix will increase your chances for success. The search engines add this text to their database and if someone searches for those exact words, your site has a greater chance to be in one of the top positions for that search term.
5. Don’t Ignore spammers: You will receive a number of emails from supposed SEO experts that make empty promises and outlandish claims. Whether they offer to get your web site thousands of links, write 50 original keyword rich articles, or get your site to #1 in Google in 1 week, the unethical techniques they would use would likely result in the banning of your web site from the search engines altogether. Make sure you block these types of comments, it can negatively impact your SEO rankings – especially when left untended or unmonitored.
6. Communicate: Let your agency know if you have an upcoming promotion or have the need to discontinue a particular product because a new version is coming out in a month. Make your agency aware of newsletters you’ve recently sent out that we can publish on your blog, or about that magazine where your company was mentioned in, or the blog post where somebody wrote about your awesome customer service. All of these things can be highly beneficial to your site. Keep the agency in the loop so they can work WITH you as a team to incorporate our SEO strategy with your business activity.

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