Search engine optimisation is a long term relationship. It's much more than a company offering services to another company. It should be a business partnership where you both have something to gain and where the end goal is to improve the performance of your website. It's very important to be able to trust your SEO that they will use all ethical methods in order to reach your goals. So how should you define a customer-SEO relationship?
- Trust - The basis of all relationships, all the more important in SEO where illegitimate tactics can do a lot of damage, sometimes even permanent to your website.
- Reliability - You should be the SEO's top priority. They should act promptly in complying with their duties and stick to the agreed plan in order to market your website.
- Honesty - The SEO should tell you all you need to know about what is being done to your website, provided it doesn't mean revealing their own methodology. If they are employing ethical tactics then sharing information should not be a problem for them.
You should be open to your SEO and expect the same in return. If you have information or rumours about your competitors or future developments in your industry, share them with the SEO. Consultants can use all possible information you provide to your site's advantage.
Be smart and use this relationship to understand the basics of SEO. You have hired a company to do that for you, that's true, but it never hurts to have a bit more control over the campaign and the control is achieved through understanding and being informed. Just get the basics right, enough to understand what's going on. In the event of contract termination you will be in a much better position to either find a more suitable SEO or use this position to start performing SEO in-house.
Once you've found the perfect SEO, one that communicates easily, keeps to the deadlines and delivers on their promises, do anything you can to keep them. Listen to what they have to say because they'll be trying to educate you. Knowledge is power in Internet marketing and to have someone willing to tutor you and make use of the knowledge for you is something worthwhile holding onto.
Keeping an Eye on Your Optimised Site
This article was first published on 21 August 2004 and does not necessarily match current events or the current opinions and views of bigmouthmedia ltd.
