The always witty Rebecca Kelley has hit the nail on the head with her latest blog post 10 Different Types of Clients.
Without naming names, Rebecca describes some of the typical SEO client types she comes across in her job and why they frustrate her. I can totally relate, as I’ve had just about every one of them!
Here’s an extract:
“2. The Lumbergh Client
You’ve all seen Office Space, so I’m sure you’re familiar with the boss, Bill Lumbergh. A Lumbergh Client is someone who is unfazed by your efforts and instead needs you to “go ahead” and make a bunch of ridiculous changes to their site, even if you’re only providing consulting work.
Client: “Yeeeeah, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and manage our paid search account.”
You: “I don’t do paid search.”
Client: “Greeeeat. I’m also gonna need you to redo our landing pages and increase clickthrough rates by 110%.”
You: “I’m only providing consulting. Don’t you have a team or a staff to handle these-”
Client: “Greeeeeat. We’ll touch base at the end of the week.” [hangs up]”
Heh heh. Thankfully, Holy Grail clients DO exist and I’m lucky enough to have two of them. You know who you are ?
In my experience the biggest obstacle to a well executed SEO strategy is usually the client. A good SEO company has to be as good at managing client expectations as they are at delivering the service.