How do you get clients to better understand the bigger picture?

[Guest]

I've been working with a client for almost a year after taking over from a previous SEO agency. I've increased their organic traffic by almost 55% from this year compared to last year. Right now, it's their dead season (website development company) and their traffic has lessoned due to seasonality yet we're still up this month compared to last November.

I've compared their competitors, and they are in the same trend as my client, but the client doesn't see it that way.

They just see that I'm not doing enough right now, and it's frustrating.

How do you get clients to better understand the bigger picture? Any tips and advice would be much appreciated!

[Richard]

Most clients seem to start off like that. Make arrangements with them preferably upfront that the minimum time will be 6 months. You decide how to hande the time in those months and it will be a bumpy ride. during low seasonalities it is about building foundations that will thrive in the better months. Show them search console indexing which pretty much always increases in numbers. And during the better season make sure it is measured in revenue vs cost by you making you're work more than worth it in numbers. That works for my clients at least when there has been no agreement on what a lead/conversion is worth, or if they simply don't know yet.

[Ales]

Gather up all the metrics you've improved for them if there's a dead season currently. I'm talking about indexed pages, search visibility, rankings, clicks, impressions... If you've delivered results and they still don't see the value it's best to part ways for the sake of your own health.

[Jason]

If it feels like you can never win..Drop them off, it's not your job to help directors anxiety .. As a therapist and an seo I see way too many clients trying to take out their insecurities on agency owners things that can never be fixable no matter what you do sometimes it will not be enough, and you'll do all sorts of things and never get a thanks, this is time to know that it's not about you.. And you can't prove yourself, especially if you have good results and they just wanna argue. I mean I don't know the ins and outs here but you'll know.

[Michael]

Forget about traffic and hold yourself accountable to leads generated from SEO.

Nobody but SEOs care about traffic.

[Peter]

If your KPI is traffic then you could explain the seasonal nature again, but this time show some case studies via Google trends, Afrefs, Semrush, etc

It seems this is not their first year trading so you could also show them the historical data?

Finally, build the concept of seasonality in your pitch; we work with a lot of builder's merchants and this needs to be mentioned in the very beginning and then reiterated a couple of times a year.

Also, do you have a target or a KPI? If not, establish one that is reasonable and can be achieved, in cooperation with the client.

Hope this helps and good luck Morgan!

[David]

It’s a simple answer, stats don’t mean nothing, calls and leads do.

Any business don’t care on rankings, keywords or traffic they want the phone to ring and email enquiries that’s what your aim should be and how you do that is what you need to work out.

Sounds harsh but we found this out years ago because which then the customers go

[Jacob]

Data, analytics, and charts are usually a tough sell when a company is looking to cut costs - in reality, they should be increasing their spend while other companies are cutting back - which can put you in a good position for proving value.

The “proving value approach” has many meanings, but at the end of the day a company that has trusted you for a year is looking for more than data - they are looking to you for guidance on what to do to fix their current problem.

If leads are coming in, I would dig into their sales approach.

If leads aren’t coming in, I would use that “proven value approach” towards figuring out how to make leads come in even if it falls outside your scope (if it's a client you want to retain) - or review your data to see if the increased traffic has commercial intent.

[Sarah]

When I had a similar issue, I exported two years worth of monthly search volumes for approx 100 relevant keywords and was able to show a 25% drop (average) in searches that corresponded with the 20% drop in seasonal traffic. Also Google trends showed something similar. The client was satisfied by my giant spreadsheet.

[Andrew]

90% of y’all need to spend some time focusing on putting yourself in your customers shoes. If they don’t understand you’re doing a poor job explaining what you are doing and you should never be doing busy work to provide deliverables to “prove” you’re getting things done for them. They shouldn’t have to question that!

[Geoff]

If you don't feed your clients regular updates with proof of the work you arer doing how can you expect to earn their trust and their loyalty. Clients don't understand SEO, they understand the "Bottom Line" and if it's declining for whatever reason they look at what they are paying and for the easiest ongoing cost to drop. Unfortunatley SEO is probably the first thing that shows up on the list that they don't understand and then you are in the direct line of fire.

[Shawn]

Its super unclear what 55% means. Traffic is sorta meaningless to management. What exactly are you managing on their account and what KPI do they want to monitor? What is their goal? Are they working with you to do something with the traffic? Are you presenting an SEO funnel to them and asking how they will handle the traffic? SEO is more than “traffic”. Not knowing your KPI, goals and client interactions makes this question nearly impossible to answer. Figure out what I wrote and see where you fit. Are you providing CRO services, marketing funnels etc. Or are you working with their teams to figure this out? Or are they just wanting more traffic? Also are you working with their media buyers to see if your assisted conversions are going up despite traffic down. Lots of things to figure out to get them aligned.

[Mike]

In all honesty, it's probably too late. This is something you should have been talking to them about 1-2 months ago. Every now and then dropping reminders of how their analytics shows a historical trend of a drop-off in November and December.