So, You Want to Steal My SEO Client?

I can guarantee that pretty much everyday, our SEO clients are bombarded with emails from competing SEO companies that want their business. Maybe you’ve seen them too, they look something like:

"Guaranteed Top Spots in All the Search Engines"
"Own the #1 Spot in Google"
"We Can’t Find You on the First Page of Google, Let Us Help You."

And all these companies offer these services for a mere $20 a month! (OK, maybe not $20, but it’s still a low price that seems too good to be true.)

Why do these people make guarantees when we all know there are NO guarantees in SEO?

We know this, but our clients don’t. We all know that you can build a site, optimize it and manage all under Google, Bing, and Yahoo’s guidelines and it still may never rank the way you want it to rank. That’s just the tough life of an SEO. SEO takes time and effort. You need to nurture and grow a site until it can learn to stand on its own with just a little help now and again.

Sure, let me do all the work for you while you steal my client.

The most ironic thing about my clients who receive these emails is that they never EVER received any type of marketing email until they began to rank on the first 2 pages of the SERPs –Pretty fishy, eh? I can’t even tell you how many of my clients have left us because some other company promises the world. Half the time, these companies don’t even change the blood, sweat and tears I put into it, they just ride on my coattails. It’s sad and frustrating – but that’s the life of an SEO.

Instead of banging my head against a wall, what can I do?

Hopefully, you have a good enough relationship with your clients that you can speak freely with them. My clients and I have an open-door policy – they know every little detail (if they choose to listen) about their site and their SEO program. When traffic is down, I tell them. When they rank very well for a particular phrase, I tell them. We both appreciate this relationship and I think it says a lot about our firm and how we handle clients.

When my clients receive these emails, they tend to forward them to me and we usually get on the phone and break it down.

I tell them to look for these red flags:
1. Are they coming from a gmail, hotmail or domainless email? Chances are, they are either overseas or don’t want you to know where they are coming from.

2. Why haven’t they provided any "success stories" – we are a "proof is in the pudding" type of company. When we go after a potential client, we provide references, success stories, etc.

3. Sure, they may give you an amazing low, low price (that definitely beats our company’s) but what are you going to get with that? How much time an effort will you receive?

4. Do they have dedicated SEOs in their organization? Will you speak to someone different every time you have a question?

5. Are they just selling an adwords campaign? Well, then of course you can own the ultimate #1 spot in Google, but I guarantee it won’t be cheap.

6. Are they charging to create a map listing? Why are they charging you extra to create a search engine account and map listing when it’s free and you can do it on your own?

7. Will you have to sign a lengthy contract and if you should leave them, will they remove all of their SEO efforts? This is a bad sign. You paid for it, you should own it.

And really, the list can go on.

Be sure to speak freely and express your thoughts about these companies who make wild claims but can’t back it up. You’ll feel better about the situation and so will your client.