Sphinn - Spare The Rod, Spoil The Client

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Sphinn It!

Spare The Rod, Spoil The Client

Went Hot: February 13, 2008 - 9:28 am
Posted By: toddmintz 509 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.semportland.com)
Category: Other Search Marketing

Where I ponder whether if I would have given "tough love" to clients & potential clients in the agency setting where I used to work, would that have been a more successful professional engagement for me (and the agency)?

11 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from tonyp 509 days ago #

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This is an excellent post about SEO and client relations. I think this is a common problem in the SEO industry. You can tell a site owner what is needed but you can't make them make the necessary changes.

from planetc1 509 days ago #

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Nice stuff Todd. Telling it like it is has its benefits.

from SearchBuzz 509 days ago #

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Love the title!

from willneu 508 days ago #

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Stuff clients, they aren't the worst. You get some heavy minded ones, but they are extremely rare! What i mean by Heavy Minded is: "Dont you think we should put more keywords in there" or "I've done this before and i find its better to do XYZ why did you say to do ZYX" (sometimes you need to wonder why the hell they hired the company in the first place!).

But worse than clients, you get developers! Developers are often the most annoying, heavy minded individuals around who, when you propose a change argue it to the ground, cloak changes because they dont like them, hide stuff with css etc etc. Ones that feel they understand how SEO works, and when you say "you did it wrong" fully take it to heart (no matter how well you put it) and everything goes down hill from there. Developers even with the largest clients and biggest portfolios can take months to implement the changes, and even when you follow up with very indepth reports outlining exactly what needs to be done they just skip it and move on.

Clients aren't the bad guy, the developers are who need the 'tough love' ;)

from seowoman 508 days ago #

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This is exactly why I love reading Graywolf and Sugarrae. Just cut the bullshit and say what you mean.

from BrettFromTibet 508 days ago #

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Sphunn for the title alone! Good article, too.

from toddmintz 508 days ago #

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Thanks for all the compliments!!!

from ChristianBk 508 days ago #

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Good stuff Todd... sphunn...

from amandamiller 508 days ago #

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Your post really hit home for me. Having to be so diplomatic and political in agency life really SUCKS in no uncertain terms. However, even if some of our clients were given the real low down without the niceties I'm not sure it would make any difference unfortunately. BTW, nice title. Catchy.

from g1smd 507 days ago #

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Agencies that let the client run the relationship are not giving that customer a good service.

They hired you as the expert. If you're the expert, take charge of the project.

from searchcommander 506 days ago #

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Great post Todd - I'm in Mexico on vacation and my Blackberry's been blowing up with comment approvals for the blog.

I wish I knew why the Sphinn's aren't showing on the SEMpdx blog for this post. I suspect that maybe it has something to do with the original sphinn being submitted from a category page instead of the post page? This might be a Sphinn bug, huh?

Anyway, again, great post. It sums up exactly why I never work well in an agency environment. The effort put into not ruffling clients feathers is not nearly as effective for me as as "telling it like it is".

I do admit to being a little envious of those that are able to acheive the same goal tactfully, but for me it's far more efficient to say "that sucks" and explain exactly why. That's hard to do in an agency environment where you have to "play well with others".