News Source: http://www.semportland.com
Published: Feb 13, 2008 - 09:28 am
Story Found By: toddmintz 1460 Days ago
Category: SEM
11 Comments
Sorry this site requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser. See the following guide on How to enable JavaScript in Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Safari. Alternatively you may be blocking JavaScript with an advert-related or developer plugin. Please check your browser plugins.
News Source: http://www.semportland.com
Published: Feb 13, 2008 - 09:28 am
Story Found By: toddmintz 1460 Days ago
Category: SEM
11 Comments
Upcoming Conferences
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
- SMX West - Feb. 28 - Mar. 1, 2012
- SMX Munich - Mar. 27-28, 2012
- SMX Toronto - Apr. 25-26, 2012
- SMX Sydney - May 1-2, 2012
- SMX London - May 15-16, 2012
- SMX Advanced Seattle - June 5-6, 2012
- SMX Paris - June 7-8 2012
- SMX Melbourne - Aug. 2012
- SMX East - Oct. 2-4, 2012
- SMX Stockholm - Sept. 15-16, 2012
- SMX Social Media Marketing - Dec. 2012
Latest News From Marketing Land
- Marketing Day: February 10, 2012
- Report: iPhone, iPad Now Drive More Web Traffic Than Mac OS
- Drawing Out Your Affiliate Program Marketing Plan
- Is Yahoo About To Make Another Big Mistake — With Its Display Ad Business?
- Google Analytics For The Enterprise: Perception & Reality
- - See more news at Marketing Land -
Upcoming Webcasts
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
- The Inside Scoop on Automating and Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns - February 21, 2012
Latest News From Search Engine Land
- Google’s Recent Domain Registrations: Labs, Screenwise & AdWords
- Google AdWords Gets Shared Lists To Eliminate Duplicate Data Entry
- SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 10, 2012
- Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google Problem
- Search In Pics: Google Sugar Cube, Yahoo Valentines & Chrome M&M’s
- - See more news at Search Engine Land -
Comments
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.
Nice stuff Todd. Telling it like it is has its benefits.
Love the title!
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’ ;)
This is exactly why I love reading Graywolf and Sugarrae. Just cut the bullshit and say what you mean.
Sphunn for the title alone! Good article, too.
Thanks for all the compliments!!!
Good stuff Todd... sphunn...
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.
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.
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".