Want to know how to manage, communicate and coordinate with SEO clients more effectively? Whether you are on the agency side of SEO or working in-house effective client communication is a must. 

That’s why LSG’s Senior Director of Operations, Tessa Voecks, recently spoke with Aleyda Solis on the podcast Crawling Mondays by Aleyda to discuss the topic and provide some quick tips for more successful client communication, management, and coordination. During the conversation, they covered a range of tactics and quick tips including:

• Major client management mistakes
• The building blocks of successful client management
• Choosing SEO client communication frequency & medium
• The best SEO communication tools 
• Final SEO management tips

You can also watch the recording of the full episode as well as catch a recap here!

Major client management mistakes

• Understanding how and when to say “no” to clients

As tempting as it might be, you don’t need to say “Yes!” to everything a client requests, particularly when it’s out of scope. It can be easy to default toward doing what the client whats rather than positioning yourself as an expert that can advise the client on priorities. However, this can be bad for you and your client’s success as this can distract them from achieving their ultimate goals.

This mistake can be mediated by understanding their budget and using that information to guide the scope and priorities. This is best achieved with communication about client expectations during the entire process from the initial sales consultation to the project management process. 

This way the client is clear with how you are helping them achieve their end goals and what it takes to get there without getting sidetracked on things that can compromise the ability to accomplish those goals.

The overarching theme here is communication, early and fast communication, setting expectations, validating what has been said in the sales process, and really I think the one that a lot of people miss is not over-promising what you’re going to be doing. Just keep it simple and that way you can always surprise people, but you never disappoint.

 

The building blocks of successful client management

• Using detailed reports to show how you are helping your clients
• Use your reporting to tell a story for the client

It’s important to be updating clients with in-depth information on what you are doing but giving them detailed reports without proper context can be problematic. 

It’s worth taking the time to break down what the reports mean and show them the progress on the KPIs they care about and why they matter–which starts with clear communication about what those are. 

For example, you could be reporting on traffic to the site, keyword positions, and brand visibility, but they might only be interested in ROI and what you are actually making for them.

Choosing SEO client communication frequency & medium

• While it depends on the client and needs, a weekly email update is a good best practice

How often you communicate with clients can range based on the type of work you are doing, their preferences, and how plugged into your project management system they are. 

For example, it may be overkill to have bi-weekly updates when your output is more monthly and unlikely to yield results in the interim. Additionally, if they can see everything going on in the project management system it may also be less useful to have a high frequency of meetings about what’s going on.

That said, a best practice might be sending them a weekly email about what we’re working on and what we’ve done as a heads-up that can make sure everyone is on the same page.

Best SEO Communication tools 

• Slack – A communication tool
• ClickUp – Project management tool
• Notion – Documentation Tool

ClickUp is a great tool for project management and allows you to keep client data organized.  LSG has what we call our “client information center” so we can keep all of the resources, project notes, meeting notes, sales notes, and all associated tasks. It also allows clients to comment and ask questions as well as be informed of what’s going on in real time.

Slack is also a very effective tool for internal communication that allows our remote agency to quickly exchange messages, files, and stay connected. 

Additionally, LSG uses Notion for the documentation of processes however in contrast to the previous tools we just use it internally. 

Final SEO management tips

Clear and effective communication is key for client coordination and that can take many forms. For example, documenting updates and calls as well as providing a summary of what was discussed is a great best practice. This gives you a record to reference which reduces confusion on projects with lots of moving parts and increases clarity on progress.  

Another tip is to personalize reports to show and explain the impact of implementations and how they affect the big picture for the client’s business goals. 

No matter which tools you use or how often you are communicating with clients ensure that you can properly address what you are executing and why that’s important for their priorities.

Originally Published at Local SEO Guide