Selling SEO to the Uninitiated Client

It is sometimes very hard to get clients to understand why and how SEO can be of benefit to them. The hardest part is conveying the importance of effective keyword research and placement.

This post is going to try to make it easy and fun for SEO’s to inform clients as to why SEO - and particularly keyword research - is important to their online presence, rankings and exposure.

We have posts with additional resources for you to review regarding keyword research, as well as  on integrating SEO effectively and efficiently into a new website, as well as into an existing website if you have a little extra time

Back to: Initiating the Uninitiated into the Possibilities of SEO

1. Spiders require theme identification to apply relevance

*** (Please see SEOmoz for thanks below)

2. Is the key theme obvious?

3. Why is the key theme important?

4. But WHY are keywords that important?

Spiders crawl webpages looking for html text based relevance of a theme. If they see the same topical reference consistently throughout the page, they will apply onpage relevance.

Really? Where is that on my page?

5. So, why can’t I just stuff my pages full of keywords? …And what is Off-page SEO?

6. How do I handle off-page SEO?

7. What happens if I ignore SEO?

Well, apart from the liklihood of poorly conceived IA, design and development; less than optimal CMS solutions; and no one finding you, there are some basic issues you might face:

*The Googlorithm image used in this blog post is courtesy of Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz. He understands that my interpretive design skills suck, that I love his blog, & that I think SEOmoz rocks. This is not an ad plug, this is my opinion

If you don’t have a PRO membership, come to SEMCanada.org 2008 in Calgary on the 3rd and 4th September and SEOmoz will give you a 3 month free trial! If you are already an SEOmoz member and want to come, we are offering a 25% discount to PRO-Members! Jane is speaking, as are a number of SEO uber-gurus, and we’d love for you to join us!