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What Clients Need to Know about Digital Marketing

So you know how I’m always telling you that our email box leads to a lot of my greatest inspirations. I had that happen yesterday so I want to share.

Its interesting to me how clients perceive what we do for them. Admittedly, we are very much out of the mainstream in that, I don’t just do SEO, or IT support, or Public Relations or Social. Normally you would think not one company can truly do everything well, but after 19 years and basically evolving with the industry, there is very little we can’t do and honestly very little I haven’t seen. We learned because of necessity.

So I get this email yesterday from an independent consultant that wants to talk to me about one of our clients websites. Its a solid local website that is ranking on about 3500 keywords according to Google. The site ranked in the top 3 or the 3-6-8 pack on the majority of the industry money terms.

What i found intriguing about the entire thing is that the consultant, although a ‘digital marketing expert’ devised a bunch of ah-ha gotcha-type questions that were not even the right questions to ask if you truly understood Digital Marketing and how it related to this website. The issue is that most customers even know when they have a real problem or a perceived problem. So enter a ‘smart’ consultant that is going to tell you all the things wrong. Whats sad to me is that in most cases, they leave the client in far worse shape than when they got there.

Here are a few tips for clients:

If a business is not spending 40 hours a month on its website minimum, there are things not being completed. And if the business doesn’t pay your SEO company for that # of hours, then know your always going to be doing less than what is needed for you to succeed. If your a large corporation that will only go up from there. Digital Marketing is as simple and as complicated as you will get what your put into it.
IT departments should not Run websites, they should just secure them.
SEO is not Dead, its just matured and evolved.
Using old information is the best way to hurt your website. If and article is less than a few weeks old assume there is something out there that supersedes it when your talking about how to get rankings. And, if someone sends you an article to back up their opinion assume they don’t know what they are talking about.
Beware of someone who wants to send you a report to tell you how bad your website is doing. The only people that get those reports are people that actually can be found. Its a common marketing ploy and usually created in a vacuum for no consideration as to how someone is running their digital marketing program.
Beware of anyone that calls on the phone and says they are Google or they can get your ranked on Google Chances are very good they can’t.
Beware of the $300 SEO company. There is no such thing. Not even one from India. Well ESPECIALLY one from India.
If your SEO says its about meta tags fire them.
Don’t assume that because a company runs a news paper they know how to run SEO. They after all run a newspaper and most news papers are going out of business.
When you ask how many words you will rank on if the answer is 7 run.
Adding a page for every city is America is passé
There are no guarantees. Run from anyone that promises one. They either don’t know what they are talking about or are a few not so nice terms.

I’m sure I can think of a few hundred more of these type things, but for now this is just a starter list.

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Beth Guide

President at Vertical Web

Beth Guide, owner of Vertical Web, is a leader in SEO Web Design, Web Hosting and Digital Marketing. She is a well known public speaker and technology expert in Houston. She also works with with University of Houston Bauer College of Business, Houston Community College for Entrepreneurship,the Houston West Chamber of Commerce, and the Northwest Houston Chamber as well as being a Fox26 correspondent for technology.

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