SEO’s Biggest Debates Right Now (with David Quaid)

Well, let's kick this off with a thread that is maybe on the negative side.

You know, that's Reddit though, let's be honest.

So the title of the thread is SEO clients keep saying we don't see the results even though the rankings are up.

And then this person goes on to kind of talk about how they don't think clients are actually reading the PDF reports that they're sending them.

And they're wondering if, you know, switching to a video or some other medium would help relay the kind of results of SEO better.

What do you think is the best way to educate businesses on the value of SEO?

I think I read that thread.

I remember when that thread came out and my knee jerk sort of like thought to that was if your client's not reading the PDF, you're not communicating the right thing, right? You're communicating data and data is not for communicating upwards, especially to a leadership team.

If I just reported on data at a startup, I'd be out the door faster than I came in.

You have to communicate a story.

And so, first of all, you have to have the sort of metrics and KPIs on the table before you start the project.

So I typically insist on, depending on the size of the company, from the CEO down or the CMO down, to have their hands in on the keywords.

I want them to be Googling every day to see where they're ranking, right? And so then they understand the importance of keywords going up and then ancillary keywords going up.

But if you're just sending a PDF report with keywords, you're not reporting.

I don't send SERP reports unless I understand the context of it.

I actually save SERP reports for Slack channels so I can point at, hey, we want to go up for, let's just say...

SEO New York, right? But in order to get up for SEO New York, we have to start with agency and expert and consulting, or maybe we'll start with Manhattan because it's easier.

And so I want to point at those early shoots and demonstrate that we're moving up towards the top.

When it comes to communication, I think you need to have a call, even if it's once a quarter or once every six months.

But if your clients start reading the PDF report, they don't understand what's going on.

They're delegating that to you and you need to understand that.

So you need to come back with another story that looks at the totality of what's happening in SEO.

So SERPs are one thing.

The problem with SERPs is that you can rank for keywords with no traffic.

You also can rank on page one, but not be in the click zone, right? So the click zone could be just the top three.