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1. 5 Surprising Reasons Your SEO Clients are Cancelling
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Client satisfaction is the backbone of any SEO agency. Believe me when I say that providing SEO
services is only half the battle; maintaining good client relationship makes up a significant part of
your efforts. So, what would you do if a client cancels on your service?
Providing great customer service plays a big role in developing brand loyalty. Start by looking at
where you went wrong if you want to retain your clients. Once you find out what made your clients
turn away from your business, you can try again and get them back to your side.
In this post, we'll go over the common misses that cause clients to cancel an SEO contract:
1. Not Showing Any ROI
There's nothing a client loves more than seeing measurable results. They want updates on the
progress of their campaigns and would like to know if strategies are right on target. Showing ROI
reports is just the same.
ROI reporting serves as a key metric of your client's business goals. A complete ROI report
motivates client collaboration by providing them with an objective means of campaign evaluation.
This also clears the path to upselling your SEO services and driving more profit into your SEO
business. Without showing any ROI, you give clients no reason to invest in your services. An example
of not showing ROI:
To include your ROI in your reports, you can set goals with a dollar value to a conversion for non-
ecommerce. Use your Google Analytics to set conversion goals. Once results are measured, your
reports will show ROI with dollar values.
For those that sell products and services, you can use the ecommerce conversion tracking in Google
Analytics, this will measure everything from transaction revenue to best selling products and even
the amount of time/days/sessions it took your customers to purchase.
2. You're Not Communicating or Meeting Clients Face-to-Face
Communication is everything in client relations. This helps you clarify key questions about your
campaigns and SEO methodologies. In turn, this provides you better understanding of your client's
situation and more opportunities to reinforce a sale. From the initial kick-off meeting to a campaign
retrospect, communication is a huge factor in building relationships with your clients.
A study by Oxford Economics shows the importance of meeting clients. According to this study,
businesses that travel for face-to-face meetings and implement a more hands-on approach with their
services experience an increase in both profit and revenue.
From a psychological perspective, face-to-face meetings allow you to create a more special

2. connection with clients. Personal conversations make it easier to resolve issues--research indicates
that 85 percent of businesses and clients experience breakthrough thinking with direct contact than
they do with email interaction or virtual meetings.
As Craig Bradford of Moz recommends, it's best to speak with clients at least twice every week, and
meet with them face-to-face once a month. When you maintain consistent communication, you can
expect lasting client relationships.
3. You Oversold Them
It's an agency's responsibility to assure clients that they are in the right hands. Promising them more
than what you can give is a different thing, though. Rather than reinforcing a sale, you're only
overselling.
If you oversell, you're setting high expectations for clients. Failing to meet those expectations results
in unfavorable responses, which could push clients to cancel their contract. Moreover, overselling
can raise doubts and make clients question if what you're providing is the real deal.
To avoid overselling, determine what is most important to your clients. Never work with the
assumption that you know what's best for them; ask clients directly about what they need, to set a
clear bottom line. Always work with this mantra "show, don't tell" in mind. Explain your
methodology, so clients will have a better understanding of how you can achieve results.
4. Your Pricing is Too High
You need to be strategic when it comes to SEO pricing. While there's no one-size-fits-all pricing, you
can still set reasonable rates to suit the value of your services. It all comes down to how you
approach your clients about it.
If you price $10,000 every month for SEO services, clients will be expecting results immediately to
fill this value. After all, clients want the assurance that what they're paying will be at par with their
expectations.
The better strategy is to lower your price and over-deliver on your services. Show clients that you
are capable of delivering results with a low starting rate. Monthly retainers are a good strategy for
lowering your prices.
If you have different services, create separate packages that correspond to the project's level of
difficulty. In this case, your pricing depends on the service plan you've put together for the client.
Before proceeding with this pricing, you need to ensure the details of the project are clear with the
client.
5. Your Reports Don't Show the Right Data
Even if you're constantly contacting or meeting with clients, you still need to provide campaign
reports. If there's missing data on your reports, you need to quickly fill in the blanks and ensure
clients are on the same page.
Reports should be as detailed as possible. You can provide a summary of your SEO efforts, but
wouldn't it be better if you show a breakdown of conversion results from different sources? Don't
chuck the important stuff and limit your reporting to only one metric. This will give your clients

3. more insights on how your SEO efforts are directly impacting their business better than other
providers.
Here are some of the things you need to highlight on your reports:
? Organic rankings - Show progressive movement of website performance on organic search listings.
This will help you determine which strategy to implement for maintaining or enhancing search
positioning on upcoming campaigns. A tool like siteoscope.com can help you in reporting rankings,
social signals and a lot more.
? Web traffic - Provide clients with clear data on web traffic received throughout the campaign
period. This can serve as a good basis if the traffic data matches organic search rankings. This
should also include the traffic sources and medium used.
? Social gains and losses - Get stats on the different social platforms that your client's websites are
affiliated with.
? Work completed - Provide a complete report on tasks deployed and completed. The report should
highlight the value added for the month of your campaign.
? Goal completions - Is your strategy aligned with client goals? Clients need to see if the work you've
done meets their goals.
? Rank trends - A detailed report shows rank trends, from keyword performance to web visitor
statistics.
? Competitors' ranking - Always study the moves of your competitors to keep up with their
strategies. Providing competitor ranking on your reports is a great way to inform your clients about
how they're doing against other businesses in their niche.
Creating the Path to Client Satisfaction
The best way to keep clients satisfied is to show genuine care for their business success. If there are
discrepancies in the results, don't wait for clients to make the first move. Show them your dedication
in getting their business on the right track. In the end, what your clients want trumps everything
else.
The above contribution was possible with the help of Clayton Wood. He is the marketing director at
SEOReseller.com. He has spoken at several online marketing conventions, and is passionate about
helping companies and entrepreneurs keep up with the latest best practices in digital marketing and
SEO. Connect with him on LinkedIn.