How Clients Can Wreck Their Agency’s SEO Campaign

In SEO’s earlier days, it was possible – more like common – for companies to be successful when clients were not involved in the process at all. Things have evolved since then to the point where this is no longer feasible. Successful search engine optimization requires a liberal amount of client involvement, and here is why:

Quality Content is Imperative

During the pioneering days of SEO, impressing search engine crawlers was a simple matter of publishing mediocre (and I’m being generous here) content on and off-site, thereby increasing rankings.

“highly ranking content will be useful, informative, more valuable than competitive sites, credible, high quality and engaging...” Click To Tweet

Once again, things have changed. Google’s algorithms now evaluate the quality of a piece of content, and rank it according to its value. This is no small feat, and here is how Google explains how content quality is determined:

“highly ranking content will be useful, informative, more valuable than competitive sites, credible, high quality and engaging…”

It is implausible for any SEO firm to create content of this quality without assistance from clients.

Factors writers must fully understand when they compose content are those relevant to the client’s industry such as: customers, selling points, branding, value, selling obstacles, and product information. This is in addition to understanding the same about the client’s competitors. Some of the best topic ideas come from the clients as well, since they are in the trenches and understand what their customers need on top of their business.

Content is the Foundation of SEO

Just as approaches to SEO have evolved, so have Google’s algorithms. In particular, to eliminate “black-hat” or unethical tactics to boost rankings. The old-school practice of keyword stuffing meta tags to elevate rankings is no longer effective, since Google spots this tactic and ignores it.

The bright side? There is a clearly defined path towards higher search engine rankings, and it does not allow for cheap tricks, hacks or shortcuts. Publishing content of superior quality, then using that content to earn high-authority inbound links is the route to a successful SEO campaign.

A SEO company will be severely hobbled in their efforts to improve organic visibility if clients do not collaborate with them. This partnership is vital to executing a successful SEO campaign.

You can learn how to work with your SEO firm here.

Great SEO Agencies Minimize Client Involvement

Now, having said all this, the need for client involvement can be reduced by choosing an SEO firm that is skilled at content development. As we anticipated the evolution of search engine optimization, we have cultivated a talented team of writers, editors, outreach specialists, and content strategists. This has given AdInfusion the ability to bear the burden of content creation, publication, and distribution to earn high-quality links.

Given the importance of high-quality content to SEO efforts, businesses should thoroughly vet the content marketing capacity of prospective agencies — it will save a lot of their time and improve results.