How to break the news to a client?
-
I have been hired to work with a dating website to help with some SEO. The website itself is in a lot of trouble from an SEO standpoint. I have been working on a plan with them for how to fix their problems.
They are currently averaging 1.6k unique users a month and wants to get to 50k in 3 months and 200k in 6 months. This seems entirely unreasonable without spending a lot of money on SEM/Social/Other marketing avenues.
-
Hello there! Without knowing anything else about the website, these numbers do sound incredibly unrealistic. Though nothing is technically impossible, I feel that setting realistic expectations upfront is incredibly important. Did you perform an audit of the site and discuss goals and the scope of work prior to being hired by this client? Also, do you know why the client chose those numbers as goals or are they arbitrary? My recommendation would be to meet with the client and discuss your concerns, recommendations (including other methods of generating traffic), and realistic goals for the website as a whole and how that could correlate with increases in traffic over time. I feel that it is better to part ways in advance if you do not feel that you can meet the (albeit unrealistic) expectations of the client versus disappointing them and potentially tarnishing your reputation in the long run. I also personally feel that guaranteeing traffic or using only traffic as a KPI or success indicator is a slippery slope. What is the true end goal? In this client's case, would it be paid subscriptions? Consider educating the client on the value of the quality of traffic versus the pure quantity of traffic and incorporate CRO into your recommendations to define your conversion funnel and optimize your conversion events. Just a few thoughts off the top of my head - hope this helps!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best structure for a news website including main menu nav
Just looking for thoughts and opinions on the best way to set up the main nav on a news website that covers a specific professional services sector. There are news items, archived news, blog, events, but also main menu links to the numerous news categories that go to a page listing the news articles under that category (as created in Wordpress when publishing the article). I'm thinking that having these off the main nav is diluting the juice to the more important pages including the events and the news page? Just thinking about how to rearrange and consolidate. Any thoughts on how people would structure something like this?
On-Page Optimization | | sam_legmark0 -
Should I index news and blog posts which receive little traffic
Hi all, I have a very large site at the moment with a handful of high authority pages with great content which describe the charity's work. But the main content on the site is blogs and news article which, while being good quality content from a reader's point of view, receive little traffic from search engines as they are so niche and long-tail. They do, however, get ok internal traffic from other pages. Should these pages be indexed still or should I remove them? Is there a rule of thumb regarding minimum clicks/bounce rates that an indexed page should have? What do big news agencies do with really niche articles that may get next to no traffic but have valuable content on for those that do click through? Thanks in advance! Den
On-Page Optimization | | Deniz0 -
Meta keywords and meta news keywords
I've got a question regarding this. So normally Meta keywords it is not relevant and we shouldn't use them, however there are opinions that we can use them as these are signals for other Search Engines. Meta news keywords - are ok to be used in the news sites. what is your opinion on using both of them on a news site? Can this help, or harm? thanks, Irina
On-Page Optimization | | InformMedia0 -
Can't canonical, but need pages to show in Google News
We are a news media site in which much of our content is third-party, and already published by several other sources. Our current version of our CMS doesn't expose head tags, so I can't canonical to the original and avoid a duplicate content penalty. Is it ok for news sites NOT to use canonical, or do I have to NOINDEX until our CMS is fixed?
On-Page Optimization | | Aggie0 -
Client has 2 websites... won't do away with old site.
Ok my situation is: We have built a new site for a client and they would like to keep both sites working. Should I just attempt to optimize both sites to rank well in their area? Or should I be suggesting a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new? Other options? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | IntermarkGroup0 -
How would you optimize a news site with no defined keywords in mind
Hi I have setup a news site giving young writers a (paid) place to write mobbly.com but I want to promote it. there is no specific keyword apart from the top of the individual article should I choose some or just let each article do its own thing any advice would be greatly appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | jimsterg1640 -
Would adding a line break tag into the product name affect SEO ranking and Google's ability to read the entire title?
Our client would like to include a link break so that part of the product name always showed up on a second line. Would this affect how Google bots crawl the product name? Would it also affect how Google would show the product name in a search result page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
Corporate Client Won't Approve Landing Pages (of any sort)
We have had this problem a couple times now! A corporate client will not sign off on any new landing page development. Instead, we need a creative content strategy that we can use to target their keyphrases AND maintain a corporate/professional veneer. I'd love to hear your ideas and things that have worked for you for onsite optimization, when creating landing pages is out of the question.
On-Page Optimization | | newwhy0