My client wants to rank for 5 different keywords on a same page.
my client has 1 page website which has 5 paragraphs for 5 keywords. I explained him he needs to create more pages and content around those keywords and we can use the landing page as pillar page. But he doesn't agrees on it . What he wants me to do instead is to get more conversions on his website through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and keyword research for the same page. I managed to rank him on 3rd position on Google. How do i deal with him i am somewhere new idk how do i deal with him further. Thankyou 52 💬🗨
aftabaliqu ✍️ ;-; shmidget This is a snarky response but shows how little some of you know SEO. Pages naturally rank for many phrases and if they don't something is wring. 30 min researching any healthy site on SEMrush will tell you so.
So silly.
xfd what shmidget Why should OP get new clients for a simple and extremely reasonable request. Getting a single page to rank for five keywords is extremely easy to do. It's so easy, and like I mentioned, natural that pages rank for multiple phrases. Most pages, most healthy pages, rank for dozens of phrases, some hundreds of phrases.
And, like I also mentioned…you can just look on SEMrush and confirm that any reputable site that has spent any time on SEO has pages that prove my point many times over. aftabaliqu ✍️ that 1 page has only 300 words of content in total is it sufficient to rank them though i managed to rank 3 of em! shmidget 300 is a lot… shmidget To whoever downvoted me: any of you want to try and prove me wrong go for it. I will bet you btc I can show you pages with no links that rank for dozens of keywords and they far less than or near 300 words.
Or, no..you are going to instead blame your incompetence on your customers which is crazy. studmuffin relax dude
deleted Tell them that you've doubled the consultancy fee
aftabaliqu ✍️ I wish i could but I signed it for one month and i don't want him to leave a bad review for me
katharss Just for the future: don't make contracts below 6 months. Doing only one month of work can lead to more or less nothing. So there is the danger of unhappy clients after that one month, cuz they expect miracles thesupermikey They are going to leave you a bad review regardless. This person seem to have fundamentally unreasonable expectations about how SEO and digital marketing works.
No matter what you do, it will not be enough.
IcicleDisaster If the keywords are all semantically similar it should be fine.
aftabaliqu ✍️ Those are different keywords for different services. Idk what he's upto
GrumpLife Each service should have it's own dedicated page, linked to from the homepage, then each of those service pages should have blog posts that are linked to from those single-service pages. Blog posts and pages should be interlinked where applicable.
deleted First things first: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a commodity. There is no such thing as "give me SEO so I can get conversions." If you and/or your client treat SEO as a commodity, you both will lose.
SEO is really nothing more than brand building. The Return of Investment (RoI) you get from SEO is more than just conversions. It is more than "I spent $2,000 in month 1 and I got $2,500 back in month 2."
I treat SEO as a premium service and I will not accept less than $2,500/month for my SEO services. Most businesses cannot afford real SEO. Real SEO takes a shit ton of time, money, dedication, research, and patience. I good SEO strategist must be good at Public Relations (PR), experimentation, data analysis, and have a creative mindset. A good SEO strategist needs to be honest and up-front. A good SEO strategist must also possess excellent communication skills. As you can see, SEO is not a commodity.
So, my advice to you is to reset the expectations of your client. If they need conversions and Return of Investment (RoI) right this second, then what they really need is Pay Per Click (PPC) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will NEVER satisfy these types of clients. But, if your client instead wants to become known as the best in their industry (and are willing to put in the money and time to do so), then they need Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Microsoft, etc did not become huge overnight. It took them DECADES of ceaseless marketing to get to where they are now. And Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one aspect of what got them to where they are now.
You need to bring their head out of the clouds and ground them in reality. Their business is simply one among thousands of others. You need to tell them that. It is your responsibility as an SEO to show them their reality and what it is going to take to move up the ladder. Good SEO takes time. A LOT OF TIME in some cases.
If you can set the right expectations, then your SEO will be successful.
But, if you are treating your services as a commodity and you allow your client to do the same, you are in for a rough ride in this career.
Good luck.
Madlad Solid post man. It's as simple as SEO is long term and broad. Pay Per Click (PPC) is short term and straightforward. His client clearly wants short term and straight forward. aftabaliqu ✍️ Thankyou so much for your valuable suggestion. I know i am somewhere messed up he is not even paying me my full amount and i was looking for clients so i agreed with his terms because he said he have a single page website but technically those are 4 different pages aligned on same page and he just want to improve his ranking for his services keyword which i was able to do since keyword was less competitive now he dropped a message that i should prepare a weekly task list with achievable in terms of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) .
I am less experienced in terms of handeling clients :/
i will hold a meeting soon with him and explain him everything right Search Engine Optimization (SEO) needs a lot of research and analysis and what you are looking for cannot be achieved in a month or so.
Thankyou i will keep in mind what you suggested! MKUWARFARE Underrated comment. Everything you stated is factual and something everyone in the SEO field need to know, including clients. Erewhynn I fully agree with everything stated here except "SEO is basically brand building". It's a form of brand building but I would honestly say most enterprises build brand on social.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more like a form of digital property maintenance. Sure, you drape your logo in appropriate places, and make sure your brand voice and colours are well used, but if your public facing site is run down or badly organised, you lose customers. Just like a dirty shop with poorly organised displays. And like property maintenance, it never stops. bayaga Great explanation buddy kbeyondmarketing Could not agree more. I'm trying to build an SEO business and it's hard to get this into the head of my clients/prospects. ayhme
Real SEO takes a shit ton of time, money, dedication, research, and patience.
So true and many don't understand this.
enyava How about tell him you'll do two versions – one of his (various keywords on one page) and one of your own (different landing pages) & explain that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about A/B testing as a rationale.
The first version with keyword stuffing obviously won't rank because it's not 2008, and maybe the client will finally understand how SEO works.
If they still don't agree, upfront tell them you don't want to waste their time and refer to a list of resources/articles about keyword stuffing and how it's outdated, as well as search intent.
I get that it's your first client, but you deserve better than being told what to do. Never get these types – why don't they do SEO instead, why hire a pro?
Drop clients that don't know the value of SEO or 'know better'. Your peace of mind is more important.
aftabaliqu ✍️ Thankyou so much, These comments/ suggestions really means a lot i ll definitely give my honest opinion to him on coming monday. Ty again 😃
The easiest way to do this is to show him the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) for the 5 different keywords. There's no easier way to get proof that he needs dedicated pages.
Let's say keyword 1 of 5 is "home office furniture". Google this and screenshot the top 10 Organic results on a PowerPoint /Google Slide. Highlight how many results have "home office furniture" or a close variant in their URL. Highlight how many have "home office furniture" or a close variant in their page title. Maybe also do a second/third slide listing screenshot of the H1 on each page.
Then do the same process for keyword 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Then explain how page optimisation works (URL, title, H1, copy related to core topic).
This is your indisputable proof that if he wants to rank on Google for 5 different keywords, he will generally need different pages for each keyword.
As u/Blue_Steel_Skies says, what this guy needs is Pay Per Click (PPC), but that costs a lot over time. And off-page SEO/link-building can sometimes get one page to rank for more keywords but this takes weeks and weeks of research and outreach for each keyword (and therefore money/time) for a result that can take months and months to work. Possibly.
gopher Going a little bit deeper with this comment. In excel, add the keyword to cell b1, c1, d1, E1, f1. In cells A2-A11, enter 1-10 to show the position. Then enter the ranking urls for each keyword. Highlight the duplicates by using conditional formatting for cells b2-f11.
If there are zero duplicates, it's usually pretty obvious to the client.
If you find that keyword 1 and keyword 3 have some overlap, then compromise and try to combine them. Then keyword 2, 4, 5 could have their own pages.
I took over a few sites where the previous SEO person tried to do exactly what your client wants.
Before, we ranked mid page 1 for one keyword and then page 3+ for the other keywords. I split the landing pages into 5 pages and then optimized each page for that specific keyword/product feature.
The keyword ranking mid page 1 is now #1. Another page is now ranking #7 for another major keyword. The other 3 pages aren't ranking quite yet, which is ok because our traffic is up over 300% y/y. (Splitting up the landing pages costed us ~$500. The sites I work on are pretty big, so the increase in traffic paid off after a day…)
If the client still thinks it's not the right strategy, find a direct competitor that does exactly what he wants and show the results. If you can't find a direct competitor, find someone that does something similar.
If none of that works, then you may need to start talking intent. The reason I'd say to stay away from intent/User Experience (UX) type of conversations right now is the client will likely interpret it as being too fluffy.
Another example…I put together a content plan and the client questioned if we really needed pages for each topic. I showed him the overlap between keywords and there was zero. I responded…No, we don't need to create separate pages, but if we combine them, we'll be ignoring the ###k users searching for the other keyword. …He laughed and said "well when you put it that way…" (we had a good relationship, so this might not be the best way to go, but it's true.)
Last thing. If he doesn't care what you have to say, do your best. If you have to target the 5 keywords on one page, pick the one that you think will be easiest to rank for. Optimize the page for that specific keyword and then sprinkle in recommendations for the other keyword. It sounds like the client doesn't know Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so they'll think you're doing what they said. Once that one keyword starts getting traffic, they'll likely be happy. (I don't view this as unethical because you're truly doing what's best for the client. Think about him leaving a bad review after you get them results. The review would say something like…"this so called SEO expert only increased my traffic by 300% instead of the 1500% that I expected")
Erewhynn Simply excellent advice. Deserves more upvotes than I can provide.
Bloop I just wanted to reiterate that setting expectations up front helps avoid this. It's hard to tell a Client that you can't get immediate results, but it's easier than trying to successfully perform voodoo to make impossible things happen.
We usually just tell Clients that it'll take time to get results so they aren't expecting results right away, then we try to find a quick win to impress them and get some results coming in faster than expected while we wait for the other results, if that makes sense.
As far as your current Client, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is confusing… but your job is to walk them through it all so they can somewhat understand what they're even buying. Your Client is just confused and is smart enough to know that he/she needs some kind of way to measure if you're worthwhile, but that doesn't sound like a huge problem, your other job as an Entrepreneur is to fix stupid little problems like that lol.
