If you are in the business of offering a search engine optimization services to the public, you will most likely completely understand where I am coming from as I write this blog post. Before I continue, I want to point out, that I love what I do, working with clients to help build their businesses through SEO and SEM.

At some point the industry veered off course because some clients look at you like you are the enemy right from initial phone call. I view at each client like a partner, I have been hired to grow their business and my only goal is to do just that. I think this is important to discuss because it seems to be getting worse for many other search engine marketing professionals. I know the past 12 to 24 months has been tough for all of us, but there is not excuse! Anyway, I encourage SEO folks, marketers, web developers, web designers and clients to read and contribute your thoughts and experiences to this blog post.

In my opinion, here are a handful of some of the top characteristics that a bad SEO client portrays:

1. Poor Communication: A large bottleneck that quite often occurs is a lack of response or communication from a client. When you set up scheduled meetings and consistently get blown off this will eventually lead to a much larger problem. Search engine optimization often times requires education and reasoning as to why an effort is being done and these meetings are vital for things to keep moving smoothly. In order for no surprises to ever occur, client, service provider communication is essential. A lack of communication from either party usually leads to loss of business.

2. Poor Company Organization: Have you ever worked with a company that couldn’t get out of its own way? Nothing is worse than having to get approval from 6 different people about let’s say, on site optimization recommendations. Often times this leads to numerous unnecessary revisions by company employees that have no business looking at this in the first place. For instance and IT Director and Sales Director really have no need to be involved. There should be one point of contact to allow for things to operate smoothly and efficiently. Too many chefs in the kitchen usually spoils the soup.

3. We are NOT the Enemy: Plain and simple your SEO service provider is NOT the enemy. We have been hired to complete the job of helping you build your business online through a variety of sources and efforts. Some clients approach purchasing SEO services like insurance. Nobody wants to buy insurance but we have to. Yes SEO is intangible but results can be seen from month to month and over time. Treating us like we are against you right from the start is not going to create a smooth relationship. Actually it will be quite the opposite and it will be rocky from the beginning.