How to keep your
SEO clients

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPS Up. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO over here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the incredible, the fantastically fabulous, the ever so awesome head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Hey, Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

Hi, Mordy. That's a very nice intro, as usual. Thank you very much. And hello to all the internet friends out there. Hi.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hi. Well, it's what they pay me to say.

Crystal Carter:

This is true. This is true. It reminds me of a little bit of the "Let's get Ready to Rumble" thing. That guy is a legend.

Mordy Oberstein:

What ever happened to that guy? Does he still do that?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I think he just walks around in a tuxedo looking for things that might rumble. Maybe he goes to building sites and just before they stir the cement he goes, "Let's get ready to rumble."

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a dude who made a whole living doing just one thing.

Crystal Carter:

One thing. One thing. To be fair...

Mordy Oberstein:

Maybe he does more, I don't know.

Crystal Carter:

Possibly, but I mean, who cares? It's the rumble that everybody's there for.

Mordy Oberstein:

Who cares. "I do so many things." Who cares.

Crystal Carter:

Who cares? Just Rumble.

Mordy Oberstein:

Just rumble

Crystal Carter:

Do the Rumble. But I think there's also the Rock. The Rock. There's a clip of him on a UK late night show explaining the whole thing of the, "Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?" And he breaks it down entirely. He's like, "Can you smell?"

Mordy Oberstein:

I remember watching it, not as a teenager guess. My brother at the time was really into wrestling, and I would watch it with him. That was very entertaining, even though I didn't like wrestling at the time, but it was entertaining.

Crystal Carter:

He was very good at it. Yeah, he's pivoted amazingly.

Mordy Oberstein:

He's really good.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And shout to all the wrestling SERPS Up fans. I know there are a few. Shout out to Jack Shaffer's Ward and all of them folks. So there's a lot of Wix wrestling.

Mordy Oberstein:

All Elite Wrestling. All Elite Wrestling.

Crystal Carter:

All Elite Wrestling.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is a Wix website.

Crystal Carter:

Is a Wix website. And they crush it every week.

Mordy Oberstein:

They do. I don't watch it. I don't even know so much about what it is. I know that it's wrestling and that it's on Wix.

Crystal Carter:

And they put the smack down on SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think that's the wrong league. Is that a league?

Crystal Carter:

Is that the wrong one?

Mordy Oberstein:

I think so.

Again, the SERPS Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can schedule analytics reports to show up in whoever's inbox you want. It's right there with Wix Analytics. Send Rick your client, if that's what you want, and do it automatically so that you can retain those clients really easily. Since today we're talking about how do I retain clients in 10 days. By the way, is a reference to... what is it? How to Lose a Guy in 10 days? That's where they got that from. It's a movie.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, I see. I see. That makes sense.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. I never even saw the movie though. I don't why.

Crystal Carter:

I'm not sure I've seen the movie either, but if you want to talk about romcoms, Dr. Pete is the romcom dude.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is he really?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. He's been spending a lot of time writing AI romcom plot lines and it's incredibly amusing. So check out Dr. Pete's thread on that.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm using Chat PT to write prompts using the Twilight Zone intro.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Write a essay about astrophysics in the tone of a Twilight Zone intro.

Crystal Carter:

Nice. Nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. It's great.

Anyway, today we're talking about how to ensure you keep your clients. We do have some simple steps for you, though often disregarded steps, that'll help you keep your SEO clients happy. Things like why the first 90 days are so important, the absolute importance of good SEO communications, and client churn prevention, what to do and what to learn from it. Plus, Lucy Dodds will stop buying and share her tips on building trust with SEO clients. We'll also travel across the Wixverse to talk to two client management aficionados, Wix's own Clay Kemp and Sean Delgado. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO News with you and who usually be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Don't lose us, as episode 28 of the SURPS Up podcast is on a retainer for the next 30 plus minutes.

Crystal Carter:

I like that. We love a retainer. A retainer is exactly what we need.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a holy grail of SEO agencies, the retainer.

Crystal Carter:

yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that it's really important. The retainers are good for two reasons, they're good for the clients and they're good for the SEOs. Having worked agency side, I can tell you that when you have a good retainer client it really gives you the scope to plan and grow. I think people talk about quick wins and low-hanging fruit and all of that sort of stuff, but that stuff gets done very quickly, hopefully within the sort of first 10 days, first 90 days. But then what do you do after that? The retainer allows you to plan for your SEO growth and allows the agency to plan for that and to plan effectively. So it's really, really useful for people to be able to service their clients really well and to build in the scope to do some of the really fancy, really high value SEO deliverables. So yeah, retainer is great because it gets you great results as a client and it also is great for the agency cause it allows you to plan.

Thinking about the first few days of an SEO client though and how you get to maintaining those lovely retainers. Having worked agency side, I can tell you that those first few days are really crucial and it's really important for people to understand how they relate to the agency and how the agency relates to the client and to sort of make sure that you've got good relationships there. The relationships are really, really important. Sometimes what I find with relationship building, there's a lot of some of the soft skills of finding out the kinds of things that they like, finding out the kinds of references that are very relatable. For me, I talk in metaphors all the time and...

Mordy Oberstein:

I love your metaphors. They're so good sometimes.

Crystal Carter:

My favorite is my nacho cheese internal linking metaphor. That's my favorite one.

But anyway, I talk in metaphors all the time, but the reason why I do that is for relatability and depending on who you're talking to. A sports metaphor will work well for somebody who's really into sports, but something else like a film metaphor or sewing even or something might work better for a different audience. So it's really important to think about that and to make sure that you've got good foundations for your relationship going forward because what's really important in the first few days as demonstrators is being able to convey trust. That comes with being honest with your clients about your capabilities and about the things that you can do for them, and also being honest with them about what you can expect from them and what they can expect from their team.

So for instance, if you're working with, let's say an owner operator and maybe a marketing manager, let's say it's a small business. The amount of SEO stuff they're going to be able to achieve is going to be smaller than if it was a massive team with developers, and a graphic design department, and a film team, and all that sort of stuff. It's going to be different, so they need to set some real expectations for what they can achieve and what you can achieve with what you're doing there. So that's really, really important.

I think also making sure that they've got clear understanding of your reporting, so reporting is also really important for that. Also being able to get some of those quick wins. Quick wins can be part of making sure that you've got some client trust there, because what will then tend to happen before a client comes on is there'll be some kind of audit. It might be a really deep dive audit that goes into every single element, or it might be just a quick audit just to sort of say whether or not there's some possibilities, what kind of growth we might expect.

Generally speaking, from that audit there'll be a couple of things where it's like, "Oh, you don't have this tag. You haven't enabled this. You haven't set up your Google business profile." For instance. And if you're able to deliver some of those and get things moving in the first few days and actually get some things that will show some good results, then that will help you to retain your client, to build trust with your client to get some momentum, and to get the kind of enthusiasm that helps SEO projects stay at the forefront of the marketing mix, which is what you want as a client manager, as a project manager, and to make sure that you've got all of the things that you want set up for the months, weeks ahead.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I think a lot of what we're going to be discussing today is not, "Wow, that's brilliant." There are things you didn't know. I think in when you learn something, there are things like this, there are topics like this where it's not that I didn't know that, but you need to bring it out to the conscious level and bringing that out to the conscious level really helps you solidify it and then be able to act on it. I think that's a lot of what we're going to be doing today, what you just did there. One of those things is, yeah, a great communication I'll get to in a second, but it's not a brilliant idea where you know that when you have a new client and any new relationship, it's one of those periods where there's a lot of uncertainty and skepticism around the relationship.

I don't think we're saying anything earth sharing or brilliant in that, but bringing that out to the conscious forefront when you're thinking about it in the context of SEO clients is really important because if you're not consciously aware, then you won't consciously act on it. A great strategy, I was talking to Jacob Clark from Nerd Wilder about this recently, not on the keeping client context, but getting buy-in from clients, so a very similar kind of context. Where a quick win gets them to trust you, see that what you're doing, see that this process is going to work, see this is worth investing, everything you just said, and it doesn't have to be super complicated. It's not manipulative, you are just laying the foundation with that client, with that person so that you can move ahead forward because they might be very skeptical of you for nothing to do with you. SEO, sometimes, has a bad repetition as being snake oil or being about tricks.

Crystal Carter:

Consultants. Some people really are hesitant about getting consultancy, and certainly sometimes with consultants people will tell you something you already know and they'll spend lots of money telling you something you already know and maybe won't give you actionables or something from that, for instance. I think that can make people skeptical. We've spoken recently about how to speak to the C-suite, and I think this is something that overlaps with that. Again, this is why I use metaphors. If you're speaking in jargon all the time, if you're speaking in words that are difficult for a normal person to understand, then that can breed distrust. So quick wins are something that people can see, but also it allows people to have more conversations with you about getting involved with the process because you'll say, "Okay, we did this quick win. Are you seeing results?" And they can say, "Yes, we did." Or "No, we didn't."

I think also the checking in about the process as you go along is really important. I remember when I first started working with clients, we get them on a retainer and I would say, "Hi, this month we're going to do this and this and this." I do my deliverables for six months, and then the beginning of the month would come, then I would say, "Okay, we did this to this blog and we did this to this, and we did that to that." And then I wouldn't talk to them for another month until we did the report. People of the internet, that was a terrible thing. That was terrible. That was terrible and that was awful. Don't do that. Don't do that. If you have clients or if you're working on a project in-house, for instance, if you're working on something talk to them as you go. Talk to them, as you go talk to them as you're working through the project.

Don't leave it a month between speaking to people. That was terrible. As soon as I started speaking more regularly with clients, I started seeing the retention grow and the trust grow. Also, when that happens, then people will come to you with more projects, right? Because they know that you're somebody that they can have a regular conversation with. They know that you're somebody who they can speak to consciously and solve problems and things like that. So I'd have people come to say, "Oh, well what about this? Do you know about that?" And I'd say, "Well, I know something about that, but I could recommend somebody else who knows more about that." For instance. That works really, really well.

So I think having the ongoing conversation. Sometimes it's a question of, let's say, you've got something really technical that's going through, try to find ways to get them involved, even if it's on a lower level. Sort of like, "Hey, we're doing this. Would you like it to be like this? Or would you like it to be like that?"

Mordy Oberstein:

It all goes back to the foundation which is the outright start of really crisp, clear communication and expectations. Which is the foundation for all of it. This is where I see a lot of people get messed up, because you are anxious and don't want to undersell. You want to show, "I'm going to get you so much. You're going to get so much." I don't think that that's the right way to go about that, because inevitably you're going to hit roadblocks, you're going to hit complications. For lack of a better way of putting it, it's going to hit the fan at some point and the growth that you anticipate is not going to be as quick and easy as you perhaps anticipated for this website. Even though it looks on paper, there's no way. There's no way it's not going to work. Then you've created a situation where the expectations are not aligned to reality.

That's just a recipe for disaster because again, underlying all of this, I think it's true for most business relationships, is a degree of skepticism. You're just letting that come out to the forefront, it's there already for multiple reasons, more so I think in SEO than even in other places. And because you're not setting up the expectations to be fully transparent you're breeding a situation that's going to end up biting you in the rear end later on. There's nothing wrong in setting realistic expectations, telling the client that this is going to be hard, it's not going to be easy. I think most people, that will probably add a degree of credibility to what you're selling, versus "It's going to be so easy. Everyone's going to see this. Everyone's going to love this. You're going to get it done so quickly."

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. If you're like, "Oh yeah. Soon as we do this, we're going to be this, this, and this." Now sometimes, sometimes you can have a look at it and you can go, "I mean, this is a slam dunk." Sometimes you can do that, but you should do that cautiously. Sometimes hold those cards closer to your chest, because you can give them realistic expectations of what you're absolutely sure that you can do. For instance, you can say, "We can do this implementation, which will make you more eligible for rich results." And that you can guarantee, right? Certain implementation will make you more eligible for rich results. You can't guarantee how many rich results they will get. You can't guarantee what they will rank for. You can't guarantee necessarily the traffic because there are many, many variables outside of that.

But you can say, "We will get you this, which will increase your visibility and rich results." You can say that. So say that. That's fine. But caveat what you're saying and things. I used to do forecast for PPC stuff, and we would hedge them. We would hedge. We'd be like, "Look, if we can bring the cost per acquisition down to five pounds, then if we spend this much we should expect to see this much. But if the cost per acquisition is 10 pounds and if we spend this much, we should expect to see this much." So you can hedge, and having the sort of understanding of what the best case scenario is, what the worst case scenario is, what your potential plan B might be, is also really important. It's not a negative to be aware of the negatives. So if you're telling the client that there's a potential that this might go wrong, that's useful, and that shows that you've thought it all the way through.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that's also a great point, because if it does go wrong you've already laid down the foundation of good communication.

I'll tell you from an interesting point of view, because a lot of my work with the agency has come in where someone comes to me and said, "Hey, I'm working with an agency and this doesn't look right to me. Have a look at this." So I've multiple times have. "Okay, we're going to fact check or check up on." And clients will do this. They'll hire a consultant to check on what an agency's doing."Does this sound right to you?" And it's inevitably when they hit a problem. One case I had was someone came to me and said, "Hey, a bunch of my local listings got suspended from Google Business Profile, and the agency is telling me X." I'm like, "That makes absolutely no sense. This is absolutely their fault. They should have known that."

When you don't have those lines of communication set up at the outset, it's really easy to get into big problems once things go a little bit sou. A point to that is, when they go sour, be upfront. Things happen, people generally understand. Nothing is ever a hundred percent simple. Nothing ever goes a hundred percent the way you think it's going to. You're going to have problems, and it's all about communication and communicating about those problems and being upfront, because the thing you don't want is for the trust to erode. Problems are fine. Trust eroding is not fine. If you can keep a level of trust up while dealing with the problem, then you should be fine assuming you know how to handle that problem.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think, again, this is one of the reasons why it's worth spending some time getting to know your clients generally as well as getting to know your clients professionally. You don't have to be hanging out with them every weekend or whatever, but it's sometimes useful to be able to speak to them in a sort of casual way because in those moments where you're talking about what happened at the football game over the weekend, or what your kids did at the thing or whatever, in those moments you understand the nuances and the ways that they talk about maybe sensitive topics, which can help you to talk about sensitive topics in other spaces. I think that, yeah, it can be tricky, but it's really, really worth it. It's really, really worth it.

I've had conversations where clients have come to me and they maybe weren't happy about something, that can happen happens. It happens. Sometimes a client can come to you and they say, "Well, I'm not happy about this. I don't like this." And I remember having one conversation and I was like, "Thank you for your candor." And they were like, "What?" I was like, "Thank you for your candor, thank you for telling." I think that in those moments, if you have clients who are unhappy or something, be grateful that they're telling you because, like you were saying how somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, this agency told me this. Or this consultant told me that." And they're asking you to double check them. Be grateful that they're talking to you about whatever the issue is, because it takes a lot for someone to come and say, "Hey. Actually, I'm not happy about this." So listen to them.

Mordy Oberstein:

Being respectful and normal about it. Which by the way, if they're not, and this is okay also, you are allowed to drop clients.

Crystal Carter:

I think this is important. I think that when you're thinking about clients, when you're onboarding clients, for instance, and your onboarding process should be paying attention to this as well, but when you're onboarding clients, make sure that you're onboarding them for a good fit. Somebody might be a good fit for somebody and might not be such a good fit for another person, but pay attention to how they operate, how you operate. For instance, if they're the kind of person who expects you to reply back to an email in the next hour or something and maybe you don't have the capacity for that, then maybe they're not the best client for you, or maybe that particular way of working isn't the best for you. Maybe they might not be a good fit for a retainer client, but maybe they might be a good fit for a project client, for instance. If you have other things, then that's something. I can see that you wanted to come in there, Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, no, I wanted to say what you could do there, by the way, is if you have a friend who owns another agency or somebody you know owns another agency that does that kind of whatever work that you don't want to do, and you do the work that they don't want to do, you can refer your clients back and forth to each other. You don't have to feel like you're losing out. This could just be part of a relationship where that makes you win, just later on.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And again, that's something that doesn't make you look less valuable to the client. That still keeps you as the person who is able to solve their problems, because at the end of the day, that's what the client wants you to do. They want you to help them solve the problem. They want to find business solutions. So if you're able to facilitate that with either a tool, or a contact, or a whatever, then that's something that's really, really valuable for them.

I think that there's lots of nuances to it, but there's a really good piece of content on the Wix Partners blog called The No Surprises Doctrine of Building Trust Through Better Communication, which talks about a lot of this and it's really well written. I would also recommend, with regards to additional reading, on the Wix SEO hub, we have something from Sophie Brannan talking about SEO reporting. She talks about how to report to clients, and I think that that's a really important part of building trust and making sure that they understand.

When I work with clients, I build their reports bespoke. So we talk to them about what things they want to see, what things are most valuable to them, will work with them. Before I've had clients who maybe the project ended it, they wanted me to make them a new report separately even though I wasn't working on the project anymore because it's really important.

Mordy Oberstein:

With that, we have Lucy Dodds, who's a Senior SEO Strategist over at Evolved Search to share with us her top tips for building trust, cause that's what we're talking about. This whole episode basically is building trust. Keeping your clients, if you want to boil it down to it, it's building trust with your SEO clients. So here's Lucy Dodds and her top tips to build trust with SEO clients.

Lucy Dodds:

For me, the best way to build trust is through a content hub. These hubs give you a great opportunity to become a trusted resource for your users. In fact, the only resource they'll ever need to use when they're researching your products or services. Your content hub is there to satisfy your audiences every need of the marketing funnel, including pre and post purchase stages. So you can embed yourselves in their sales journey. The best content hubs put the brand at the forefront of their customer's minds by building that trust, which in the long-term results in sales and repeat business. And although we call it a content hub, it actually encompasses all parts of SEO, which means your technical on-site content and digital PR records are all aligned working together towards that one goal. But let's break that down.

So the technical SEOs will start out and build the foundations for your content hub. They ensure that all the content is housed in the correct sub folders coming from your commercial page, and not just left in a blog forgotten about. This helps to ensure any value from traffic or link building is only funneled into that one commercial pitch, which they'll also be managing through some very controlled internal linking.

Then we have the onsite content itself. We're going to be answering long-tail queries about the products or services that this business offers with more unique and informative content. We're integrating product experience, we're using internal statistics, we're creating genuine video reviews. Building trust by using authentic contact that's much better than any AI can scrape from another source. Users can find the content through search when looking up the long-tail query, and it's your job to ensure they leave your site feeling like you are the best and most trustworthy resource, so when the time comes to buy they remember you.

And finally, the digital PRs are going to make this content, and therefore your brand, more visible. Of course, there's always room for big creative link building campaigns, but actually you can get a lot of value from outreaching this informational helpful content. With the rising cost of living, pandemic, and other global worries, many journalists are looking for ways to support their readership with helpful content. So say we have a piece of informational guide content on cleaning a mattress. The digital PR can still make some headlines from that, like "How to Cheaply Clean your Mattress", or how to do it naturally with household goods. Probably not an award-winning campaign sure, but does it genuinely help users? Absolutely.

Reactive commentary works in the same way. When your sites in-house expert offers insight into an event that's happening in the world, that allows the digital PR to get your brand out there while helping users and forming trust with them at the same time.

So, we have the best informational content which strengthens our sites authority on the products or services we offer, and also means we don't look overly salesy. We have our brand building efforts through digital PR to pose in-house experts as the most knowledgeable people on a topic. And then we have the optimal technical setup to ensure all value from backlinks and organic traffic is being passed to our key commercial page, so we'll rank better too. And that's what a content hub is a great way to build trust because it gives you the opportunity to bring your SEO efforts together to become the greatest resource for your audience.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Lucy. That was really interesting and quite insightful for our audience.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, she's starting from a really good place. Lucy comes from an agency which is renowned for SEO. Evolve Search is an award-winning agency, and so she knows exactly how to work with clients and how to keep clients happy. Wise words from Lucy, she's a great follower as well, so follow her @lucyalicedodds on Twitter. She's got some great information about client management, about SEO, and she's worth checking out.

Mordy Oberstein:

So with that client management, as you just mentioned, one, is obviously not easy, but two, it's obviously not unique to SEO. A lot of the principle, like client management, have nothing to do with SEO, just being good at managing clients.

So with that, we're privileged to know some really amazing folks here at Wix, and in this particular case, these folks, we have to meet with them quite often so I know firsthand that they're awesome. They do also have an amazing SEO background, so we thought, wouldn't it be cool to learn more about client management, and client success, and driving client success, and having clients feel valued and taken care of, and how to do all of that from people who also know the SEO world all at the same time. It's all coming together. One magnificent storm of perfect awesomeness. So let's explore our client success with an all product advisement team as we go across the Wixverse with our own Clay Kemp and Sean Delgado.

Speaker 6:

3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hey Clay. Hey Sean. Thanks for coming on to the podcast, guys.

Clay Kemp:

How's it going, Mordy?

Sean Delgado:

How's it going? Thanks for having us.

Mordy Oberstein:

So you both work to help our clients feel, I'll call it valued and taken care of. What goes into what y'all do and how do you approach it?

Clay Kemp:

Yeah. So on the product advisor team, we actually have a bunch of our top partners, top users, some of our best users on the Wix platform. We really jump into help our team Account Managers when certain users on Wix need to learn more about SEO, or even have some troubleshooting issues. So if they need help doing some redirects, they're doing a site migration, or if we're just getting them up to speed on all the new changes that are constantly rolling out with the Wix platform, like the new SEO home dashboard or whatever it might be. We kind of have those two arms to our team. So whether it's making them successful through product and education, or that troubleshooting side that's kind of where we step in.

Mordy Oberstein:

So the troubleshooting side is interesting to me, because I feel at that point the client's on the fence. It can go either really, really well or any second it can break out into all sorts of frustration and chaos.

Clay Kemp:

Indeed.

Sean Delgado:

Indeed.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think Sean was like, "Yes." And it's understandable, because it's something that's complicated, it's something that's frustrating that you're trying to get your business going, your site going. So what's important to keep in mind in those moments, Sean, when you are dealing with something that it's really complicated, it's really frustrating, and you just want to make sure that the person understands that you have them, you have their back, and no matter how complicated it's going to get, you're going to be there for them. How do you walk that line?

Sean Delgado:

Yeah. It's a tough line to walk, but I think patience comes into play and also just being open and honest comes into play. I think it's important to really get as much information from the user as you can, just having a good backstory and a good background from where the problem started, what issues they're facing, what these issues are causing for them, the troubles that they're causing, whether it's just on the website or their business itself. I think understanding that is really, really important, but then taking the time to go through everything that they brought up and everything that might be the issue. Doing really good audits on the website and audits on troubleshooting things on your own time, just making copies of websites, going through things, making sure that things are working properly.

I think it's really important to make sure that you listen to them, talk it through, show them what you're doing. If in that session we don't get a full answer, reassuring them that, "Listen, we will do our work on our end. Make sure that you know are heard, you are understood, and you're not going to be forgotten just because that our session is up. It's a continuous thing and we're going to keep working to make sure that that issue is solved."

Crystal Carter:

Certainly with some of the discussions with partners I know that you have some bespoke communication tools that you use, I know you've got a few dashboards and things that you help to keep people aware of what's going on and how things are progressing. Can you talk a little bit more about communication methods? Certainly I know from my client side working, making bespoke things for communication requirements can be useful. Can you and expand on that or share any stories around that?

Clay Kemp:

Yeah, so I think keeping clients engaged is really a holistic process, at least where we sit. We sit in a unique spot between, I guess you could say product and then the actual clients themselves, so we come in as the subject matter experts. There's a lot of different channels of communication between. We sometimes help with webinars, we have a lot of different email campaigns that could be highly automated sometimes based on their behavior, even, just to empower them based on what they're doing within the platform. Then also very tailored approaches. It could be something slightly exclusive at times, like if they want to join this specific small group training, that's something that we will do from time to time. If there's a small cohort of partners, for example, like you're talking about Crystal, that I think have a stronger need to get up to speed on this tool to empower their business.

I think the most impactful thing, and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but within all this communication is really just continuing to ask those questions when we're in our one-on-one consultations themselves, which is what Sean was referencing, is just doing the discovery. I think the number one way that we make clients successful is just by continuously asking those questions, because everyone's goal is going to be a little different. We can't come in with a totally templated approach or too much automation or anything, but really just asking them, "What are you doing with your agency right now, and what are your goals from let's say 2023? Or what are your goals for the next few months?" And really digging into those on a client by client basis.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hearing that, and especially in working with both of you, the term that comes to mind is you both seem like advocates of the client. I'll have cases, for example, where Sean will come to me and say, "Hey, what's going on with this on the SEO side? What's happening with that?" And it really feels that you are an advocate for the client. It goes back to what you were talking about before, and we actually talked about this earlier in the show, it's not about avoiding problems. There's going to be problems, but it's a matter of when you're trying to retain clients, about showing the client that even though there is a problem, you're there for them and you're an advocate for them to get the problem solved. I feel both of you do that. Particularly, Sean, we work closely on stuff together where it does legitimately feel like you're an advocate for the client.

Sean Delgado:

Right. A hundred percent. I think any client feels that, and if it's an actual genuine want to help someone, I think they feel that and understand that. So whether it is something that you're solving in that moment or later on, like you said, me and you work together, I'll reach out to members of different teams if it involves something differently. We go that extra mile because we want to make sure that that client is happy in the end. We want to make sure that they feel heard, feel wanted, and feel needed in everything that they're asking and everything that they want. So, I think it is important to remember that we're here to help, we're not just here to go through our days just to go through them. We're here to help and actually give people the answers and tools that they need to succeed in their business and in their life.

Crystal Carter:

I think nobody likes feeling like they've asked for help and somebody's ticking a box. "Check, check. Yes" And you're like, "Oh my God." And they're like, "Press number three." And you're like, "I'd like to talk to a human being, please."

Clay Kemp:

Exactly. We're here to take those in.

Crystal Carter:

Right, exactly. I think that it is something that builds a lot of trust. I think Clay, you also talked about nurturing people and in a sort of education space, training people up on things that they need training on. I think particularly when you're working in a digital space, whether you're working in a B2B space like you are, or working client side, or even if you're working with customers even, where they're trying to learn how to use your product or a complimentary tool, for instance, one of the things you find is that in digital marketing, very often they're working with something completely new.

So there's a brand new tool or brand new feature that exists and there isn't training for it so you have to be that trainer, and in order to help make sure that the client is successful with this new tool that you've either advised them to have or that you are giving them you, that should be part of your mix and part of an expected process for your agency or for your client management thing. I don't know, did you ever consider or did you ever expect that you'd end up being a trainer in your job?

Clay Kemp:

Yeah. Actually, that's one of the things that I love the most about this role, because I've sat at the enterprise in-house side doing the analyst day to day. While I actually really did love it, I kind of realized that I wanted to teach people, cause part of what I was actually doing at the time was doing a lot of cross-departmental trainings or, let's say, more of our content strategy or our copywriter team. I would sit in on blog meetings and then I would give them some those targets for that quarter or that month. Then also just some 100 level and 200 level training, so that SEO became more of a mindset across the company and not just in our little small department over in the corner.

I think that's when I realized that I just love teaching people and empowering them to use product, and especially SEO, because I think with SEO there's a lot of at times gray areas, I will say that, and I think debunking some of those and just clearing some of that up is just a really fulfilling thing. It's great to see that among Wix users, and partners, and clients over here as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

What better way than to end here. That was perfect. Guys, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and keep it up.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Clay. It's great to be able to bring their expertise to the podcast, cause I learn so much from them every time we actually meet. Looking forward to seeing them over at Brighton. So we're going to be at Brighton, by the way, BrightonSEO in April. Clay and Sean just let me know. Crystal is surprised. Yeah, they're coming.

Crystal Carter:

I'm very surprised. Yay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yay, right?

Crystal Carter:

They're both great folks.

Mordy Oberstein:

They're awesome.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely fantastic and so, so enthusiastic about making sure that Wix partners do amazing things and that clients of Wix do amazing things. It's a very Wix.

Mordy Oberstein:

So if you'll be there, say hi to Clay, and say hi to Sean. Nice. You know what else is news, is Crystal coughing.

Crystal Carter:

Sorry.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what else might be news for you, Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

What?

Mordy Oberstein:

The Snappy News.

Crystal Carter:

The Snappy N`ews.

Mordy Oberstein:

Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News. Here's what's happened in the world of SEO outside of AI writers. Just kidding, this is all about AI writers, because Bing made a few interesting announcements over at Pubcon, the SEO conference, about its AI chat experience. First off, they said SEO is not dead. So thank God, I was worried for a second. They also said impressions, clicks, and so forth that come to your site from their AI chat experience you'll be able to see them inside of Bing's webmaster tools at some point. Meaning you'll have real data about if or if not AI chat is hurting or helping your site from organic traffic point of view. Very cool and very transparent of Bing. Not to worry though, Google's Gary Ilia said, also at Pubcon... Wow, so many things going on at Pubcon about AI chat... That Google's Bard will also have its own unique way of sending traffic to sites, as there were initial concerns about Google's Bard when Google announced Google's Bard as there were no citations to other websites. So have no fear. Less fear? Let's go with no fear. We're going to go with no fear. Have no fear.

This comes, by the way, on the heels of Bing saying that they have finished an update to their AI chat systems to make them more likely that the chat will return an answer and reduce what Bing is calling "hallucination answers", which sounds fun, but I'm glad they're gone, I guess. Coming on the heels of this, geez, everyone is stepping on everyone's heels these days. Anyway, on the heels of this Brave announce its own AI powered chat experience is live on its own search engine. AI is everywhere and not a drop of accuracy to spare. I jest, but there are some accuracy issues that I have seen. So please be careful when using the AI chat experiences on the various search engines to make sure that the information they're showing you is up-to-date and as accurate as possible. With that, that is this week's Snappy News.

Now, wasn't that jus the snappiest of news for you?

Crystal Carter:

It was so snappy. The snappiest Snappy News.

Mordy Oberstein:

Snap. It was news.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, Snap!

Mordy Oberstein:

Which brings us to the last little part of our humble little episode, which is who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, which brings us to a very, very special person who knows a lot about managing clients because he is the founder of the UK's largest specialist SEO agency, also known as Blue Array. He is Simon Schnieders.

Crystal Carter:

Simon is fantastic. I spoke at the London SEO Meetup XL last year and met Simon, spent a good amount of time with Simon, and he's just fantastic. Blue Array is a great agency who has a free SEO course available to anyone who would like to check that out. They're a great agency, and Simon at the helm does some amazing things.

I think that managing clients, looking after clients, is absolutely crucial to making sure that agencies perform well and grow. I think retaining your clients, whether you're a freelancer or an agency, is absolutely critical. Absolutely crucial. I hope that this episode has been useful to people who are looking to do that, and follow Simon for more. Thanks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Simon's on LinkedIn predominantly. He also has a newsletter he puts out with Blue Array, so we'll link to that in the show notes, and is a great follow on LinkedIn. Do you follow on LinkedIn? How does that work? Yeah, you do follow people on LinkedIn.

Crystal Carter:

You can follow. You can follow, you can also connect.

Mordy Oberstein:

Follow and then connect, yes. I know. I do LinkedIn, but I just repurpose all my Twitter stuff for LinkedIn.

Simon does put out a lot of thought-provoking posts on LinkedIn, so he is a wonderful follow on LinkedIn for you. Of course, we'll link to his profile and the newsletter that you have over at Blue Array in the show notes, which means that hopefully we've retained you to this point.

Crystal Carter:

We have. We have.

Mordy Oberstein:

We go all the way back around. We've clearly communicated with you so that you feel that we have embedded trust in our listener-host relationship.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. And we set expectations that the podcast would end, and now it will.

Mordy Oberstein:

And now it will. Thank you for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode and a special guest as we dive into how will chat GPT change search and the web forever.

Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts, or on the SEO learning over on wix.com/seo/learn. Looking for a little more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn.

Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.