That’s why, as Sandford advises, you need to discuss the opportunity and the challenges.
Report the issue in time. Flagging a potential issue in good time before it happens shows that you are on the ball. If you can see an issue somewhere down the line, it shows that you are thinking about a long-term strategy, and that you are invested in your client’s success.
Don’t try to hide things.
The fact that you are being proactive is important, and most customers will appreciate it. You don’t need to plan for a potentially catastrophic drop. Instead, think of it as valuable insight that can help your customer make informed decisions.
Action 2: Highlight SEO Opportunities With SEO Forecasting
Contents
Back up all connections with data.
Uncover Real-Time Market Shifts: Evaluate Shifting Trends
When dealing with people who may sound like “bad news,” keep them to the point to show the basis of your analysis. Whether it’s competitive analysis, keyword data, or broader market data, this additional insight will add more value to customers.
An SEO report can help you uncover unique opportunities and help you evaluate trends before your competitors do.
Another way to discover real market changes and fundamental opportunities is to measure the search area, including annual trends, to estimate the growth rate.
Predictions can be difficult when it comes to SEO but it’s also important to make sure you’re working towards a goal that can provide a return on investment.
We look at the total amount of search traffic our clients are targeting, what share they are currently getting, and then we think about what improvements are needed to get X traffic and Y sales increase.
This really helps bring the opportunity to life and makes [SEO] seem like an investment.
Complement this with a predictive tool that considers all the important variables that influence your SEO goals, and you’ll build a solid business case that differentiates you.
Because, as James Euinton, Account Manager at The SEO Works, points out, economic conditions are “like the weather, we have little control over it but clearly we will have to face also in business. Although that doesn’t mean we should be unprepared.”
Announcements are not set in stone and will often change based on many factors beyond our control.
We need to show, instead, the factors that influence our work and give our estimates of how they can directly affect the site.
Using the data tools available in SEO, such as those found in the Search Console performance section and Google Trends, can be a good way to understand the keywords that are showing up for you to use. We may also use this data to make predictions about how the number of searches will be affected going forward and use that to predict what the impact will be on traffic and data.
That’s why it’s important to consider the seasons and annual search trends when forecasting or forecasting for SEO – you’ll see hidden opportunities that your competitors probably will wrong.
Image via SEOmonitor, October 2022
Align: Map SEO To General Business Objectives
Finally, Euinton explains well:
Being responsive and having the ability to quickly identify and take advantage of new opportunities can help weather the storm of uncertain business conditions.
To prove SEO ROI and maintain cash flow, you need to demonstrate how your planned campaign fits in with the overall business goals.
In order to have a steady flow of income, you need customers, and in order to have customers, you will probably need some form of advertising.
The cost of marketing services is often the first thing that should be considered to be reduced in difficult times. But cutting budgets can be detrimental to cash flow later down the line, leaving less money for core business operating costs.
The advantage of SEO and similar digital marketing channels is that you have a lot of data to show and demonstrate the effectiveness of your work.
It is important that we take this into account by showing customers the value that we offer the site in a way that they can understand and pass on.
Maintaining a good and consistent level of reporting and communication to ensure that the client is able to fully understand the role that SEO has not only in terms of our KPIs, such as traffic and conversions, but where they are relevant to the objective general business, too.
It’s also a question of repeating long-term SEO gains. As an expert, you have the knowledge and responsibility to explain why continuing to invest in SEO makes sense.
Getting buy-in for the long-term benefits that SEO can bring is important. In the face of adversity, companies that are able to continue to improve their website and market themselves effectively are more likely to reap the rewards when they are out the other side. However, as we have done during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering alternative payment terms is something we are willing to do.
Forecasting exercises can help achieve this, too.
Once you’ve defined how achieving the desired benchmarks will bring more time, conversions and revenue, the medium and long-term benefits become apparent from a business perspective.
Bonus Tip: Always Show How You’re Moving The Needle
By comparing the costs and results with their use of Google Ads, you get an external benchmark that makes your argument even stronger.
Image via SEOmonitor, October 2022
This insight comes from The SEO Works, giving you even more arguments to be active in customer conversations and to explain the real impact of your work:
Focusing on activities that move the needle and prioritizing them is important in uncertain times.
There are so many improvements you can make for a website in SEO that it’s difficult to isolate the activities that will really have an impact in terms of getting rankings, traffic and conversions. Add in the complexity of different types of website (such as ecommerce, directory, one-page applications), CMS platforms and business sites, and it doesn’t get any clearer.
When we review a website or create activities for the next quarter, prioritizing impactful work should be the foundation.
In addition to checking the site in detail to get a complete picture of where the site is, it is important to check what content is presented and to consider what the cost of the equipment for us and the client will be which one advises us on what to deal with.
SEO projects are always done within a budget, and it is important to be able to stick to this by working as efficiently as possible and prioritizing the right tasks.
In A Nutshell
For example, there’s no point in doing several developer tickets and campaign hours working to improve your Core Web Vitals score by a few points if the content can’t be parsed and analyzed by Google in the first place.
In addition to the actual tasks, observing our work and using tools to reduce the repetition of manual work, such as using letters to self-assess and standard methods can be very useful for the success of the project. .
Every conversation with stakeholders and customers is an opportunity to be proactive and address all concerns related to digital marketing budgets, SEO, and business plans.
Being transparent, sharing potential issues and ideas as market trends change, and constantly aligning your SEO work with business KPIs are key to keeping churn low.
As you can see from the top digital marketing agencies and their advice, showing that you are a business partner and maintaining a long-term experience is a winning strategy.
That is why, at SEOmonitor, we have developed a forecasting solution that is fully integrated with our daily ranking data, research data (research publications, seasons, and annual trends), and has a transparent algorithm – so you know what it’s doing. Your business case is credible and you can explain it, especially when everything feels uncertain.
