In case of most SEO professionals, client retention is harder than client acquisition. Client retention can indirectly impact client acquisition. If you have a low client retention rate, chances are that those unhappy or, we should say, unsatisfied clients will tell bad things about your company or you as a consultant to the people they know. It, therefore, will be a genuine way for your SEO brand to get some negative publicity and reputation.

However, there are a few simple ways that I’ve discovered over the years, being heavily active as an SEO professional, that help in client retention like nothing else.

1. Educate Your Client

The first thing that you should do after you get a brand new client is educating them about the very basics of SEO and about their own site’s current state of SEO. The truth is no matter how good the links you acquired are, no matter how targeted the content pieces that you created for that client are, or the hours that you’ve spent doing manual outreach for the client, they don’t matter to the client unless they know why they’re important.

On the other hand, if you educate your client about the basics of SEO and what their specific site needs, they may be able to become a source of motivation for your work on their site and may even offer unique insights and suggestions especially if they know more about the industry more than you.

2. Be Clear about Your Goals

Many SEOs tend to overly exaggerate as to what they can do for a client’s site before they sign up. Heck, even on their landing pages they boast about how they increased the organic traffic of a client by 1680% (what they don’t mention is that they increased the number of daily visitors from only 50 to 890 visitors) and that sounds ridiculously high and drives potential clients crazy about the things the SEO can do with their site.

If client retention is your thing, you should definitely be clear about the goals and possible achievements in terms of traffic and conversions in the next few months. Also, you should mention up front to the client about any possible slow growth periods or small periods of traffic losses due to something as a disavow filing to make sure they don’t have to worry much.

3. Prepare an ‘SEO Strategy’ Document and Send it to Your Client

To be honest, giving minute by minute updates to your client regarding what you’re exactly doing is not feasible. But, you can at least give them a basic idea about what you’re going to do in the next month, or in the next quarter, for example.

The best way to do this is to study your client’s and their competitors’ sites thoroughly, determine what all changes can be implemented in your client’s site from an SEO perspective, and plan their content strategy as well — and then list them all down in something as simple as a Word document and later send it to your client in the form of a .pdf file for easier access. This will not only let your client know what you’re planning to do with their site, but will also help you stay organized when working on that client’s project.

4. Be Honest with Your Client

I’m not sure if there’s a field where dishonest people flourish, but SEO is definitely not that field. Before committing to a contract with a client or deciding on a price, let them clearly know what they will and more importantly, what they won’t get.

So, if you think that creating an infographic for a client will really help their site but the cost of creating one isn’t permeable given the client’s budget, let them know that clearly. If you create it with your own money, and they don’t renew the next month, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

On the other hand, if you don’t let them know about a possible way of increasing the traffic of your client’s site because you think it’s over their budget, they may blame you later for not letting them know about it and decide.

As important as letting your clients know that “I did this, this, and this” is also letting them know “I couldn’t do this, this, and this due to budget constraints”. So, honesty is a must.

5. Change Your Client’s Perception about SEO

Many clients think that SEO is a ‘one-time’ process that, once you do, isn’t needed to be done any time in the future. They’re obviously wrong, as SEO is far from being a ‘one-time’ process — it’s in fact a ‘forever’-process as there’s almost always some room to scale.

Let your clients know that their old perceptions about SEO are largely inaccurate in the current time. This’ll not only rid them off false ideas about the SEO field, but will also help you justify your actions from an SEO stand point to them.

Conclusion

Retaining clients is one of the hardest things about being an SEO consultant or running an SEO agency. However, if you manage to educate your client, change their old and inaccurate perceptions about SEO, give them a brief idea about the strategy you undertook for their site, and most importantly, be honest with them, client retention is no big deal.

So, what other ways do you know that definitely help in improving your client retention rate?