Understanding the client’s expectations will make it easier for you to create a tailor-made strategy for their needs. The following questions are designed to get you started on creating the SEO questionnaire.
1. What are your goals?
Understanding the goals of your SEO client is an important step in the process of understanding their needs. Understanding what your clients are trying to achieve will help you better tailor your SEO strategy. This will ensure that they get the best possible results from your work without any problems.
Their goals might be to:
- Increase organic traffic
- Decrease bounce rates
- Increase conversions
- Improve rankings
You may want to try asking more focused questions. For example, specific questions about their goals would help clarify what they’re trying to get from working with you.
2. Who is your target audience?
Understanding your target audience is important in SEO. The success of any marketing campaign on the internet is heavily dependent on who your audience is. Know your target users so you can develop an effective SEO strategy.
Here’s an example: let’s say you only run a business in Texas. You need this information to figure out where you should be focusing your marketing – such as local SEO.
3. Which keywords do you want us to focus on?
There are many cases where what the client thinks are important keywords are irrelevant – or have minimal search volume. It is the SEO specialist’s job to choose keywords that will be relevant and won’t create any competition with other businesses. Keyword research helps identify the words and phrases that best represent a business’s products, services, and offerings to reach the most relevant audience possible.
4. Who are your top competitors?
Clarify with your clients on their top competitors. Once you have a good idea of your client’s competitors, you can compare them to your client from many different perspectives, including website quality, links, social media following, and more.
Gathering this information can help you to identify their actual competitors. It also allows you to benchmark success and educate the client on their true competitors.
5. Are there any SEO-related documents we can see?
Request the company to send you any old documents that they or someone else had been working on regarding SEO. It will help you get a complete understanding of their past performance. That might include:
- Performance reports & metrics.
- Keyword research.
- Strategy briefs.
6. Has your website ever been penalized by Google?
A Google penalty happens when a website is penalized by Google. It can happen for many reasons, such as duplicate content, spamming links, and thin content.
Ask clients if they’ve ever experienced a Google penalty, and find out the details of what happened. That way, you can better audit the website on the correct parameters.
7. Which address do you want to use for local listings?
A local business listing is an online profile for business. This includes address, phone number, and other information. It’s important to ensure you’ve got enough business information on hand from the client.
8. How many domains or sub-domains do you possess?
Before starting a website, it’s important to ask the owner if they have any domains or sub-domains. If they do, find out which domain or sub-domain they want you to work on and plan your strategies accordingly.
9. Don’t forget to ask the website access details
Ask your clients to provide access
- To Google Analytics account.
- To the admin details of the website.
- To Google Search Console account.
So that you can analyze the traffic of the website and work on it accordingly.
10. Who will take care of the design and development part?
When it comes to design and development, you have to be focused. Ask your client if they have a team of designers and developers ready to help with the project.
If they don’t have a team, it might be worth introducing the client to your designers and developers who can work on it for them.
11. Do changes need to be approved by legal before they go live?
One of the first things to always clarify with your client is whether you require permission before you make any changes or additions to their site or not. Then, as much as possible, suggest helpful initiatives that foster autonomy for the SEO team.
The more autonomy you have, the more tasks you can complete, and the faster results.
Before you take on a new client, ask these questions to identify what they can realistically expect from you and their goals.
You can also go through the Digital Marketing Maturity Assessment and know which area to utilize more to develop your digital impact.
