As an agency, consultant or in-house supplier, delivering quality is a priority.
But what exactly defines a “quality” SEO service?
Is it just about getting results? Or are there other important factors to consider?
This checklist outlines the key elements for evaluating and improving the quality of your SEO services.
Does price affect the quality of your service?
No, price is not part of how customers would view the quality of your service. However, it can affect their expectations and their perception of the value of the service.
Did you know that popular methods of measuring service quality such as SERVQUAL, don’t you consider the price? This means that the cost of a service is not considered part of its quality.
So changing your price won’t necessarily make customers think your service is better. They might see “value” differently, but that’s a separate topic.
How to provide quality services to your SEO clients from day one
There is no one way to define quality. It also gets complicated when we’re talking about a service like SEO versus a physical product.
It’s easy to spot a quality t-shirt or shoes, but what about SEO services?
That’s why I think it’s important to have a checklist that you can adapt to your needs and vision. If you’re part of an agency, you can use it to discuss internally with your team, or you can measure your performance if you work as a freelancer or consultant.
The SEO Service Quality Checklist
Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on each of the following items and see how your total measures up out of 50.
1. Tangibles
In a remote world, your documented SEO deliverables are your tangibles.
Pay close attention to detail and avoid typos. It is critical to maintain proper branding and ensure that each deliverable is clear and easy to understand.
If your customers often ask for clarification, maybe the format you’re using isn’t working.
This also applies if you work from home. If you put effort into your results, people will be able to see and appreciate it more.
One little thing I like to use are tooltips. In Google Sheets, right-click the cell title and add a description of what the data in that column means. Anyone who hovers over the cell can see this additional information and better understand how to use/read the document.
2. Insurance
Warranty is about your team’s knowledge and whether they can communicate it to customers. In other words, do your customers trust your expertise? Working with you gives clients the confidence that they will achieve the desired results.
Assurance is a feeling based on your and your team’s knowledge and the soft skills needed to communicate and build confidence in your experience and capabilities as a service provider.
So, first of all, hire smart people, always improve and keep learning. SEO is always changing and you should always set aside time for your team to develop. Consider blocking off an hour a week for the team to get the latest industry news or SEO tactics.
The second part of the warranty is soft skills. You must have good communication skills, patience and tact when communicating with your customers. Learn how to explain complex SEO concepts in simple words.
If people don’t understand your work, they won’t appreciate it. They may work with someone with less knowledge and experience, but because they understand their work, they will perceive the quality of service to be much higher.
Security is also important as “business moves at the speed of trust”.
Ask yourself: How much do your customers trust you? And how can you improve it?
Another thing to consider is that providing regular updates and reports and having transparent communication about SEO performance can also improve security and trust.
Many people can’t interpret data reports, so make sure your reports are easy to understand. Use the “Keep-It-Simple-Stupid” concept when designing a report for your clients.
A customer was once puzzled by the “classification change” data. If the ranking improves, such as moving from 10th to 3rd, the ranking change would be “-7”.
However, a negative number is associated with a drop in performance, which is the exact opposite of what the report is about. So make sure your reports are easy to understand and guide your customers through them and answer any questions.
Learn more: How to build and maintain client trust in your agency
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3. Reliability
Reliability is divided into three parts:
Meeting of the agreed terms: No one likes working with a freelancer or an agency that doesn’t deliver on time. This is one of the biggest concerns, especially when it comes to freelancers. This will affect the perceived quality of your service. It still amazes me that some people don’t use project management tools. Make sure you use one that helps you keep everything in one place and track progress and deadlines.
Fulfilling the promises made to your customers: For example, if you tell the customer, “Let me check it out and take it back for a spin,” you’ll have to follow through.
Implementation of SEO strategies and tactics that bring results: I can’t really simplify this here, but it’s basically everything you’ve learned in SEO so far.
4. Responsiveness
It is important to respond to questions and emails in a timely manner. I think this can be difficult to balance as some clients are more demanding than others so you need some tactics to manage this.
I usually start the day by checking email, check it once or twice during the day and one last time before I finish. If something is just a quick response, I do it right away. Otherwise, I will respond and give the customer an estimate of when it will be ready. For these situations, I say things like:
“Thank you for your email. I will have to check with the team and get back to you at the end of the day tomorrow.” “I will add this request to our plan, it should be ready early next week, please let me know if you would like to prioritize this request in the current tasks in progress” [and you can also list the current tasks in-progress]. Sometimes I ask ChatGPT to help me with these emails. Here’s a suggestion: “I have noted your request and will prioritize it accordingly in our plan. You can expect completion early next week.” Below is an update on the progress of current tasks.
Dig deeper: How to build a values-based agency that drives results
5. Empathy
While it may seem strange to include it in a checklist to assess the quality of your service, I think it’s a great point. In most cases, you may not necessarily work directly with the business owner.
You’re probably working with their internal marketing team, developers and writers; these people tend to be very busy and have a lot on their plate. Having empathy in this situation means trying to find ways to help them execute and make their lives easier by fitting your results into whatever format makes them comfortable.
I have found this to be important if you also work from home. It’s important to take care of the people you work with.
When I worked at the agency, I would try to help the client team with whatever they needed. For example, I can request access to their WordPress and update the title tags and alt tags myself.
Another thing I do is try to be resourceful. Try to find low-effort opportunities for them to execute.
I recently wanted to launch a bottom of the funnel page, but to avoid making requests to the content team, I duplicated the existing PPC page, updated the title tags, and published it. This helps with two things:
Collecting initial data to see if this page is worth investing more effort into and optimizing it more, or if we should create more of the same type. Test things quickly while saving internal resources.
Also, give them enough time to speak during meetings. Listen to their concerns and try to resolve anything that is blocking them.
Your job is not to send recommendations and make requests, but to partner with different stakeholders to build trust and long-term business relationships.
Evaluating and improving your SEO service standards
Providing quality SEO services is essential to building trust, retaining clients and achieving sustainable results. This checklist can help you systematically evaluate and improve the quality of your SEO bids.
Remember that quality is about more than the bottom line—it’s about the entire customer experience, from tangible products to responsive communication and empathetic partnership. Continually evaluating your performance against these key criteria will help you stay ahead of the competition and build your reputation as a provider of exceptional SEO services.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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