How SEO Agencies Can Mitigate & Minimize Client Attrition
SEO agencies have a client attrition problem. While SEO isn’t “one and done,” there is a tendency to reduce or completely halt spending on content and link acquisition once desired rankings have been achieved. But retaining clients is crucial for growth, at best, and critical for avoiding oblivion, at worst. Because roughly 40% of our own internal revenue is derived from our SEO reseller partners, we have a keen interest in helping other SEO agencies succeed in client retention. Here are a few of our learnings when it comes to retaining clients for our white label SEO clients. Set Clear Expectations from Initial Engagement Educate clients on realistic SEO timelines and results. SEO is the equivalent of online brand-building. It takes years, not weeks and months. The best SEO is measured over 4 to 6 years. You can expect it to take that long, and your clients should expect it to take that long as well. For small, local SEO clients, SEO results can be achieved quicker, but most national SEO clients experience gains over a much longer time horizon. Consequently, it’s best to establish clear, long-term expectations for rankings potential at the outset. This will include key performance indicators so your client knows you’re tracking according to expectations. It is also important to be clear that SEO is never “done.” SEO spending can be reduced after certain desired milestones are met, but it should never be ignored entirely. Maintain Transparent and Regular Communication From a client perspective, almost nothing is worse than: Not knowing how a campaign is progressing Having to check in with the SEO team to get a status update Regular communication with the client is absolutely critical to maintaining the long-term relationship and trust clients should expect. Weekly check-ins and monthly reports are table stakes. Even better are clear and easy-to-understand reporting dashboards (there are numerous platforms that can help here – we have tested a number of them). Be sure to take a proactive stance in addressing concerns and adjusting SEO strategies. Consistently Demonstrate Your Value Showcase ROI through case studies and example progress reports before engagement. Once engaged, and for the lifetime of the engagement, highlight regular wins, even small ones, to reinforce ongoing progress. Some examples could include: Rankings improvements for specific keywords Overall keyword gains Leads generated Revenue growth These last two are the most critical as they demonstrate ROI. However, they will be less likely to come quickly. You will need to explain the long-term benefits of SEO to prevent client impatience. After you have gained prominence and the leads and revenue the client desires, suggesting and targeting a new set of tangentially related keywords can help you further grow your client’s traffic and leads from other search sources and new niches. Diversify Services to Increase Stickiness While most digital marketing agencies do this from the outset, offering other complementary services like PPC, content marketing, and web design can help increase client stickiness. Use your client sales team to cross-sell and upsell additional services that add value. When doing so, it can be helpful to throw in freebies to get them hooked and charge for these additional SEO services later. To be even more sticky, provide exclusive insights or tools to keep clients engaged and happy with your work. This omnichannel approach embraces search everywhere optimization for multiple traffic sources, not just traditional SEO focused solely on Google. For instance, we have proprietary tracking tools (not just Ahrefs, Moz and others) that we use to showcase the value of how our services work together seamlessly. In fact, you can use other paid services to influence how you perform and manage your SEO campaigns. The more you are able to add value to your clients (and show it), the more likely you are to experience better client retention. Foster Strong(er) Client Relationships Personalize interactions and go beyond transactional relationships. You can do this by: Sending occasional gifts Sending very personal holiday messages or thank you notes Creating client loyalty and discount programs for recurring and bulk campaigns There are numerous ways to incentivize long-term client retention and reactivation. Improve Client Education, Onboarding, and Support When you are able to develop a seamless onboarding experience complete with training materials, your clients will thank you. One major mistake we often see SEO agencies make is keeping their clients ignorant of the “magic voodoo” of SEO. It’s best to default to the opposite. Educate clients on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it a particular way. In doing so, you will achieve greater client buy-in that your strategies are sound. Furthermore, it’s best to offer dedicated account managers for more personalized service. A responsive support system to handle urgent client requests quickly. Nothing will cause client attrition more rapidly than a bad customer support experience. Address and Reduce Pain Points Painful conversations and pain in your client’s business should not be avoided. The same goes for the pain points in your own customer churn. Identify common reasons for internal client churn and proactively address them. Offer flexible contracts or pause options instead of cancellation. Again, providing proper client education to prove SEO value and prevent unrealistic expectations is critical for long-term retention. Leverage White-Label SEO Support If you want to both scale and retain more client accounts, white labeling can help. But your white label SEO provider needs to be top-notch. Choose a reliable white-label SEO partner that enhances client satisfaction. You’ll want to ensure your white label SEO partners maintain high-quality service and reporting. The right partner will already include SOPs (standard operating procedures) that address the items already discussed above, allowing you to scale your SEO business with less churn. Conclusion Client retention is the lifeblood of any successful SEO agency. People don’t shop based on your SEO pricing. They also don’t leave due to pricing. They leave because of lack of results. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. While achieving rankings is a key milestone, maintaining long-term relationships with clients
Every Company is an SEO Company
The effectiveness of SEO is admittedly waning. However, the death of SEO is still greatly exaggerated–at least in the short term. And, even though SEO cannot be as reliable a source of 90% of your digitally-fed leads as it once was, it still should remain a key pillar of your company’s digital visibility. As such, every company that has even an inkling of tangential reliance on the internet for leads and growth should be an SEO company (or at least treat themselves as one). Said differently, every company, whether they realize it or not, relies on SEO to succeed. That means every company needs to learn SEO and have at least one person internally that can serve as the DIY contact for technical SEO with an SEO agency as a backstop. SEO is Still Not Optional For the most successful online companies, organic search (still) drives a significant percentage of website traffic, even if the overall numbers are declining. And, according to every search platform out there, YOY searches continue to increase. And, Google still commands 90% of market share worldwide. SEO has been a critical component of companies that operate online for decades. Every Company is Already Doing SEO (Even If They Don’t Know It) If your business has a website, blog, Linkedin page and does PR, you’re already doing SEO, even if you don’t know it. Here are some specific examples of SEO activities that your company is already doing that are helping your SEO even if you may not know it: Content Creation: Businesses produce blogs, landing pages, and product descriptions—whether optimized or not, they impact search rankings. Website Experience: Site speed, mobile-friendliness, and user experience all influence SEO. Brand Mentions & Reputation: Online reviews, PR, and social signals affect rankings. Local SEO & Listings: Any business with a physical presence relies on Google My Business, Yelp, and local citations. If your team is already doing many of the tasks that an outside SEO agency is doing, then it could be rightly assumed your business IS, at least in part, an SEO business. The Competitive Edge of Proactive SEO As a team, we can consistently show through direct SEO case studies that the revenue and growth prospects of those who actively manage their SEO are consistently higher than those who take a passive approach. Even those who rely wholly on managed SEO services to do all the work will not experience the growth of companies who take internal ownership of their SEO seriously. Because there are so many ranking factors, internal as well as external eyes on content strategy, link building and technical improvements are essential for guaranteeing long-term growth. And while there is a cost to perform SEO, the cost of neglecting SEO can have a much larger negative impact on revenue and company sustainability in the long run. And, what is that cost? In part, it is the cost of acquiring leads via paid channels–which can be much more expensive and lead to a major squeeze in profitability. Embracing an SEO Mindset Across the Organization In order for your organization to adopt an SEO mentality and thereby succeed online, every silo of your company should become versed in the nuanced aspects of SEO–not just your marketing team! It starts from the top down: Leadership: SEO starts from the top down. If leaders, owners and other C-level stakeholders are not “all-in” on SEO, then pushing the concept of “our company is an SEO company” is an impossible sell. In addition, understanding the ROI of SEO and investing in long-term organic growth is something only top-level leadership have authority to do. There needs to be more than just mental buy-in; there needs to be ample budget to move the needle, and that comes from leadership. Sales & Customer Service: Sales and customer service reps can and should leverage SEO insights to address customer pain points and provide the proper feedback loop to content marketers and UX designers to ensure there is alignment for what people are finding via SEO and how they are treated once they connect with a member of the team. Developers & IT: Your technical staff needs to ensure websites and web properties are technically optimized for search engines. This means sites need to load quickly, include the right entity and LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords, include the right title tags, and have the right sitemap structure. And, when changes need to be made, there should not be too many communication layers to get to someone in the IT department that can fix an issue. Ideally, the IT department itself will be monitoring for SEO issues and preemptively take action before a marketer finds something. Marketing Teams: Internal marketing teams align SEO with a broader branding and content marketing strategy. The marketing team should be more attuned to driving the messaging that aligns with SEO keyword strategies. The strongest digital-first companies will be those who treat their organizations like their own internal SEO company. They will have more than just managerial buy-in. Your entire organization should be trained in the technical nuances of SEO. Old dogs need to be taught new tricks. In many ways, because today’s ranking factors and digital flux are causing many businesses to lose out, it’s more important than ever to not be an ignoramous when it comes to running SEO campaigns as part of your digital marketing strategy. It also means your organization will be better equipped to spot SEO fraudsters who are simply out to make a buck and not necessarily drive revenue for your business! Why SEO Agencies Still Matter While every company is, in some way, an SEO company, that doesn’t mean they can—or should—handle all aspects of SEO on their own. Specialized expertise is still essential. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complex, ever-evolving discipline that requires specialized knowledge, the right SEO tools, and ample experience. Here’s why partnering with an SEO agency is still essential: 1. Keeping Up with Algorithm Changes Google’s search
AI is Killing the SEO Agency
AI isn’t killing SEO. AI is killing SEO agencies. It’s not that SEO itself is dead. It’s that AI is killing the current revenue model of SEO agencies. It’s not only a problem for SEO agencies; it’s a problem for Google. And Google knows it, too. It’s why they’re running scared. What happens when: There aren’t 10 blue links in the SERPS (only references to well-known, branded internet sites)? The effectiveness of Google Ads takes a nosedive? When more people search via an AI chatbot and avoid Google altogether? When AI can do the work of 10 lower and mid-level SEO managers with a simple automation workflow? Here’s how AI is replacing SEO services. The Evolution of Search in the AI Era Here’s where SEO is and where it’s headed: Perplexity.ai, Claude/Anthropic, DeepSeek and ChatGPT are stealing eyeballs and user attention. AI agents/agentic AI is transforming how SEOs are performing keyword research, link building and content production User intent, guided by AI, and user mechanics are trumping traditional ranking factors. AI is transforming keyword research, content creation, and link-building. Google’s AI-driven algorithms (e.g., SGE, RankBrain, BERT) are working together to give competing signals. Meaning, you may have a positive signal placed on your site by one signal, but a completely negative symbol tagged to your site from another. User habits are changing. Who cares if SEO is still alive if the eyeballs shift to another platform? SEO is alive and well on Bing, but do you care? What AI is Doing to Traditional SEO Agency Services Here are some trends we are noticing: Automated Content Creation: AI-powered tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) can generate content faster and cheaper than an army of expensive, U.S.-based writers. In fact, the “want ads” for writers and writers reaching out to our SEO agency have skyrocketed in recent months. Google has a mixed relationship with AI content, and we’re seeing some punishing going on, but that doesn’t mean that some sites aren’t using it to their massive benefit. This alone has killed many freelance writing gigs, particularly if those writers are mediocre and below. Technical SEO Automation: AI-driven platforms like SurferSEO and Clearscope streamline on-page optimization with implementation and analysis done by AI tools like N8N, Bolt.New, etc. Link-Building Challenges: Google’s AI is getting better and better at cracking down on manipulative and spammy link building. It’s one of the reasons we admonish clients to use our white label and standard link building services for acquiring quality backlinks. DIY SEO Tools: Businesses can now handle SEO in-house with AI-powered platforms, reducing reliance on expensive SEO agencies and even humans. In fact, SEO has been discussed ad nauseum for the last two decades in both blogs and on YouTube, and many small business owners can discover and do SEO without the help of an agency. The Agencies That Will Survive (And Thrive) in the AI Era The transition to human-less SEO (search engine optimization) or GEO (generative engine optimization) is happening faster than most digital agencies want. It’s not giving SEO agencies much time to adapt. Only the cameleons will adapt and survive. Here’s how Be Prepared for Consolidation & M&A: This tectonic shift will undoubtedly bring casualties. Your SEO agency can either be a statistic or get ahead of the curve. Some agencies will shut down altogether, others will simply survive but likely with far less revenue as companies shift away from traditional SEO services like link building, content writing and on-page SEO. The total number of searches will continue to climb, but without a clear path toward revenue, many agencies will simply die. Those that survive will have far fewer employees, as AI will replace specific positions. But be prepared for discounting in your SEO agency business valuation. High-Level Strategy & Consulting: AI (in its current form) lacks the human touch for custom strategies and business-specific SEO roadmaps. Those that thrive will be able to provide the 50K ft view of strategy, while agentic AI will take care of tactics, operations, and throughputs of the chosen pathway. Brand-First Approach: Brands always win in SEO. Agencies that integrate SEO with broader marketing (PR, thought leadership, social media, and better branding) will remain relevant. Your name in the marketplace takes years to establish. Focus on brand. The “optimization” will take care of itself when customers are searching for your brand and not just a keyword. This means building your own list and community that cares what you have to say. Human Creativity & Expertise: AI can’t replicate brand storytelling, nuanced messaging, or real audience engagement. Technical & Programmatic SEO: AI can assist, but experienced professionals are still needed for complex implementations. AI can find the errors and fix them, but many tweaks and fixes are nuanced and require assistance from real professionals. The Future of SEO: AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement The agencies that survive will be those that embrace AI rather than fear it. AI will make the surviving SEOs super-powered by augmenting their natural skills and replacing mid and lower-level SEO virtual assistants with AI agents. With the augmentation, the agencies and SEO freelancers that succeed will likely pivot in the following ways: They will become extremely adept at using the latest SEO AI tools to augment and maximize their native SEO expertise and abilities. They will need to be able to do much more with much less human input. AI content generation lacks originality and real-world expertise. It should be augmented by a human touch, even if AI content is part of your overall strategy. Google’s increasing focus on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and brands will squash those who simply try to automate their online business with artificial intelligence. SEO will become a single piece of a more holistic approach toward “digital marketing” and “search marketing.” SEO experts will still exist, but the survivors will be Swiss Army Knives who know much more than just content marketing and technical SEO. How to Future Proof Your SEO Agency in the
What Your SEO Company Isn’t Telling You
Industry prognosticators have been crying SEO is dead for decades. Every new algo update spurs a wave of Chicken Little-types who cry, “the sky is falling!” Rightfully so. Algo updates have decimated even large, well-funded companies that relied too heavily on the whims of Google’s algorithm. But, like many sectors impacted by AI, SEO will also continue to have a waning effect on your business. As such, you should–at least in part–start to prepare for the “new normal” as it relates to consumer and business search marketing trends and how it will impact your business. What follows will mostly exclude digs/swipes at unscrupulous SEO practitioners (even if many in this unregulated wild west continue selling frosting-covered dung). It will more prominently include the critical industry trends your SEO company may be failing to tell you, but that will be necessary for your digital survival. Below we’ll talk about the pros and cons of still using SEO, what to do in conjunction, and why many businesses are treading more lightly when it comes to huge budgets in the realm of organic search marketing. SEO Takes More Time Than Ever The time to rank is now more elongated than ever. What once took 6-12 months can now take a minimum of 3-6 years, depending on your existing competition. Let that sink in. Did I also mention it’s going to cost you thousands to play authority/rankings catch-up with even your lowest competitor? To make matters worse, if your competitors continue to invest in SEO, you are never likely to truly catch up because they will almost always be ahead. It’s like trying to bridge the age gap between a new college grad and a senior citizen. Not possible! Unless you’re operating in a complete blue ocean (which likely has zero search volume anyway), you may be better off running a PPC marketing strategy to bring some bread in the door. You will need to do a rough ROI computation of your expected traffic, subsequent revenue from 1-3% conversions of said traffic, and factor in the time element along with your SEO budget. The unmentioned “time” component is even more costly than the overall cost of your SEO campaign! Rankings Don’t Always Equal Revenue Some clients are obsessively focused on ranking for specific keywords. But they eventually discover that ranking for those keywords does not have the positive ROI they may have anticipated. Here’s my personal take: Even top 10 rankings may not do it anymore. Top 1-5 rankings are often critical for actually driving real, quality leads that bring revenue. Even if you are able to rank in the coveted top 5 for your niche (which is regularly getting more difficult for national terms), you may be pushed below local results, PAA, Google Ads, LSAs, etc. Which means your top 5 rankings is probably actually top 15 of the clickable results. Organic results don’t mean what they once meant. Even if you are able to capture revenue in excess of the cost to get you to rank and maintain those rankings over time, have you considered your profit (sans COGS) and what your CLTV looks like? If your purchase from a client is one-off and non-recurring, then your overall ROI from SEO and content marketing may actually be negative! Search patterns are changing FAST. AI is capturing more of the long tail search volume and is available on all Meta applications (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) and on a slew of other LLM sources. What may have once been a healthy search volume on Google may not hold the weight it once did. Without a conversion rate optimization audit, a page with traffic may not be a page that converts your ideal customer–unless you truly run A/B tests at scale. Your SEO Agency May Be Outsourcing Your SEO Services Sadly, some SEO companies are doing white label SEO without telling you. In our business, roughly 40% of our overall revenue comes from our white label SEO partners. That means 40% of our customer relationships are not owned, controlled, or communicated with directly. It also means there is a middle-man markup on the SEO services! Demand transparency. It’s okay to outsource key aspects as it can lead to higher-quality service, but greater transparency should be provided. Roughly 10% of those who brand themselves as SEO resellers simply put us in touch with their client directly. In such cases, all fees are transparent and the outsourcing SEO agency is more involved in strategy than in campaign execution. The greater transparency also allows for more collaborative eyes to mitigate risks and solve perplexing problems. SEO Requires Ongoing Effort – It’s Not a One-Time Fix SEO is an evolving field that requires continuous optimization. Google algorithm updates can shift rankings overnight. Consistent content updates and technical improvements matter more than ever. It’s never one-and-done. This is likely a bit of a red herring, as most SEO agencies are incentivized to tell you this. It’s how they make their money by selling you more SEO services! You Might Be Paying for Unnecessary Services Some agencies bundle in services you don’t need. One of the things I love about where AI is taking this is that AI can disintermediate SEO services like SEO audits, getting you to the crux of your issues and focus on low-hanging fruit for the quickest route to ROI. Agency salespeople upsell all the time, but if you’re educated, you won’t buy something you don’t need. I always recommend 3-4 quotes, proposals and recommendations asking pointed questions like, “If I had a limited budget, which of these SEO services would be the first that YOU would cut out?” Then, cut it. It likely won’t move the needle and is just fluff. SEO Alone Isn’t Enough – It Needs to Work With Other Strategies SEO is one part of a holistic digital marketing strategy. Never solely rely on SEO as your one method of distribution for marketing and sales. Diversify your marketing streams! Omnichannel marketing leads
How to Conduct Original Research on a Budget
“Original,” of course implies that nobody’s ever offered it before, which usually demands some type of original research. The problem is original research can be time consuming and costly to conduct—especially on a national scale—but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re looking for a fast, relatively inexpensive way to conduct your own original research, try one or more of the following: 1. Survey your customer base. Surveys are easy to create and manage, especially if you use online software like SurveyMonkey or something similar. The choice of topic is up to you; you could conduct an opinion survey about specific recent developments in your industry, a strategic survey asking your customers for their behaviors or buying preferences, or anything else that might be valuable to your intended audience. Submit the survey to your current customers (or readership, or social following), and collect the results. It might take you an hour or two to write out the questions and collect the information (especially if you keep it brief), and voila—nearly instant original research. 2. Publish company numbers. Depending on the secrecy and nature of your company, this could be very difficult or very easy. For example, if you’re in a field dense with competitors, it may not be wise to disclose how much you’ve invested in your new marketing strategy. However, it might be helpful for customers and business owners to know how many people bought X product instead of Y product over last year. You’ll have to do some creative thinking to find a number that works that doesn’t compromise your proprietary insights, but once you do, collecting the numbers are a snap—and nobody else will have them. 3. Interview industry leaders. There are plenty of thought leaders and influencers in your industry itching to get more PR, so take advantage of that. Come up with an intriguing, debatable topic that your audience would like to know more about, then get in contact with some of the most prominent influencers in your area. Quote them, give them credit, and collect your findings into one comprehensive article. You’ll be presenting new information from multiple angles, and you won’t even have to work that hard to do it. 4. Conduct an experiment. Experimentation is pretty easy, but depending on your field it could be easy or difficult to pull off. For example, an online marketer wouldn’t have to invest much time or effort into a basic A/B test of different call-to-action strategies, but a lawyer might have a hard time comparing two similar cases to find a meaningful conclusion. Use your best judgment here, and measure your results carefully. 5. Present a case study. Rather than conducting a new experiment, look to something you’ve already done well in the past. Report on the scenario before you got involved (being as detailed as possible), explain what you did, and evaluate the results of your intervention. This counts as original research, since it provides valuable information that nobody has provided before, and it can also double as sales material if you choose to use it that way. 6. Scout for examples. This tactic forces you to look for companies, websites, products, or strategies online that you can compare against each other, or otherwise use to illustrate a concept. For example, if you’re an SEO provider, you could compare a highly ranked site to a low-ranked site, and evaluate the onsite factors that differentiate them. If you’re in a more tangible industry, like manufacturing, consider doing physical visits to other locations to perform a similarly comparative study. 7. Aggregate other findings. This is the easiest strategy in theory, since it relies on taking advantage of research that’s already done, but it’s also one of the most comprehensive and painstaking. In this scenario, you’ll choose a topic, and instead of conducting research in a new direction, you’ll be collecting the research that’s already been done. Usually, this means reading several books with dissenting opinions, then reviewing the highlights of each, comparing and contrasting the viewpoints for your readers and possibly settling on one conclusion. This is completely free (or nearly so) but be prepared that it will take a lot of time if you do it right. Original research can be a boon for your content strategy, but remember that it’s only one part of the process. After completing your research, you’ll need to write about it in a logical, comprehensible, entertaining way, and then syndicate it to maximize your reach with your target audience. If you can do all that and your content gets a foothold, there should be nothing in the way of your earning hundreds to thousands of new shares and links.
