033 – Managing Monthly SEO Clients

00:00.76
Pete Everitt
Hello and welcome to this episode of the WP SEO show. I am here with my good friend, Jeff, all the way from California. Hey, Jeff, how are you doing?

00:10.22
Jeff
Hey, I’m good, how are you?

00:11.79
Pete Everitt
I’m all right. Thank you. I’m all right. I missed out the, I’m Pete and I’m your co-host and I’m here with my co-host and now I’ve said it anyway. So it’s pointless me missing out the first time around, but it felt kind of better.

00:24.07
Pete Everitt
I’ll go. For full transparency, both of us struggle with the intro to this podcast because it seems like co-hosting co-host and, you know, Jeff and Pete and, you know, root and tootin’ and it’s just, it all seems a bit weird.

00:38.44
Jeff
I like the rooting and tooting part, but yeah, no, it is the most uncomfortable thing to start a podcast. Like I have no problem being on them and talking and hanging out and stuff, but starting it, and especially when you are the one like literally like figure, like literally starting it is so freaking awkward. It makes me feel so weird every single time. So.

00:54.91
Pete Everitt
And the problem is if, if neither of us started, then it sounds like this and nobody’s going to listen to that for very long. So,

01:03.52
Jeff
Should have, should have had the rim shot in there for you. but dumb gene Good joke. There we go. We got our first joke in one minute then. All right.

01:10.14
Pete Everitt
yeah so now welcome to the show. It’s, uh, it’s been a good couple of weeks. We had a good few weeks.

01:16.89
Jeff
Yes, yes, it’s a work has been very nice. I wouldn’t say it’s been busy. It is kind of the end of year slowing down a little bit, but like, probably have never felt more efficient and like on top of things in years as long as I can remember right in two years. So I’m feeling like like, at least we’re hitting the end of the year here in a really nice stride, at least a stress free one.

01:38.59
Pete Everitt
That’s good, that’s good.

01:39.50
Jeff
yeah

01:39.82
Pete Everitt
Yeah, it’s it’s all a bit weird. I always find that the last quarter of the year a bit strange because… And Black Friday expedites it to a certain extent, because not only is it the end of the year, you want to finish finished strong.

01:53.55
Pete Everitt
One of the cycling friends that I have whenever we’re doing a hill or ah but a ride somewhere, he’s always like, finish strong! There you go Dean, there’s a shout out to you mate. But you do want to finish strong, you do want to you do want to hit your targets or your goals for the year. But with, almost with the marketing that comes around Black Friday and all of the sales that that ah sort of tried to be forced through that that kind of window.

02:18.09
Pete Everitt
It feels more and more like people are using or marketing Q4 anyway in order to gear up for the next year and almost like, oh, well, this, this year has done and dusted.

02:28.61
Pete Everitt
So yeah, you you just, now you need to focus on the next one. And by the way, give me some money in my black Friday sale for this thing. That’s going to help you do whatever next year. And and yeah, it just seems to be a bit kind of, a bit kind of forgotten, but yeah.

02:42.31
Jeff
little bit. I’ve got to say, i am I do not want Black Friday to happen this year. I would be fine if we just erased this from our made up list of holidays. I’m just i’m just so over it. I’m so burnt out on Black Friday. I know we’ve gone back and forth like off and on for years, like, should we run a Black Friday thing? Should we? Should we not? Should we? And then you just get all these just emails and advertisements. And it does feel like, maybe because it’s just a little early, but it does feel like it’s less this year, like people aren’t kind of worried about it. But I’ve seen a couple of posts like on Facebook or some people like, Hey, has anybody seen or heard about any good Black Friday deals yet? And it’s like, dude, it’s six weeks away. Like, wait a second. Like,

03:19.70
Pete Everitt
I know. i’ll I’ll be honest, I can’t ever say that I haven’t participated in a Black Friday deal ah because I have. But what I can say is that everything I’ve bought as part of a Black Friday deal is because I was going to buy it anyway and I just got it from Black Friday because it was a bit cheaper.

03:38.83
Pete Everitt
i I really do try and remove myself from the hype of of, you know, hey, get this shiny thing, like never, never to be seen again, offer, get it now, or you will lose.

03:45.32
Jeff
Yeah.

03:48.78
Pete Everitt
ah If you’re going to have to do that to convince me, I don’t want to know.

03:50.19
Jeff
Yeah.

03:52.72
Jeff
Exactly. Yeah, like, oh, look at this.

03:53.01
Pete Everitt
So.

03:54.24
Jeff
It’s a great deal. but You didn’t even know about it yesterday. You don’t need it. Now, I got to say though, I probably have. click I’ll admit, I probably have bought a few things where I’m like, oh, that sounds good. But I don’t know.

04:05.04
Jeff
I’m definitely moving away from that now. I feel like the last thing I bought was just like you said, it was something that I literally waited like a month to buy the license for. Because I was like, no, I know what’s going on sale on Black Friday. Like, I’m going to wait. I’m going to save me $100.

04:16.89
Jeff
and Yeah, you know, did it, but yeah, but I already wanted it. And yeah, I don’t know.

04:21.18
Pete Everitt
I have.

04:21.65
Jeff
Before like AppSumo deals, he goes email. You’re like, nope, I don’t even want to know about him anymore. I don’t even open those emails anymore. i like

04:27.27
Pete Everitt
Oh, now, interesting, I do read the AppSumo ones because there are some cool tools and and stuff in there. I don’t I don’t buy very frequently. I may have any buy three or four things a year, I guess.

04:38.00
Pete Everitt
But I I do read them just because I i find them interesting. But yeah, that’s.

04:43.23
Jeff
Well, I can predict it now.

04:43.42
Pete Everitt
ah

04:44.51
Jeff
And I know this isn’t the point of this show today, but this Black Friday is going to be all AI tools.

04:51.36
Pete Everitt
yeah

04:52.01
Jeff
99% because that’s what AppSumo is right now. It’s everything is an AI tool for repurposing your content or for search key terms. or so I mean, it’s just it’s everything is an AI term.

05:03.98
Jeff
So and I kind of wish that a couple of years ago. I mean, I don’t. But in a, you know, as far as like a ah maximizing like profit or I don’t know, I’m trying to say like, you know, take taking the bank from somebody right now would be like to build AI apps, just keep building them. I feel like people are just going to be doing this until we’re just like stop with all the AI apps, you know, and they’re gonna make their money and run and they’re just gonna die apart in a few months. So

05:30.87
Pete Everitt
maybe Maybe that’s a theme for a show or a live or something that we should do, which is like you know a roundup of the the best SEO Black Friday tool tools on Black Friday sale. So maybe help some of our dear listeners out there who are still listening to us waffle on now.

05:44.89
Pete Everitt
um you know Help them maybe you’d make some informed choices if they were wanting to participate in any Black Friday things.

05:51.55
Jeff
Maybe.

05:52.12
Pete Everitt
That’s not to say that we want to encourage you to do it, but if you do want to do it, then here’s some recommendations.

05:52.79
Jeff
Maybe.

05:58.61
Jeff
we’ll We’ll see what comes up around Black Friday.

05:58.63
Pete Everitt
Anyway.

06:00.57
Jeff
I don’t know.

06:00.78
Pete Everitt
I can already tell Jeff’s not sold on that idea.

06:04.71
Jeff
Well, actually what I think would be fun would be doing a live or hang out with some, some other people too. And just reviewing and or ripping all of the deals that we found. I feel like that would just be fun. Like is everybody get a beer or something like that. Let’s just look at all the deals and let’s just talk trash about them. Just have some fun.

06:24.17
Pete Everitt
So let’s segue seamlessly into what this ah this episode was about, because we were actually quite close to a segue and then we waffled on about Black Friday. And ah which is, um what we wanted to talk about was about the the management process that we go through, that we recommend that you should go through.

06:44.02
Pete Everitt
for managing monthly SEO clients because actually there’s there’s a bit of a misnomer around this to do with, you know, expecting a monthly client to kind of just have a, ah require a kind of monthly effort from you. And actually what we found doing our thing is that as we’re serving clients, particularly as we’re working with clients through our manage plan,

07:07.57
Pete Everitt
it’s It’s really interesting to see, it’s really quite um surprising to see you the difference if you have more of a weekly process for managing your monthly clients and how that affects the flow of work that goes through the business. So that’s really kind of the frame for the topic for this week.

07:27.18
Jeff
Yeah, if if anything, I think that this is good um kind of good habits and things to get into when you’re dealing with clients, regardless of whether it’s SEO or whatever. i mean you know Maybe if you’re like you’re hosting a website, you don’t need to bug them every week about it. But like if you’re working on marketing for your clients, right you you need to be on top of it, or you at least need to be holding your hand through the process.

07:50.01
Jeff
um and ah you know There’s so many different plans and strategies and you know ways you can set things up. Admittedly, we have multiple ways of doing that and how we interface with ah both agency and their clients. There’s a lot of ways to go about it, but I think the important thing and things that we’ve seen over and over again is that a lot of times people will sign them up, whether it’s with us or something else, on a monthly plan and then just kind of go, cool, they’re set. Everything’s good and just let it go. and some clients, that’s fine. I’ve got plenty of clients that every time I email something, they’re just like, cool, I don’t care. are we is Are things working? That’s all I need to know. And then there’s other ones that like will question every single like plugin update that shows up in a report. Like, hey, we saw you updated the event calendar on Tuesday. Why?

08:32.26
Jeff
Because it needed an update, you know what I mean?

08:34.13
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

08:34.22
Jeff
so like you’ve got to like ah Yeah, you’ve got to put these in place, but you can also you know put up the the safeguards and the rails to you know make these conversations smooth and efficient and make every make sure that your clients know that you’re looking out for them and holding your hand through the processes.

08:50.91
Pete Everitt
Well, and there’s a consequential effect with this when it comes to SEO as well, which is that any changes you make on a site take time to reflect in the search results, which therefore then take time to appear in the reports and whatever that you you get to deliver to your client at the end of each month.

08:58.66
Jeff
Yeah.

09:06.32
Pete Everitt
so you know if you If you have a monthly client and the due date for them is simply set the day before their renewal and yeah and you kind of, you know, kick back, enjoy their fee, go on holiday to the Bahamas for three weeks, and then get back to them at the last week of the month and think, oh crap, I best do some work for them now.

09:21.94
Jeff
Yeah.

09:22.76
Pete Everitt
you’re not gonna You’re not going to be able to really report anything based on the the work the work you have done that month because you’ve left it too late. And that’s not to say we do all of our work right at the start of the month, just to just do um ah So they can filter into the reports the most, but we do genuinely check in with clients every week. Each site has a check in at some point every week by a member of the team looking at, ah you know, looking at some of the stats, checking up on the status of the work that’s going to go through to make sure it is delivered on time.

09:56.77
Pete Everitt
um ah we On some of our plans, we send weekly roundups to clients as well. So if you’re like on our local plan, for example, you know we will send you a round up. Here’s the reviews you got this week. So the client knows that we’ve been in touch with their their account at least every week. they Those things go out on Fridays. So they there is there is kind of a number of reasons why, particularly for an SEO retainer, it is important to set some time aside, even if it’s just like in you know a small pocket of 15, 20, 30 minutes each week for each site that you manage in order to make sure that the client is getting the best result for it at the end. And ultimately you have something to say back to the client because you’re the one that’s going to look bad if it’s ah you know if there’s if there’s nothing to report.

10:42.63
Jeff
Yeah, and it’s, yeah, it’s I mean, if like I said, it’s it’s being able to let them know that you’re you’re there and you’re looking out for them. And whether or not every week you have an amazing ah success story, like, hey, we just did this and now we’re ranking for 12 more keywords on page one, that’s amazing.

10:59.44
Jeff
That’s not gonna happen every week, you know? And that’s okay, but you need to be on top of that.

11:01.37
Pete Everitt
No.

11:04.54
Jeff
um And I think with with the volatility in um in search rankings, which is something that, constantly blows my mind, right? Cause it’s, you try to have a conversation with like, Oh, look, you’re, you know, you’re on a spot three for this one. And then next week there was spot five. Nothing has changed. You know, you haven’t done anything one way or the other. It’s just the, uh, the world we’re living in and the other people doing things. Then in the next week you’re back to three or maybe even at two.

11:28.00
Jeff
So just kind of having those, maybe those are weekly reports, whether those are automated or whatever, but those are, you know, this quick one to look at and you can, you can have those conversations, right? Because if they just look and they go, Hey, we went down three spots this week, that’s not good.

11:41.96
Jeff
Um, maybe there’s a problem, but if they don’t get that from you and they’re just getting it themselves, it is a problem. You know what I mean? Whereas you are in the position to analyze the situation and go,

11:49.55
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

11:53.83
Jeff
It’s it’s nothing. It’s next week. You know what I mean? You can look at it. You can make sure nothing’s wrong. You can check and make sure that I don’t know, the search engines didn’t get blocked in WordPress for some reason, you know what I mean? Because that could potentially happen to be the cause, but chances are it’s just a volatility and the search rankings.

12:08.69
Jeff
and And we’ve been seeing that go up and down and even like, you know, around like top five, it’s more stable, but sometimes like around like 30, it’ll go like up or down 20 in a week. You know, it’s just the wildest like roller coaster of things.

12:18.96
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

12:21.73
Jeff
So that’s just I mean, that’s just a quick example. I kind of popped into my mind to go, hey, look out for them and you know, keep your eye on these things and talk to them. Let them know.

12:29.81
Pete Everitt
ah there’s There’s loads of good reasons for it. And, you know, keeping up to date with algo updates as well. if If you’re monitoring all of your clients every week, which I realize to some people might seem like a huge job and we’ll we’ll get onto ways of.

12:43.87
Pete Everitt
making it a bit more efficient in a moment. But if you’re keeping in touch with all of your clients every week, then as algo updates are applied um and as trends change within within the search results, then actually you can see the effect of that kind of across the board. you know When the the helpful content update was rolled out of those three updates through August and September and websites seem to go all over the place,

13:10.01
Pete Everitt
For those of us that were kind of um ah keeping in touch with our clients on a regular like weekly basis, it became very obvious really quite quickly that there was two groups of clients here. You’re going to have the winners and the losers, basically, and you could very easily see you know how those trends match. So likewise, when you’re communicating with your clients,

13:29.41
Pete Everitt
You’re not just left in the dark about saying, oh, what’s wrong? Because your default position is to say, right, well, what has happened on this one website in isolation? But actually, you’re looking at your entire portfolio. And and that gives you a little more confidence and a little more ah information to to put your clients at ease and to understand a bit more about what the effects of these things are. And that’s that is one of the challenges with SEO, particularly, which is that, you know,

13:56.08
Pete Everitt
we’re not in control of the rules. And though those rules get get changed, those ah goalposts keep getting moved every so often. And ah ah because of that, as we just said, some clients win ah ah more times at certain times and other clients lose at certain times. And that’s that’s just the the nature of the beast of of being active in SEO and wanting organic traffic.

14:19.51
Jeff
Yeah. And I mean, maybe it’s a little off topic, but that’s kind of conversely one of the issues we deal with as ah as a white label provider is that you know we don’t necessarily vet or interview the clients that we take on because we’re working with agencies, which I suppose we do in a sense. but you know We put in, I don’t want to say the same amount of work, but essentially we do the same job for you know the service, right? We deliver our service and how that affects one client is going to be different from how it affects a different client just because of the nature of their industry, the products they sell. um you know we’ve We’ve had some very wacky

14:54.42
Jeff
Products sold from clients and it’s like we can do all the search engine stuff whether or not people are going to buy your weird product i don’t know you know but after the time and managing the clients and you know paying attention and we can get more information on that where is if you just kind of throw them into a monthly thing and let it sit and go.

15:12.64
Jeff
you’re probably going to grow their rankings, but you might not really have your, you know, your, your finger on the dial, I guess, per se, in ah in ah in a sense of knowing what you need to do to actually get them to sales, right?

15:25.25
Jeff
Because it’s one thing to get traffic. It’s another thing to actually talk somebody somebody into buying the product or the service or trusting you and stuff. So um it’s, it’s kind of funny. I think there’s a huge disconnect between search ranking and sales.

15:36.90
Jeff
It doesn’t always equate.

15:37.85
Pete Everitt
Yeah. Well, I was just about to say, and if you want to know more about that, please go and check out our episode on conversion rate optimization. SEO Hive.co forward slash zero three one.

15:45.86
Jeff
Yep.

15:47.90
Pete Everitt
I think it was.

15:48.51
Jeff
I think so.

15:49.68
Pete Everitt
Yeah. So, but yeah, go and check that out. We talked more about kind of a conversion side of the SEO coin in that episode. And it was a good chat. We enjoyed it. Not everybody did, but we did.

16:01.45
Jeff
That was still fresh in my mind. I thought it was a good one. Yeah.

16:04.78
Pete Everitt
ah ah But look, so in order to to sort of give you some action points from this, in order to make this episode valuable rather than just just us kind of ah chewing the fat about it, there are a few places to start with what to review for each client each week.

16:23.26
Pete Everitt
that I just want to run through. just just to and And these are very much broad brush stroke things that that you can check in with whilst you’re having a coffee and and and make sure that that things are happening.

16:35.81
Pete Everitt
So the first thing is kind of a bit of an SEO review. So you need to make sure that, ah you know, you you’re checking in with your rankings. We’ve we’ve already mentioned those. So, ah you know, if you’re running software like SEMrush or Ahrefs or whatever it is, have reports set up in there. If you’re working with with us, we will, ah through your management dashboard, you can see your your rankings on there. So get those, you know, go and check in with your rankings on a weekly basis.

17:02.56
Pete Everitt
And this is the rankings for the client. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily encourage the client to check in with them every week, but this is for you as the agency to make sure you’re aware of the things that are going up and down. Make sure you’re aware of your traffic as well, particularly your organic acquisition.

17:17.82
Pete Everitt
That’s, again, something that you want to make sure is is stable, if not increasing. And ideally looking at annual comparisons, if you can, in Google Analytics, because obviously, you know, monthly we’re just We’ve just been talking about being in Q4.

17:30.34
Pete Everitt
We’ve got Thanksgiving, Christmas, um whatever coming up. your Your analytics are going to be all over the place. Whereas if you at least do annual, then it kind of balances some of that out.

17:37.82
Jeff
Yeah.

17:39.65
Pete Everitt
um So you need to make sure that’s that’s done. You need to go and check things like Google Search Console and make sure that there hasn’t been just a whole ton of errors appeared out of the blue that that you might need to um that you might need to address.

17:52.08
Pete Everitt
So they’re really the key things from ah from a site perspective. And then, of course, you then want to check in with things like what are the tasks for this month? So is the client waiting on copy? Have the um GBP posts been scheduled um and that kind of thing? And then the final thing I would always check is actually hooking this into a metric that is important to the client. So whether that is the total number of sales that they’re after or whether that’s an increase in inquiry through particular submission forms or whatever it is, make sure that you’re checking in with their KPIs as well.

18:27.37
Pete Everitt
And I wouldn’t, whilst I’ve just said I wouldn’t necessarily report all of this to the client every week, I would do a couple of things. One is I would make sure that I’m sending them any highlights. So if anything’s gone particularly well, I’d make sure I’m reporting that back to them. I would also be asking them if we’re waiting for them on anything to sort of gee them up throughout the ah throughout the month.

18:50.55
Pete Everitt
um And then the last thing is I certainly wouldn’t ever go more than two weeks without just having a check-in with the client, just to say, hey, how’s it how’s it going? you know How are those sales looking?

19:01.29
Pete Everitt
maybe Maybe you need the information for them for their inquiries or sales or whatever. That’s a great tool for you to just make sure you’re pinging them an email. And all of that, whilst that sounds like quite a long list, you know all of that you can do in 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

19:17.16
Pete Everitt
It doesn’t have to be a ah long period of time.

19:17.69
Jeff
Yeah.

19:20.58
Pete Everitt
And on top of that, I would occasionally, particularly if I can see that we’re maybe like ah a week or 10 days out from any of the work being delivered, I might then pop into their website and maybe just add in a couple of extra, extra internal links somewhere. Or, you know, if ah if ah if something had been flagged up on a health check report and it was, I don’t know, I went into a site today, for example, no word of a lie. They had 10 page titles that had too much text in there.

19:49.30
Pete Everitt
In the in the title tag so i just went and fix it i didn’t and you know i i sent and the client an email just saying hey found this just went and sort it for you just want to let you know and.

19:57.91
Jeff
Just a little cleanup.

19:59.22
Pete Everitt
Yeah, just a little cleanup. It literally, I did it whilst I was having my morning coffee. Um, uh, we, we were waiting for a delivery to come. So I didn’t want to get involved in anything big and heavy. So, uh, you know, I knew the guy was like four stops away or whatever.

20:11.98
Pete Everitt
So it was just something I did because it was a good thing to do. And I, you know, I try to do more good to this world than I, than I take from it. And that’s, that’s just the kind of guy that I am.

20:22.59
Jeff
Aw, you’re such a sweetheart.

20:22.80
Pete Everitt
So, um, so, um,

20:27.67
Jeff
when We need more people like that in this world though. You mentioned something, I know, um mix exactly with I’m being ah um being serious, what do we do?

20:31.68
Pete Everitt
I didn’t say it to be self-deprecating.

20:38.62
Jeff
um You mentioned something a second ago that I wanted to to go back to, and you’re checking in and seeing how like maybe their sales are going. Obviously, with you know SEO and marketing and everything, and we could set up goals and we could we could check things.

20:50.16
Jeff
If it’s an e-commerce site, you can see how their sales are going. If you know if it’s lead gen site, you can see how many leads they’re getting. but actually talking to them is really helpful because a lot of these don’t get necessarily picked up in analytics because if they’re not selling something like an e-commerce thing on their site, maybe they have to call them up to order it or actually go into the store or something like that.

21:10.73
Jeff
That’s stuff that you need to actually talk to them about to find out. So we do, for an example, I’ll just try to be as knowledgeable, but a jewelry company and they make custom jewelry, right?

21:14.00
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

21:21.09
Jeff
And They’re technically speaking over the last couple of months, their e-commerce sales are slightly down before, or from when we started, but having a conversation with them about it, wondering, you know, what is, is there anything, is that random?

21:32.04
Jeff
Is there anything about what we’re doing? And they told us, Oh no, we have had so many custom sales that have all done over the phone.

21:35.34
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

21:38.92
Jeff
They’re like, no, no, no, don’t even worry about what’s going through the website. It’s been great. So it’s like, okay, all right, good. So let’s keep focusing on that. So that’s good news to make us feel good about knowing that we’re doing a good job and everything like that. But really, what we learned was, this is, this is where we need to keep focusing these efforts, you know, if we can track them better, that would be great. But ah Obviously, this is way more beneficial than a few extra spots and in Google that we’re tracking in our reporting dashboards.

22:04.34
Jeff
you know if If they’ve made an extra $200,000 in custom jewelry sales this quarter, that’s amazing. you know what i mean Let’s focus on that.

22:10.44
Pete Everitt
Yeah. That’s it. that’s a That’s it. Absolutely. And we we were talking about this in the, year I think it was in the conversion rate optimization show, which is, you know, if you get this right for your clients, actually when they hit a critical mass where they are so busy, that they actually kind of don’t really care so much about the SEO, not in terms of they’re going to stop it. They want you to keep on doing it because they know, they know you’re the key to that success, but they don’t, they don’t care so much about the positions or about the traffic. They just want to make sure that.

22:38.80
Pete Everitt
the the phone keeps on ringing or those sales keep on coming in or whatever it happens, they just want more of it. They want you to keep it up. um You know, i’ve I’m amazed we’ve got this far into the show without yeah yeah Jeff mentioning Bob the Plumber, to be honest.

22:52.83
Pete Everitt
um I nearly mentioned him earlier just to make you you know make him feel better because I have a horrible feeling you might be feeling left out of this episode. So anyway, ah now I’ve been included him.

23:00.46
Jeff
Well, you know, I mean, actually, you know, you mentioned about the plumber, and then I start thinking, well, that’s probably one of the easiest and most common type of sites you see with fantastic ah tracking, fantastic call tracking, form, you know, I mean, and everything goals, because it’s, it’s a, it’s a, you know, it’s less complicated than something else I was talking about, like big ecommerce sales and custom orders and stuff.

23:17.09
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

23:25.13
Jeff
People go on a plumber site, they book them or they send an inquiry or they, you know, have a custom quote or something like that. It can all be very attractive. You track very easily. So that’s great.

23:33.39
Pete Everitt
Yeah, absolutely.

23:33.81
Jeff
Do you feel better, Bob, the plumber?

23:33.95
Pete Everitt
and

23:36.17
Jeff
We’re still looking out for you.

23:36.97
Pete Everitt
I hope so. I hope so. He might leave us a review. i would Man, that would be that would be awesome if if at some point we get a a review, hopefully a five star review, because that they’re the only reviews we rewire.

23:41.55
Jeff
What if we actually start helping somebody in our area named Bob, the plumber, like rank just from all of these mentions or whatever?

23:51.85
Pete Everitt
Bob the plumber.

23:54.60
Pete Everitt
I do need to put a disclaimer in here that we are are not being sexist. We are equally, will would support anybody called Charlotte the plumber as well. that’s ah This isn’t a um you know this isn’t and ah sexist kind of thing.

24:06.78
Jeff
Oh, I was actually thinking it was Bobby with an eye and I and ah didn’t even think it was a man.

24:06.79
Pete Everitt
I don’t know, you came up with them. Oh, really?

24:12.10
Jeff
You see, there you go. gosh

24:18.54
Pete Everitt
Oh dear. So yeah, so they would be the things that I would i would check in with on ah on a regular basis, um as I say, a weekly kind of process. Have a have a task list, to have a checklist, have a something somewhere and just just run through it for each client each week. The way I personally do it is I have a, I’m looking at it in my to-do list right now.

24:39.41
Pete Everitt
Every Monday, I have a task set in my Todoist called Review Retainer Clients. And within that is a sub list, which is all of the clients that I need to go and check in with. And they don’t all happen on a Monday, but I’d say generally by kind of Wednesday afternoon. Yeah, I’ve been through them all. I generally kind of tend to do them all in the same order as well, simply because they’re all in folders and click ups. I just start the top work my way down.

25:06.17
Pete Everitt
um But yeah, that’s how I do it. I don’t know, have you got any other nuggets of wisdom about doing these processes on kind of a habitual kind of basis?

25:16.58
Jeff
Well, I don’t know about a nugget of wisdom necessarily, but I was going to say I, for me, it’s my Friday mornings. My Friday mornings are always like the slowest and just kind of like lightest part of the week. And so I just love sitting with my cup of coffee. um yeah I work from home. My wife works from home. She actually, she has Fridays off. She usually goes out on Friday and goes like out hiking or birding or something. And not that she bothers me at all during the week, but when the house is just super quiet and it’s just me, I’m like, I can I can just sit here and do this. And I don’t know, I just feel alone and I can kind of focus on it. And so Fridays can become my my habit of big picture thinking and kind of goal tracking and things like that.

25:56.24
Pete Everitt
There you go. I was waiting to hear like blue sky.

26:00.58
Jeff
Depends on the week.

26:02.79
Pete Everitt
You’ll see a dumb sight more of it than I will in shipping.

26:05.47
Jeff
Yeah, yeah, we get a lot of blue skies around here.

26:09.14
Pete Everitt
Yeah, we don’t. we go I’d be like drizzle thinking.

26:13.37
Jeff
are ours occasionally depending on time of year will be black and gray from all the smoke and fires but you know other times it’s really pretty we’re not burning it’s pretty

26:19.58
Pete Everitt
Ooh.

26:24.06
Pete Everitt
So, so yeah, so that’s, that’s ah kind of our thing. And like we mentioned, you know, this is, this is a process that we kind of build build into our managed plan. So if you’re struggling with any of this, or you have clients of your own that, um, you know, and you think, I can’t do that for this many clients, so I don’t really know where to start. Then as I say, that’s, that is something we have built into our managed plan. this This episode isn’t really about the managed plan, but it is part of it. So if, if that is a burden that you do need some help with them, we have something that can help you with it. but I don’t really need to say much more about it.

26:55.93
Jeff
Nope, other than put your own in place if you’re not doing them already. And if if you if you aren’t, we’re here to help with it.

27:02.61
Pete Everitt
You know, just before we come in to land with this episode, there was a… I had a chat with a client this week. um I was going to say it was something on social media, but it wasn’t. It was a chat with a client this week about…

27:17.29
Pete Everitt
that which project Well, they wanted a project management tool for processes, for very similar processes as this. And they were, you know, that they wanted to ah know how I structured things in ClickUp and I shared a bit of that with it and this, that and the other. And you’re like, yeah, but we just don’t like ClickUp.

27:34.12
Pete Everitt
You know, no nobody uses it. We tried it. Nobody uses it. I’m like, well, then what will people use? Because the the best project management system out there is the one that gets used. It doesn’t really matter what it is.

27:44.57
Jeff
Yeah. No.

27:46.99
Pete Everitt
That’s a secondary a secondary issue. You know, are people going to use it and does it do what you need it to? And beyond that, it’s kind of irrelevant.

27:57.22
Jeff
Yeah, that’s I know we could go off a whole topic about project management apps or insert type of app here, but to figure out what actually works for you to use it. I mean, they all essentially do the same thing. Some of them might have an extra feature too. Some of them like ClickUp might start charging you out the butt for some of those features that you love. m Sorry, not the not a little bitter about some of their things lately. But he just they’re all the same. Don’t get overwhelmed with technology.

28:24.57
Pete Everitt
No, absolutely. So actually the client settled on Basecamp because it was the cleanest one and they’d used it before.

28:27.90
Jeff
There you go.

28:32.54
Pete Everitt
And when they had used it before, they could see that their team had had kind of the biggest take from it. So I’m like, right, well, there’s the removal of most of the barrier for um implementation.

28:44.99
Pete Everitt
So do that.

28:46.82
Jeff
There you go. There you go. I used to use Basecamp a long time ago. And we still randomly get clients from like seven or eight years ago going, Oh, I really missed that old tool you used to have that whole project management system used to have. I don’t even remember that you were in there. That was a long time ago.

29:02.24
Pete Everitt
See, i I used to use Basecamp. when i um When I was a freelancer, the new look of Basecamp was kind of the the new thing. So they it’s very much based on like sheets or pages now, isn’t it? And that was kind of the new thing. So it moved from Basecamp 2 to Basecamp 3, and that was the the thing I adopted. And as a freelancer, it was great. I found it really easy to manage the work I was doing for one uh, you know, on my own based on multiple clients, but the clients weren’t really in there.

29:31.67
Pete Everitt
It was all for me. Um, and if I needed extra support, it was fine to sort of delegate bits of work that way, but the clients never really engaged with it. They didn’t, you know, but yeah, it just didn’t, it wasn’t anything bigger than that.

29:45.60
Jeff
i

29:47.54
Pete Everitt
I didn’t, it didn’t sit right for me. That’s not to say other people don’t make it work, but it didn’t sit right for me.

29:49.82
Jeff
Yeah.

29:52.41
Jeff
I think chances are like for an example, you said that clients didn’t use it, they probably wouldn’t use anything. You know, you move to another one, they’re going to do the same thing.

29:57.64
Pete Everitt
No.

29:59.69
Jeff
So it’s just kind of darn if you do darn if you don’t.

29:59.99
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

30:05.41
Pete Everitt
So look, we won’t keep you any longer. This, uh, if you’ve got any questions about, about what we’ve talked about today, if we, you think we’ve missed anything, um, feel free to drop us an email at hello at SEO.

30:14.67
Jeff
Actually, sorry, I don’t mean to cut you off.

30:15.02
Pete Everitt
hi dot com Yeah.

30:16.11
Jeff
But honestly, if you’ve got any tips, I feel like this is a good one that we can kind of crowdsource and community source too. So feel free to share things because hopefully, if they’re not, you know, in the comments or something on this, or you know, if we get any good things, maybe we can rehash this topic in the future with some other things that we’ve kind of learned or heard from you guys because I think that this is, I mean, it’s such a broad topic.

30:34.30
Jeff
You know what I mean? We’re, we’re very kind of just, you know, hovering above this kind of dropping a few nuggets here and there, but it’s, it’s important and it really can help, uh, you know, not just organize, but, you know, satisfy your clients and make sure that they look at at you as their trusted provider, their source, their, their expert, you know, in their business.

30:51.28
Pete Everitt
Yeah.

30:51.72
Jeff
So keep doing it.

30:53.40
Pete Everitt
And actually, one final note for me on this. If you’ve listened to this and then you’ve thought, I can’t start doing that for all my clients, I don’t have the time for it. And just pick a few. You’d be amazed how easy it is to get into the swing of of doing these things.

31:06.39
Pete Everitt
So pick your biggest retainer clients for next week. Just do three of them. Just check in with the biggest three to begin with and then move on to, you know, the next two or three after that.

31:10.75
Jeff
yeah

31:15.80
Pete Everitt
You don’t don’t have to at all try and do all of this in one go. Um, but you know, honestly, the more and more you can be in touch with your clients, the more they appreciate it, the more that they stay with you.

31:30.69
Pete Everitt
Um, as you say, as their trusted advisor, absolutely. And the more you’ve got to tell them,

31:34.70
Jeff
Yeah. yep, yeah.

31:38.56
Pete Everitt
which is where we kind of started.

31:38.91
Jeff
hopefully more good news than bad news.

31:40.98
Pete Everitt
Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, there there is a point that serious on a serious note, which is, you know, if what, if something bad happens, actually. Being able to go to a client and say like mid-cycle and say, look, just just so you’re fully aware, there was an algo update three days ago. Your site hasn’t fed particularly well, but we can see that amongst a group of our clients that we know we know why this has happened. And, you know, we’re we’re figuring out a plan to to address certain parts of it for you, but we just wanted to make you aware. So it’s not a surprise when we get to our monthly call in a couple of weeks.

32:13.36
Pete Everitt
um That is a far easier conversation to have than them not hearing from you for 30 days ah coming to a meeting, expecting everything to be hunky dory, and then you get the graph up and it says like minus 40 percent. And and all of a sudden you’ve got questions to answer.

32:29.74
Jeff
Yeah, and you haven’t had the time to figure out what’s going on and let them know.

32:32.19
Pete Everitt
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

32:33.38
Jeff
That’s a bad spot to be. You always want to be proactive. Always want to be proactive.

32:36.13
Pete Everitt
Yeah. ah Just while we’re on with to do is some tasks and routines, just on that point, I always make a point. So when I have ah an SEO client meeting, I will at least one business day in advance. If not two business days in advance, go and review the data for the meeting. Just so that I don’t have, I used to work at a place where like bookings for our boardroom to have, this was well before COVID, we’re talking like 2014, 2015.

33:03.77
Jeff
real offices?

33:03.86
Pete Everitt
and I worked in a real office, a real bricks and mortar business, and we had a glass a glass boardroom right in the middle of the office. Everybody could see what was going on. And, but bookings for that boardroom, that that was half the issue with arranging meetings with clients. We all had to have the meetings, but it wasn’t so much your availability or the client’s availability. It was, can we have the boardroom? So you you’d end up with like stacking meetings. So like, I just, I got to the point where like every other week I would book it out for an entire morning and I would see how many clients I could get to see me on that morning, just back to back to back to back to back reception hated it. Cause they had to make coffee for everybody, but I didn’t care. I was in the boardroom.

33:45.15
Pete Everitt
And, uh, but yeah, you’d you’d get to like your second or third or fourth meeting. And even if you’d had chance to review the data, you, uh, you know, because you’ve had so much going on your head, it was like a surprise to you every time. And I hated it.

34:02.39
Pete Everitt
So when I set my own thing up, I was like, no, I’m not. That’s one of the stresses I don’t need. I’m in control of that. I can change it. That’s what we’re doing. um So, you know, unless there’s an emergency coming up, people don’t get a a call with me like today, because no, I need to be able to see the numbers so that we can have a meeting meaningful conversation. And it’s the same with our strategy sessions. If you book a strategy session with either me or Jeff, it will ask for the information at least 48 hours.

34:29.75
Pete Everitt
I think it says ahead of the call just so that we can be prepared so that you get the most from the session with us and Yeah, absolutely Yeah, absolutely so so yes

34:36.00
Jeff
Yeah, there’s nothing more awkward than getting on a phone call. What do you want to know? I’m gonna have to go look that up. Thanks. Give me a few minutes or let’s let’s circle back tomorrow. I you know, that’s yeah, ah if you can, ah if you can share the info ahead of time or the questions that always helps get you prepared. I’m just amazed that you had a secretary or you know, a staff that that made coffee for you. I’m very jealous about that.

34:56.32
Pete Everitt
Oh no, they didn’t make it for me. That’d be daft. It wasn’t- Hang on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s hop back up here. I didn’t have a secretary. I’ve never had a secretary.

35:03.60
Jeff
i read I went back and I changed that to staff. I don’t want to say the secretary.

35:08.63
Pete Everitt
i i the The agency I worked for had two people that worked on reception. They were receptionists, they so they dealt with everybody that came in, they answered the phone, and they dealt with everybody that came out. The problem was that, because I was stacked in the boardroom with meetings, like I’d already be in meeting one, and meeting two would arrive, and they’d have to look after them until I was ready. And that was that was the bit they didn’t like, because they were making more cups of coffee than they than they thought was in their pay grade.

35:36.79
Jeff
Just put the Keurig machine on top of the conference table and leave it.

35:41.32
Pete Everitt
so So anyway, right. Well, we will wrap it up there. um I hope you’ve got something out of this episode. it’s ah you know what You know what we’re saying at the start about and about starting these episodes? I feel the same about ending them. I feel like at the end of these, I would say, oh, I hope you’ve got something useful out of this. And if you if we don’t see you you know anywhere else, we’ll see you in the next show. and that’s kind of my So maybe you should end this one.

36:05.62
Jeff
Bye, everybody. See you next time.

36:10.11
Pete Everitt
And on that bombshell, we will end. See you later, everyone.