In this week's episode, we chat with Billie Hyde, SEO Training Lead at The SEO Works about setting client expectations.

Where to find Billie:

Website: https://billiegeena.co.uk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/billiegeena

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billie-hyde-a0396919a/

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Episode Sponsor:

This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They are keen to support and promote technical SEO women in the industry, and would like to use this sponsor slot to offer an open invitation for contributors in the WTS community to write for the Screaming Frog blog. If you’re keen on being heard by a large technical SEO audience, then do drop them an email with a pitch via support@screamingfrog.co.uk.

Where to find Screaming Frog:

Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/

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Episode Transcript:

Areej: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am Areej AbuAli, and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about setting client expectations. Joining me today is the brilliant Billie Hyde, who is SEO Training Lead at The SEO Works. Hey, Billie.

Billie: Hi. How are you doing?

Areej: I'm good. How are you?

Billie: Brilliant, thank you.

Areej: It's so great to have you with us. You're super, super active in the industry, you're so active in the community. I'm really, really happy that we get to talk together today on the WTSPodcast.

Billie: Me too. I'm just fangirling over here.

Areej: Well, can you tell everyone a little bit about you, and what you do, how you got into the world of SEO?

Billie: Absolutely, yes. I'm Billie Hyde, or if you follow me anywhere online, it's Billie Geena. I can't use my real name because of SEO. There's a slightly more famous musician kind of guy with the same name,

I'm the Training Lead at the SEO Works. My job is to basically find ways for us to do SEO more efficiently, teach their student department, as well as training people that are new to the industry, and getting them their start here a well. I have a split role, so I am also a senior account manager as well. I look after a handful of clients and have the usual stress that every agency SEO has basically as well.

Areej: I can imagine. Have you always been agency side?

Billie: No. I did use to work in-house. I did that for about a year. I'd worked on the training side there, after working as a content SEO for a while. In-house, at certain places, there's just very little growth, and you're stuck in a rut, so I tried agency. I don't think I'm ever going to go back, I don't know.

Areej: Wow. I love it. I know it's very, very different for different people. Some people are more team in-house, and others are more team agency. I can imagine especially with your role being very training-driven, it completely makes sense to be on the agency side. I love that your company has a training lead role. That's really exciting.

Billie: It's really fun. Like most places, SEO just took off for our agency over the pandemic, and because of the skills shortage, it just makes sense of having me do this to get people who aren't currently in the SEO world into it. It's been working really well for us.

Areej: That makes a lot of sense because I know how difficult it is as well right now, recruitment, and hiring, and bringing on new people. The fact that you have dedicated time and resources to training people who might be new to SEO. That's such a critical role to have.

Billie: Absolutely. It just makes sense. I just can't believe we didn't think of it before.

Areej: What advice would you give for women who are starting in the industry brand new?

Billie: My best advice is don't try to learn everything at once. That's what I did when I first came into the industry, and I burnt myself out. I got confused with all the different acronyms and terms. I recommend specializing in one area to start with. I started in content, and now, I'm a technical SEO when I am doing agencies, that kind of work. Pick a niche to learn, but don't stick to it. Just take in as much information as you can from anyone that will give it to you, but don't just limit yourself o one area.

Areej: I think that's such great advice. You're right. It can be so overwhelming when someone is initially starting, and there are so many different types of SEO. It's important to take your time discovering different parts and then making sure that, "Yes, this is something I'd like to specialize in more," as opposed to trying to learn everything in such a short period of time.

Billie: Absolutely.

Areej: Awesome. Well, we're here today to talk about setting client expectations. I love that you put that idea forward. Was there a specific reason? I imagine you have a lot of clients that you tend to work with. What inspired you to want to talk specifically about this topic with us today?

Billie: I just think clients are wild basically. I think for any campaign, the first three months of it are just trying to make a client understand SEO and what they think is the ultimate goal potentially isn't. I think SEO is just a big education piece for really everyone. Having expectations there makes our jobs easier, makes the clients understand what they're spending their money on better.

Areej: 100%. In terms of your agency setup, how do you work with clients right now on a day-to-day basis?

Billie: I have between 5 and 12 clients at any given time, all with different-sized client hours for me to work on them. For me, I tend to work more on the project lead and the technical consultancy side, so we tend to work as part of a team, I'll spend a lot of my time talking to them, feeding back data from any reports we do, and just explaining the things that we're doing and why we're doing them. Yes, I just dock from client to client. I can't work on one website for a whole day. I get so bored with one task, so it suits me to have just a big range.

Areej: I can imagine then why the agency side suits you more than in-house. You would completely lose your mind if you were just looking at one website the whole time.

Billie: I think that's what happened. At one point, when I was in-house, I was just trying to get the team to play Pictionary with me most days.

Areej: You're the SEO account manager when you're working on specific clients. Do you have more SEO specialists who work alongside you on the account, or are you fully focused on that one client?

Billie: Since I tend to have other people on the account with me, there's normally between three and six of us. Everyone's got the things they prefer to do. For me, I like-- If someone prefers to do content to technical, I'll give them as much content as they want. That's my least favourite thing to do, so they can take it. It's really good actually because you know everyone's skillsets, but you can also-- It might be just my training side kicking in, but I try to push people to do the things that they're not necessarily confident in. I might give them a tech audit to do, and then I'll go through it with them. We do tend to try to put specialists on everything to fit the clients' needs, but for me, I just tend to push people into trying new things.

Areej: That makes a lot of sense. It's important to help others get a little bit out of their comfort zone as well and work on new things. Let's say you're starting a brand-new relationship with a client, you've just onboarded them, how do you go about setting some high-level KPIs from the start?

Billie: The first thing you want to do is to just talk to the client about their goals. Don't even put KPIs into it until you know their goals. Sometimes, what they want us to work on isn't realistic, isn't going to help them, there are all sorts of factors. I think have wider picture will help you set those goals. Most of the time, it's to make more sales, but the thing that they want you to report on could be revenue, but what you should really be looking at is, "Okay, where are people coming in? How long are they staying on for?" What they're asking for might not be what's right.

You've just got to delve into that and get as much data and understanding of the client, and the niche, and the industry, and then you can figure out your KPIs from there. I try to avoid KPIs where possible. I don't make any promises. Not every client likes that obviously, but I do find it helps to just not set anything concrete.

Areej: Do you feel that sometimes some clients would ask for KPIs that might be a little out of our control? Those areas are probably difficult to sign up for from the start.

Billie: I've had occasions where I've had a client come in who need a lot of technical SEO work doing before we can do anything basically, like the website's just a mess. The navigation doesn't work, things like that, and the client's just been like, "Okay, so how many links a month can you guarantee me?" One, I don't promise links. I'm not a digital PR. I can get them, but I can't put any promises on there for you. It's just a bit counter-productive.

Areej: Especially when there's a lot of legacy behind these websites. When I used to work agency-side before, we always used to have a similar problem where a client might come in and right away we're talking about, "Oh, we want traffic that comes through such high commercial keywords," but then you look and you realize this going to take months and months and legacy problems to be technically fixed before we can even start thinking about the content, or the link building, or any of those sides.

Billie: Yes, you've just described my life basically.

Areej: That's why I've left agency-side.

Billie: How do I like this?

Areej: I know what you mean. It can be-- In general, I'm sure you have-- Maybe let's talk about the good side initially with clients who you do-- They manage to see a really positive impact and an uplift. What's that like generally? How does that communication turn around? I'm guessing through a lot of reporting and so forth. How does it best work from your end?

Billie: The best way to turn it around and be able to get through that is just by communicating with them regularly. Whenever I get a new client, in the first two, three months, I will talk to them weekly. I try to keep them in the loop. Then as they start to trust me more and see that I am doing things, I'll probably start communicating with them less. I'll report on things once a month. I'll do that anyway. I do a full big report. Once the client gets to know you after a few months of that report, it's just amazing when you are getting them results consistently and how happy they are with the work you've done.

I particularly really like working on small businesses because that's their livelihood. You can see them when it's working, there's so much joy and they're so appreciative, but it's so rare just to immediately have that connection with a client and it does take a lot of work and trust.

Areej: Yes, 100%. I imagine on the other side, you might, unfortunately, have clients that are a little bit more difficult than normal. How do you tend to attempt to turn that relationship around?

Billie: I think honesty is the best thing you can do in those situations. I'm currently having an ongoing situation like that at the moment. Although the things aren't going too well for the client's campaign because we're very limited with what we can do. It's customer CMS and just all a nightmare now. Nothing seems to be working right. The client's not overly happy because things aren't happening as quickly as they want to, but they are appreciating that I'm honest and like, "This is happening. I'm not making excuses. This is the work we've done. This is how we hope it'll resolve this issue."

We should have this downward moment now while it's not peak season and make these changes." Just be honest about it and don't be afraid to just-- If you've tried absolutely everything with a client, sometimes it's not SEO, just say that this is an us problem. Don't go say, "This isn't an us problem." They'll block you and complain, but sometimes it's not SEO. We can't fix everything.

Areej: Yes, definitely, and being honest is important with that because there is no reason to continue taking budget, and retainers, and so forth from clients if it feels like there's a bigger problem there or there's something else they need to be looking at, or there are other resources that they need to be prioritizing.

Billie: Absolutely. A big issue with clients sometimes is that they'll come in wanting results instantly. That's something that I've dealt with quite a lot, and they can't get that from SEO. You're not going to rank number one in two days. Say what they're expecting isn't right. Talk to them about it, say what is achievable, and suggest other things. If they're an interior design company, that's an over-saturated market, so don't say, "Just do SEO." Advise them to use Pinterest. If it's a make-up client, tell them to use PPC. Look at the market as a whole because sometimes there's just no SEO answer, or depending on the client size, we can't do it. Put them onto a different method where they can.

Areej: Makes sense. I know this is something that you talk a lot about as well, but being agency side, how do you go about building relationships with developers who are sat on the client's side?

Billie: I find this is an art form. I thought it'll be so easy. SEOs, developers, it shouldn't be a problem." I think that because I came from an in-house place before what had such a push on SEO. It turns out there is such distrust between SEOs and developers. For me, don't talk the developer's language, speak to them in just normal terms. If you try to put everything into jargon for their industry and you are not an expert in that, it's just going to come across as gobbledygook.

Just get as much detail and information and knowledge behind anything you want to take to a developer and then put it out in common terms so the developer can understand it, but also your main contacts with the client can understand it as well. That'll just help because you're not coming in trying to look like you know everything and you're trying to do the developer's job. If you do that, the developer just doesn't trust you no matter how hard you try. How many smiley faces I put on my emails, they don't like me ever again. Just provide all the information you can, explain why it affects SEO, just treat them like humans.

Areej: Yes. You're so right, though, I think especially in the bit where we wouldn't want, as SEOs, developers, or other people in general from other principals coming in and claiming to know what is right and what is not for SEO and claiming to be the experts in that, which is exactly what you're saying in terms of we don't want to go to developers and pretend that we understand the roles better than they do because it's just disrespectful, isn't it?

Billie: Absolutely, yes.

Areej: I know how challenging it can be, especially when you're agency side because even with in-house you still have your challenges. You're still trying to work with the tech team, especially if you're sat in marketing. Being agency side is even more challenging because the tech team on the client side might have a lot of priorities other than the ones that are coming through the agency. I think the more we talk about this as an industry in general, the more helpful it would be.

It just goes back to your education piece as well where, as long as everyone has a clear understanding of why we're doing this, and what we're doing it for, and everyone's aligned, that helps.

Billie: Sorry. I was drinking some water there, sorry.

Areej: It's okay.

Billie: It's absolutely that. The more we talk about it, and the more we talk to developers, and the more we talk in simpler terms to the clients as well and just make SEO more accessible and understandable for the different industries and knowledge levels, the easier our job gets. It's way to in-house because you're there. You've got easy access to everyone. In an agency, I do think we're almost in our little world, we just obsess about SEO. We don't think about the other teams that our clients have and the processes that they have. Were just like, "Okay, this needs doing, let's get it done."

Areej: I think I only fully understood and appreciated that when I moved in-house because I was agency-side for five years. When I moved in-house and we were working with an agency, and for me, it was just one thing off my to-do list, where it was like there's this one thing that the agency asked me to do, but then there are 10 other things that I need to do from internal teams. The levels of how you can prioritize this or how much time you put into it, or so on. That leads me to the question of if there are recommendations that you put forward that you know are high priority, how do you manage to get buy-in for them to get implemented?

Billie: I've got a few different ways that I do this. My go-to way is to put everything into a spreadsheet, that's my go-to for everything. I'll break down the key areas like what the issue is, what are the issue is affecting, how it affects SEO, and all the different knock-on effects it has, with the different - to provide evidence of how widespread it is. I also give everything a priority score, I'll share this spreadsheet template as well this but it's just such a massive help being able to break it down.

I can highlight the areas that I know will be important to the developer. What the client will say and care about, even if it's on the same thing, is different to what the developer will say and care about. If I could break it down, so it's easily understandable and has some suggestions of a way you can resolve this, it just tends to get picked up makes it into the pipeline quicker. Again, that doesn't always help, it depends on what the issue is.

I've recently, with one client, they painfully decided to change all of their links to be served through JavaScript. I've been speaking with their development team to get that changed back to HTML. They were like, "Oh, it seems like a lot of work and I'm not sure," blah, blah, blah. I kept trying to explain the SEO effects, but no matter how much...