Top Eight Questions to Ask a New SEO Content Client
Techsplace | As an SEO content writing company, you may meet all kinds of clients who have varying degrees of expertise in the field. On your better days, your client may already have compiled a list of keywords to utilize, and are extremely researched in this area. On other days, you may find some clients lacking the knowledge in this area, no blogging strategy with no identified target audience. Regardless of how experienced they are in terms of digital content marking; there are significant and essential questions that you should ask your client before taking on the job to make your life easier. And knowing exactly what they want as well as what you can provide, like a sem reporting tool or tailored services will prevent any miscommunications from happening. Let us dive into the questions that are paramount to understanding their brand and audience-focused SEO content.
1. Describe your business
The first question you want to ask your client is to describe their business to someone who is completely unaware of what their brand does. This helps to lay the foundation of the sense of brand name that they are trying to push out to the target audience while letting you fully understand the range of services and products that they are trying to sell. With the lack of technical terms and marketing terms, allowing them to present their brand in the most layman way possible will help you to be clearer, thereby helping their target audience have a better understanding of their products and services as well.
2. What is your brand’s mission?
While some brands already have a well-thought-out mission with a well-articulated three-liner paragraph, other companies may be clueless in this aspect with no proper mission identified. This simple question is definitely worth asking as this is an important piece of information to include in SEO while also giving a chance for companies to come up with a mission for themselves. Though a proper mission is not mandatory for all businesses, it helps to draw out their unique points and define them, enabling their brand to stand out from others.
3. What taglines does your brand have?
Taglines are the best way to capture the attention of the brand’s target audience and an even better way of creating a unique brand name for a business. With famous taglines like “I’m lovin’ it” and “Just do it,” these businesses are able to set them apart from the rest of the competitors. Therefore, taglines should always be incorporated in SEOs, promoting the creation of brand loyalty and also adding a touch of character to each business.
4. What are some words your brand wants to avoid using?
Though this may seem too much of a taboo topic to discuss, words that your client’s brand tends to avoid using to associate them with “cheap” or “low-grade” products and services will help you tremendously. You do not want a scenario whereby a seemingly useful marketing strategy that you think you can ride on is frowned upon by your client, resulting in extra hours clocked in for you. Furthermore, this simple question will also help you as a marketer to clarify the meanings of some technical terms used in their business, to avoid any inaccurate marketing.
5. What is the purpose of this content?
Instead of assuming that every client’s content is created with the purpose of achieving higher rankings and higher traffic, it is important to clarify these goals that each company may differ in. Though it may seem like a relatively obvious and seemingly silly question to ask, some businesses do have a different set of goals in mind, perhaps creating more engaging content or generating leads for their business. In such cases, tailoring the content with the sole purpose of receiving higher conversion rates may potentially misalign with their intended aims in the first place, leaving your marketing strategy ineffective.
6. What sets you apart from your competitors?
You may be surprised by how many businesses lack a legitimate and compelling answer to this question, and hence it is important to ask. If your client is unable to provide a distinct characteristic or trait that their brand is trying to push forward, it will be rather difficult for you to market their brand in a unique way to set their business apart from the others. Vague answers like “having over 20 years of experiences” or “being a family-owned business” is not enough for you to effectively market their brand. Instead, encourage your client to brainstorm selling points of their company to enable a more effective branding strategy.
7. Provide a detailed description of each of your products/services
While this may seem like one of the most basic questions that any SEO content writer should ask, some are guilty of writing in an offhanded manner, which may result in vague or confusing content. Without having an in-depth understanding of the products or services that your client provides, it is almost impossible to come up with comprehensive content that is easily understandable by the target audience. As your clients describe their products or services in simpler terms, you are also able to have the freedom to rephrase and explain their services in the most effective way possible, without having to strictly adhere to their technical terms that may be unclear and ambiguous to prospective customers.
8. Who is your target audience, and what are they like?
In any SEO content creation and marketing strategy, the target audience is the most important factor in tailoring any content to meet the needs of prospective clients. As engaging as some content may be, it will immediately be deemed ineffective if it fails to capture the attention of the targeted group that each brand is aiming to reach. It is also important to gain insights from your clients as to which types of content they are more receptive towards and are more prone to consuming. This way, it helps to drive your content marketing in a specific direction, ensuring that it is able to engage the targeted customers.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, every client and brand has its own set of goals, the preferred mode of content, and their specific target audience. It is important to understand your client’s brand as much as possible, to ensure that the content you produce is in line with their set out goals and tailored to a specific target audience. There is no rule of content marketing, as it boils down to the different needs and wants of each client to determine how the content should be created. Therefore, it is always important to ask more when in doubt and avoid situations whereby the SEO content that you create is unsuitable for their branding.
This article is contributed by guest author on techsplace.com.
