Comments on: 10 Questions You Should be Asking Your Client But Aren’t

By: Mark Kennedy

Mark Kennedy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:08:08 +0000

Good list. 1, 3, and 7 are the first things we ask a new client. However, 10 is a really, really good one. Going to make that a standard. Thanks!

@Jordan That’s another important one we ask, too. Nice.

By: leon

leon — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:40:01 +0000

or maybe create a webform for them to filled up

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:30:59 +0000

Nice, i think something in a nice little pdf document to hand over, please tick the boxes that are relevant... very good summary Web Analytics & SEO Agency

By: Paul Lee

Paul Lee — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:06:13 +0000

This is an excellent list. Thanks for sharing some of your mistakes and client pains. Very useful.

By: Jordan Glogau

Jordan Glogau — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:48:38 +0000

I have two more totally brain dead questions:

Did your designer put up your robots.txt file and lock all the spiders out? Which is why you haven’t any traffic from the search engines.

Are you pointing your www and root domain to the same place. Not every ISP does this. If not you have a duplicate content problem.

By: Dev Basu

Dev Basu — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:47:48 +0000

@IrishWonder – Funny thing really, I just pitched to a client that has the exact same problem – multiple domains which are mirrors of the same site.

@ Adam – I think the background research and being proactive about asking the right questions go hand in hand. Asking questions for enterprise SEO simply cannot be managed in one, two, or three meetings. You’re bang on about researching as much as you can and coming up with supplementary questions to clarify the situation with the client.

@ Christian – That’s a great idea. I just got off a call with a client that exclusively carries a brand name product in their market. Had I not asked a question regarding which product lines they consider special, I’d never have known about their product related marketing goals.

By: Internet Marketing Joy

Internet Marketing Joy — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:29:59 +0000

knowing what your client wants is very important..so you can decide which way to go and what steps to take..

By: Christian Vuong

Christian Vuong — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:54:34 +0000

These are wonderful tips, thanks for sharing Dev. I think these questions are paricularly important to address in conversations with the client.
I’d also ask content related question such as:
Are there specific terms or brands you don’t want us to write about?

By: Adam Lefever

Adam Lefever — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:56:37 +0000

Oh I can think of a LOT more than 10 “obscure” questions that should be asked.

Asking the questions is necessary but can only be useful if you can find someone who can answer them. Not one organization I’ve worked with in 6+ years has been able to answer all of my questions or can tell me where all of their online resources are. This is especially true with large organizations who have had multiple employees churn and marketing online for 10+ years.

When researching a new project, I’ll ask questions but still do a LOT of data research in search indexes, link popularity, duplicate content, related articles, company members’ names, etc. to be sure that I’m getting the whole picture and finding all of the “Golden Eggs” we can leverage for SEO benefit.

Cheers, and good post!
Adam

By: IrishWonder

IrishWonder — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:27:45 +0000

Yup been there done that, can attest to the multiple domains issue – better yet, multiple domains replicating the same site! So not only should you ask if they have other unused domains, but also if they have other used domains and what they use them for!

By: Joshua Sciarrino (schreno)

Joshua Sciarrino (schreno) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:31:35 +0000

Fantastic list. There are a few of them, that I’m smacking my head about. Thanks a ton! Now added to my list of things to do with new client.

By: Dev Basu

Dev Basu — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:18:05 +0000

@ Michael, Matt, and Jeff – Thanks for your comments!
@ Chris – I think #3 is one of the questions that most SEO’s forget to ask, while #1 and #2 are more core questions that become apparent if they already have a site, or through client meetings. When working with enterprise clients, I’ve had my fair share of difficulties in getting approval to have title tags changed… A particularly well known brand in the insurance industry took over 6 months to get that one little tweak done.

By: Christopher Kata

Christopher Kata — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:00:38 +0000

Thanks for sharing these questions. I’d questions like

1. Are you locally focused or targetting specific geographic markets
2. Do you need to target more than one language – ie are you targetting the French Canadian population?
3. What are your standard operating procedures when it comes to producing, reviewing and posting content to your sit [In some cases this process is onerous that it does not warrant doing SEO for them!]

By: Michael D

Michael D — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:10:52 +0000

yes, yes, no, yes, yes, many locations USA, too many, yes, no, to the top – the tippy tippy top!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:45:13 +0000

I would add, what digital content do you have that might be able to be added to your website? And, do you think this content is useful to a particular audience?

By: Matt Hanson

Matt Hanson — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:40:12 +0000

Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your rss feed my Google News Reader..

Matt Hanson