u/AtlasSEOGuy

I feel like I’ve backed myself into a bit of a corner with one of my clients, and I’m not quite sure how to approach it.

For the sake of the story, let’s call him John. John is a great guy, but he has never been fully sold on digital marketing. He is more old-school in the way he thinks about business development. To him, marketing is built around relationships, nice dinners, handshakes, and personal trust.

So you might be wondering how we ended up working together when I run an SEO company and he does not really believe in SEO. The answer is that I spent months building the relationship without pressuring him. I was simply available when he had questions, whether it was about his website, marketing, or what I thought would be best for his business. Over time, I think that approach earned his trust, and eventually he decided he was ready to give SEO a try.

The challenge is that when he came on board, he negotiated me down to a discounted rate. I agreed because I saw it as a way for him to get his feet wet, with the understanding that once we built some traction, we would revisit the rate.

Fast forward to today, and I honestly got so focused on growing my business and doing the work that I forgot about the rate increase conversation altogether. I only realized it during my yearly account review, where I look at the bigger picture beyond our regular monthly reports.

The results have been strong. John’s traffic has nearly tripled, and more importantly, his total leads from forms and calls have increased by over 40% in the past six months.

I’d like to present these numbers and ask for a rate increase, not just because it benefits me, but because it would allow us to put more resources into continuing to grow his business. My concern is that, because the campaign is already working, he may say, “Why should I pay more if things are going well as they are?”

I know the answer is that more resources would allow us to expand, build on the momentum, and pursue additional growth opportunities. I’m just not sure how he’ll take it or how to position the conversation in a way that feels fair and professional.

How should I properly ask for this rate increase?

I know when you guys see success stories on here, it’s usually a $20,000,000 deal, someone selling their company, or something massive. But today, I might’ve done something that beats any new signing, at least in my mind: I got my client to finally give me a compliment. It may not seem like a big deal, but this client is an older guy who runs an HVAC company. He’s a pretty typical tradesman and definitely looks at me like some soft-handed SEO guy, which, don’t get me wrong, I am, especially compared to him. But the work I do is solid. Compared to this point last year, organic traffic is up 30%, and leads are following. Still, every time I’ve shown him a report, I’ve gotten pretty much nothing back.

Until recently. It wasn’t the lead numbers. It wasn’t the traffic. The thing that finally made him smile was that he outranked his brother, who owns a much larger HVAC company in the town over. Apparently, they constantly go back and forth about who’s better, which is honestly hilarious. His brother mentioned it at their most recent family gathering, and my client gave me the old thumbs up with a big smile. It really warmed my heart, and hopefully I can get another one out of him soon.

For years, there's been one company in my area that just absolutely dominates all things pressure washing. They have the most crews going around, they have the most signs out in the neighborhood, and they rank number 1 for all the local searches like "Pressure washing services near me." While I can't do anything about the size of the company, I did notice that even though they rank well, ultimately, it was because nobody was doing anything about it.

All the other sites in the area were a typical one page wix site or maybe a Yelp listing, but nobody was capturing or challenging this market, and I wanted to know why. I decided to actually call a buddy of mine and see what he was doing or if he even knew a hole existed and obviously he didn't as he doesn't spend his time searching Google for ranking opportunities and rightfully so as he's not in SEO like myself but I brought up the idea to him, and while he sounded interested, he ended up passing due to the cost. Well, you win some, and you lose some, but I decided to dive deeper into this and find someone who could afford it since I knew there were probably hundreds of call just out there being collected by this company that nobody would challenge them on. For about 2 months, I cold-called around, presenting my plan to whoever would listen, and I can't tell you how much I hate doing that but finally, somebody took me up on the offer.

They actually were a company one town over, but they were extremely interested, as I guess he knew the owner of the larger company, and there was some friendly beef/competition going on. Long story short, I didn't care what it was, but it helped get the deal signed, and we were off to the races. We created a new website, added more content, developed authoritative links, optimized the Google Business Profile, and essentially left no stone unturned here. Now I'm happy to report this day, maybe 4-5 months later, we've done it.....

I won't take all the credit as Google has done a ton of heavy lifting with all of their new content updates, which we fell on the right side of, but we now rank ahead of them on Google both in my local area and the surrounding towns. I felt like Charlie in the mailroom from Always Sunny when I came up with this strategy but I can't tell you how great it feels to watch a plan come to life and follow through.

I've had a client who works in the construction industry, and for roughly a year now, he's been battling with a competitor who cheated his way to the top of Google. Now, when I say cheated I mean cheated in the most obvious ways possible. Stuff like whitening out words to expand his keyword usage, using fake addresses on his Google Business Profiles, and even just copying content word for word from pages we've created in the past. It's actually impressive how long they've gotten away with some of this stuff, I imagine mainly due to the fact that Google just doesn't care about user experience as much as they say (another rant for another time)

But for a while, they did outrank us and kept us out of that number 1 position, always just one below them. Now, for anyone who does SEO the difference between number 1 and 2 is a pretty good amount of leads/traffic, and because of this, my client was getting pretty angry to the point where he started asking me if maybe we should start doing some of this stuff but I always reassured him that when the time comes we will get the spot and Google will right this wrong. Finally, it happened, with the newest core update focused on quality content, Google penalized its site to the dirt. Traffic deleted, webpages not indexed, and the icing on the cake is not only do we rank number 1 now for a good amount of keywords organically, but not related directly to the update, which was his Google Business Profile getting suspended.

I hate to pray on other people's downfalls because I imagine whoever owns that business is just like all of us, but we all have to play by the rules, and it goes to show cheaters never win in the long run.

I’ve been pulling my hair out recently because one of my clients decided to bring family members into his business to help run things. And honestly, it’s his company, so he can do what he wants. The issue is that their involvement is starting to spill over into my work and the results I’m responsible for, and I don’t want it to look like the SEO services we’re providing are the problem when he reviews the monthly reports.

The most recent example is his younger cousin, who says he’s a “big tech guy.” He watched a few marketing videos, including one about a Shopify store, even though this is a landscaping company, and suddenly decided the website needed a full redesign. Before bringing it up with me, he started deleting and moving things around on the site. Luckily, I caught it early and was able to restore a backup, but this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

Another time, he decided to “limit test” the Google Business Profile, which was ranking number one at the time and generating around 50 calls per month. He started changing the address without realizing that Google may require verification when you edit key business information. That ended up triggering a reverification issue that cost us more days of no leads.

I’m in a tough spot because I understand this is family, and I get that he’s trying to help them get involved. But at the same time, he’s paying me to do a job that I can’t properly do if people are making random changes without telling me. Right now, SEO makes up about 70% of his lead flow, with the other 30% coming from referrals. If the website gets damaged, the Google Business Profile gets suspended, or major changes are made without a strategy, there’s a real chance we lose the progress we’ve worked hard to build.

How can I bring this up to him in a professional way without sounding like I’m attacking his family?

I’ve had a client I’ve worked with for over three years now. When I first met him, Andy, the owner, had one crew that he personally ran, and I was the only outside support handling SEO for him.

Fast forward to today, and Andy has people door-knocking, cold calling, managing social media, and running paid ads. It’s been pretty amazing to watch his business grow. I joke with him that it’s all because of SEO, but the truth is, he’s one of the hardest-working guys I’ve ever met.

So why does this matter? Almost everything I just mentioned is now handled in-house for him, except one thing: SEO. That’s still me.

A big part of that comes from the partnership we’ve built and the fact that we’ve grown together, which I’m genuinely thankful for. Recently, though, he brought up the idea of my coming in-house. The pay sounded good, and the benefits would definitely be nice, but I’ve worked at an agency before, and the main reason I left was that I wanted to own my own business.

I want to turn the offer down, but I also don’t want it to damage the relationship. I realize he may eventually bring SEO in-house as he has with everything else, but is there a way to decline the offer without ruining the partnership?