Full-Service SEO vs. SEO Consulting

10 Sep 2007 at 22:37 by Joshua J. Steimle

For those of you involved in the search engine optimization industry, how many of you offer your clients SEO services that are of a consulting or training nature, as opposed to full-service SEO?

That is, I've found that my SEO firm has approximately 50% of our clients paying us to tell them what to do, but we don't actually do anything ourselves other than run reports and give advice. All the actual changes are made by the clients themselves.

I've heard from our clients that they went with us because we were willing to be open and candid with them, whereas other SEO companies wanted to protect their "trade secrets," or more likely the lack thereof. I know we shoot ourselves in the foot in a way in that our clients often take SEO in-house after a few months once they feel like they get it, but at the same time we sign up a lot of clients we might not sign up if the only option were full-service SEO.

One major reason is that many of our clients have IT departments that will absolutely not allow access to their website by a third party. In these cases our only option is to provide consulting services. That, or walk way from the engagement entirely.

So what about your firm? Do you offer SEO consulting or training services? What percentage of your clients choose that option? How has it worked out for you?

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