After the Foundation is fixed. . . .

[HoosierBuff]

Hi All,

In another thread, someone posted that they really don't do any link building, and instead, just focused on fixing the site and all that goes on with that. I think this is very interesting because this is essentially what my company does. This does give me a bit of a quandry about what to do after you've sort of fixed everything. I mean, you could fiddle with title tags, etc, but, I think the client will have already received 98% of the value after six months.

The question/issue is, what do you do after month 6, once everything is sorted out? I feel like Linkbuilding fits in well there, because it can be an ongoing thing. . . except, I hate linkbuilding. I think its hard to quantify, and to get real links you need to have personal relationships with other local businesses (perhaps I am dismissing this opportunity).

As a result of my disdain for Linkbuilding, I think we can be "done" with SEO work in 6 months. What we tend to do now is move people to SEO maintenance at 1/3rd our regular rate, and do a little SEO work, and keep the reporting, the database submission and reputation monitoring.

Does anyone else work in this fashion, and have a similar issue?

-Steve

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Steve,

So we find we are never really done because of how much things change. Here are a few things we do on an ongoing basis for clients:

1. New content. There are always opportunities for new content (good stuff, not garbage) and also keeping existing content up-to-date. For example, with some of the lawyers we deal with we would need to keep pages updated that cover specific laws since those do change over time.
2. New GMB features. Think of all the new features that have come out in the last bit. Q&A, Appointment URLs, Services menu, now Products etc.
3. Soliciting & responding to reviews. We use GatherUp for this.
4. Backlinks - we like to go after press mentions when reporters are looking to interview experts. I just recently hired a full-time guy who has a background in this so we can focus on it more.
5. New locations - a lot of our clients have multiple offices and are looking to open more as part of their ongoing strategy. Every time a new office opens there is a butt-load of stuff to do.
6. Spam removal - this is huge and something that never completely dies for most competitive industries. Even clients we've had for years will have new lead gen listings pop up in their area that would push their listing down if we didn't remove it.

There are more, those are just the top ones.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@HoosierBuff, after the mostly one-time stuff, earning links is one of the two sink-or-swim activities (the other is earning reviews). If you don't work with clients on that, you've still performed a great service for them, but I'd suggest working with them on links in whatever way(s) you can. Depends on the particular client, of course.

Likewise for helping them rustle up reviews on a variety of sites.

Other long-term activities include (1) helping them keep competitors' mapspam under control, and (2) continually adding detail, FAQs, reviews, photos, etc. to existing pages (in what I like to call "content CPR").

 

[Oliver Keates]

In regards to adding photos i have heard from various sources that adding a few photos a month would be worthwhile.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I've heard that too but haven't seen any case studies or examples of why this would make any sense for service-related businesses like lawyers, doctors, insurance agents etc. I'd love to see some data if anyone has tested this.

 

[Oliver Keates]

It would be helpful to get some data, i have also found monitoring spam images where people have posted random photos that are not related to that specific GMB listing.