Who You’re Really Working With
I do all of the core technical SEO work and research myself. At any time when I feel you might be better served by having someone else do a task, I’ll let you know. Often, I will train/mentor someone on your team for certain tasks, such as auditing your Google Business Profiles. If you have many of these, I can save you money (AND grow your team’s skillsets) by showing your team how to do this themselves.
I have a few contractors we work with who do things like graphic design, implement mu recommendations on web pages, web design of new pages, building out social media profiles, etc. As well, I frequently refer clients to colleagues whose work I know well and trust thoroughly–for things like PPC, Google shopping feed work, PR, link-building, content creation, etc.
If I can’t take on a client because I already have a client who’s a director competitor, I’ll generally refer them to other SEOs I know well and trust.
Communicating With Me
I don’t answer unscheduled phone calls. I recognize that I bill at a fairly high hourly rate, and don’t think it’s fair to take a call when I’m in the middle of doing work for another client. Even if I stop and restart the task timer, there’s often a substantial amount of time involved in getting my head back around what I was looking at for that client, and they shouldn’t have to pay for that extra time.
I typically fill my calendar solid about two weeks out with tasks and appointments for calls with clients. I try to leave a little bit of unscheduled time to handle “stuff that just comes up”. Some weeks that works better than others!
Working With Michael Long-Term
You shouldn’t be.
After the initial keyword research, site audit, on-page recommendations, and some coaching calls, you’re not really going to need me going forwards on a monthly basis. You should stop spending money on people like me!
You WILL need to do ongoing marketing work, of course–involving people with better marketing skills than me, PR experts, content writers, etc. Do outreach, get yourself written up in the paper or an industry blog, or do a guest article for another site. I’ll coach you on getting started with that, and help you figure out how to find the right experts for that kind of work, but it’s not me, and it’s not SEO: it’s regular PR and marketing.
You will also need to do some ongoing work on your social media channels, promoting content and interacting with customers and communities. I’ll coach you on getting started with that too, and I can help you set up your social media profiles and process if you’re not already there. But on an ongoing basis, that’s going to be YOU doing the social media work.
Many (maybe most) of my clients come back to me on an occasional basis with little questions, or looking for a review after a major website update…things like that. No problem–my invoicing and time tracking system (Harvest) tracks & bills by the minute, so you can get an answer to a 5-minute question without breaking the bank. And if it’s really quick, I won’t bother charging at all.