Giving an SEO client 6-12 month projections...

I was wondering about this as me and my team finally have a larger client on our radar... Dealing with smaller clients is not a problem, especially those who already have websites. You go in, see what's the problem and give estimates based on what you plan on doing compared to how they stand with their current efforts and the competition.

But dealing with a larger client seems like a completely different ballgame, which is why we are looking for advice...

The problem with a larger clients is, from our perspective, more money. As more money is in the game they are looking for predictions, projections, guarantees (hopefully not many of those). How would you approach such discussions with the client? Setting up some sort of a 6-12 month retainer is a must, but laying up a month-to-month plan is what we're struggling with the most. Do you follow a template or a blueprint of sort? How do you handle such situations? How do you give something concrete to the client when there are no guarantees in SEO

You would be far better off working out or you should know what the client expects and how much you are going to quote them.

Break that down to hours or cost spend per month.

Then set budgets or tasks to fit in that costing & time frame to do each month.

If you do it that way you can set out a project plan.

What you need to be able to do is SHOW some kind of progress as well so id mix in jobs where the client can click on the site and see something has changed on a semi / regular basis rather than saying "we are waiting on a reindex or a serp update"

So once you know the costings and what the client is going to do you should be able to do something like:

month one analyse the site and competitors

month two take all data and present additional options to client

month three start doing X Y Z and so on..

Every 2-3 months break down a time to have full dates & feedback should the client want it ..

Yes, we've worked out the reporting and are working on calculating the cost, but it's kinda difficult as we've never worked in such a competitive field before. Most websites ranking on the first page are well-established businesses of 10,15+ years with insane DR's.

I like that breaking down in 2-3 month sections, rather than a big block of 12 months. This way we'll monitor the progress better and give better predictions as we gain more data. Thanks