Explain the situation to her and educate her. If she still wants a refund...give it to her and apologize....you never want to have a lawyer seeking money from you.

Ahhh, the joys of running a business!

It effects their adwords because you're changing information that led them to a higher quality score. The higher the quality score, means the lower CPC.

This is something that could easily be fixed. If they don't want an ad for St. Louis showing up in peublo and vise versa, create different campaigns and limit who can even see the ad.

Don't give a refund. You did work, no one gets work for free, they canceled and you put forth your best effort.

The thing is that sometimes even if they're wrong, a lot of clients will not listen to reason. If that's the case, I usually apologize, give the full or partial refund and good riddance.

Try to satisfy your client with efforts and changes you can do for them to serve better service. still she not agree, refund her amount after deducting few money for your efforts.

Thanks guys. Actually, the client's brother, who is also a lawyer, fancies himself as an Internet marketing guy. He really only knows enough to dangerous.

Quick question, did you have a monthly contract (or any contract) that outlines performance guarantees?

I think you need to talk to them more.

I'm not sure what you did opr what they think you did which would effect the other office. Were they running one website for both?

Honestly this sounds liek a sitaution where more questions before the close would have helped.

I don't mean to ask a stupid question, but this is just ONE website right? Are there TWO practices?

Either way... I agree with Nameless....it sounds like they are not targeting their Adwords campaigns properly, and do not have them set up properly either.

You probably made changes on a page that they have linked to one of their ads, without you realizing it, and without them knowing what the heck they need to be doing.

Educate her if you can, and see if you can fix it. Do you manage the Adwords account too, or does the brother?

If nothing else, you could create additional pages, targeting the new keywords, and use those in the ads, which would be beneficial to the quality score anyway. An ad for Pueblo should NOT be linked to a St. Louis site anyway, and that's why the QS tanked... one of the reasons anyway...

More targeted is better though, so her freaking out about you changing "family law" to a geo targeted meta set... shows her lack of understanding.

A few things for you to consider....

1) She has someone besides you in her life who has influence over her thinking about internet marketing. It turns out this person is her BROTHER, who is also a lawyer. He probably runs the other office. He has far more control over her thought process than you.

2) Lawyers see litigation as a business tool (we all should) because that is what it is. It will be nothing for her to have a paralegal file a motion against you next time they are at the courthouse filing a stack of motions.

3) You may fight, and you may win, or you may lose. Either way, you need an attorney. Is there enough cash at stake here for a fight? It seems your actions HAVE adversely affected another marketing campaign, so they have a reasonable argument.

4) Customers like this are seldom worth the stress. A few hundred bucks isn't worth the stress and ill will she will come at you with. Not to mention, these types of people often do not go away. They can be a pain in the ass for months or years. Some people will never stop complaining and badgering you.

All of that said, if I were you, I would take the following actions.

1) Apologize that it didn't work out. Don't admit you caused them any problems, just apologize for ending the professional relationship.

2) Tell her you will gladly issue her a refund. Write up an agreement that this refund will settle the issue and no further action is needed in the matter. The issue is finished and no ill will remains between you. Realistically, she could demand a refund AND demand compensation for the losses to her business including wasted PPC money and damage to business reputation when people could not call the correct office. From the wording of her complaint email, she is already thinking along these lines "you are costing us money." If she files a motion against you, it will be for much, much more than the refund. Once this refund agreement is signed, cut her a check, smile, and sincerely wish her the best of luck. It will feel good.

3) In the future, ask more questions in your interview. Add a question about any other marketing efforts they may be doing. Find out if there is anyone else in their life influencing their decisions relating to internet marketing. You simply must know these things.

4) In your work agreement, be sure there is a clause which mentions you don't guarantee results and you will not be held liable for any unintended effects of your marketing services. Because you are not in control of search engine algorithms, you simply can't guarantee that Google wont change their mind about what they do and don't like.

That's what I would do.

If they want a refund then give it to them and move on. It is not worth the trouble if they are not happy. Find a new client that is happy to pay you for your work.

No refund. You did the work, and to your knowledge (while I don't agree) you did the best you could have, which is standard SEO practice.

I'd also side with comments that your OTP changes do not affect PPC side. I'd refer your client to this Google document, that indicates organic and PPC are not tied.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmaster Tools Help

Can you simply fix the problem for them? I'm thinking a little additional customer service here can turn people into raving fans.

Try to reason and come up with a solution. Ask to look into the adwords campaign and see what's wrong, because it shouldn't be your SEO? If you find out you did nothing wrong, explain it to the client. If you screwed up, issue the refund.

I'm wondering why you didn't have custom landing pages made for each location and avoid the main site all together as a destination from clicking a ppc ad. Unless you didn't do the ppc portion? This person just seems like they are making an excuse but you need to tell them they just need to adjust the ppc campaign if you aren't doing that for them.

Family attorneys collect retainers before they start a case. Ask her, if she'd refund a client who doesn't like her work, especially after she already spent few weeks on their case?

Who's managing their PPC? If they're doing it, it sounds like they don't know what they're doing.

If they're not getting the conversions they previously were, or as they put it the "phones have stopped ringing", they need to align their ads with the site changes you've made.

Also, what are they using to measure that their phones have stopped ringing, besides the actual ringing sound at their business? Are they using conversion tracking on their ads? What about Content Experiments from Google Analytics to test different versions of their landing pages?

My best guess for their phones not ringing from their ppc ads due to the changes you've made on-site, is because their ad rank has likely decreased and their quality score needs to be improved to increase ad rank again.

Now I don't know what you know about adwords ppc, but ad rank is affected by quality score and cpc, and quality score is affected by 3 things... CTR, Ad Text Relevance, and Landing Page.

Now they could increase their max cpc, but that's not a great solution if their quality score is out of whack, because they'll just be wasting more money.

Their ad text NEEDS to be relevant to their landing pages. That also includes their display URL.

The display URL shouldn't be directing them to a page that's no longer relevant to the ad, it should be sending them to a page on the site that matches the ad.

So, in their case, a pueblo attorney ad needs to have a display URL that directs to a page on their website that's about them being a pueblo attorney.

Like I said, they need to align their ppc with their website. You could charge more and do it, if you know how, outsource it, or part ways with them.

Obviously you should have a terms of service in place before beginning work. That would explain what's guaranteed and what amount would be refunded.

For SEO, you pretty much would guarantee nothing and then ask the client to hold your harmless for any negative outcome.

You really need to do this to protect yourself from this situation. Lots of times business transactions don't work out, especially for something like "SEO."

Sorry to hear about your client issues. Lesson learned I guess. Lawyers are the top of my list of people I do not do work for. Followed by:
interior designers
photographers
rock musicians
multi-level marketers
life coaches
anyone who's main form of online communication is a hotmail account

Did someone say E&O insurance?

{pin drop}

Rule Number 1) Never work for anyone that thinks they know how to do what you do.
Rule Number 2)Reread rule number 1

I hate dealing with clients who "think" they know what they are talking about. It's a tough situation. I would be tempted to give her a refund, but you did the work. Maybe give her a partial refund so you can get paid for some of your time.

At the very least I would cut her loose as a client. From personal experience she'll just be more of a headache in the future.

Good luck.

I too would like to low the outcome. I also agree with several points made. If total disclosure wasn't made ..is it truly the OPs fault? I think a terms of service contract needs to be completely spelled out..and think that should be in the must to-do's when starting a service business.

Also, I think open communication with the upset client once the apparent issue came about may have caught it before becoming too large. Seems as if it would have been an easy fix.

Man, that sucks. Dealing with lawyers. I would try to fix their problem before I even thought about a refund. It can be fixed. You can give them one or two months free for the mistake but giving back the initial compensation isn't good especially if you can just fix it.