When taking a new SEO project, which questions do you ask your client?

For starters you should ask basic questions like:
- industry/ product
- budget
- how much time are they planning on giving you in order to rank their page.
- how advanced is their domain? from 'no content at all' up to decent blog posts.

According to my experience. You should ask the following things when you get a new project:

• Niche(Service, eCommerce, Product)
• A project budget.
• They want free or paid work.
• Bunch of keywords suggestion which they want to rank.
• Project Timeline.
• They provide other work resources like (Content, Designer, Developer).
• Work report(Monthly, Annually, Weekly).
• Google webmaster or analytics access
• Social Channels account access
• Website Admin panel Access depend upon CMS or custom based.
• Payment Structure or timeline

Here are the questions which you must ask when you hire for the SEO project.

What do you hope to achieve with SEO? What are your main goals and KPIs?

Who is your target audience? (Age, gender, education level, etc.)

Which countries are you targeting?

Do you have any other offices around the world?

Who was your previous SEO agency/consultant?

What is your level of understanding when it comes to SEO?

Who are your main competitors?

Do you have an in-house developer?

What level of support will we have from the in-house developer?

What CMS are you currently using?

What is your budget for SEO?

Will I be given access to the following items?

What is your Unique Selling Point (USP)? What is the key differentiator between your product/service from that of your competitors?

Are you working with a PR agency?

Do you have plans to redesign your website?

Do you have any brand guidelines?

Are there any websites/forums/subreddits that are frequently visited by your target audience?

Who would you identify as influencers or thought leaders in your space?

Do you have any design assets we can have access to?

Do changes you make to the website have to go through an internal approval process?

Basically there are 2 forms of SEO: On-page SEO & Off-page SEO

On-page SEO is for the code, structure & content on the pages & Off-page SEO is how & where your site is linked to from elsewhere. You need both to rank well on competitive search engine results pages (SERPs).

For a new project look into the fact -
1. That if the Website has a responsive design.
2. See they have used the robots.text & XML sitemaps code.
3. and, look into there landing page templates.

If you find any issues on the above three, tell them to look into the issue. Next, you can go with -

4. What are their goals and their target audiences based on which you can suggest the content strategy and keyword ranking?
5. Are they using google analytics & webmaster tool to monitor their website?
6. what is their budget to spend on SEO?
7. what are their product/services, so that accordingly you can go ahead with their project?

That's some of the basics to get started with.

If you don't know what questions to ask, you probably shouldn't take the project.

Is this your first conversation? As a co-owner of an SEO agency in Sacramento and surrounding areas, I LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN. In an initial conversation, I'm trying to do a few things: Get the vision of where their business is and where they want it to go, pain points, ideal client, some details about the company (website, competitors) and I want to DRIVE the conversation into another convo. I need to determine if I can help them. I won't sell a person just to sell them. Each step, I do various things before sealing the deal.

A good question and must say many good points are already covered in your replies ( by Vijay R). Here are points we feel good to ask:

1. How old is your domain?

2. If your domain is old and still not ranking well, has it gone through any immediate traffic drop or Google Penalty?

3. Is the content on the site original ( else check through plagiarism software)

4. Which keywords client wish to target?

5. What is the competition of those keywords?

6. What is the tenure within which the client wants to see website on those keywords?

7. What platform the site is built on?

8. How good the site is with backlinks?

9. Was promotion done earlier too?
'
10. What is the time period for which client wishes to opt for SEO?

11. What is the budget range?

12. Is client only interested in SEO or SMO as well?

13. Do the site has a blog?

14. Will you get the liberty to make changes in the content/theme/pattern of website?

Most of the time I ask the client for what is their target like locations, male or females or both, duration of project, objectives, and target conversions.

There may be lots of question but some common things which comes on my mind are:

1. Niche - products or services
2. Client's final budget
3. Target audience (country, age group or gender)
4. Project timeline
5. Website's full access (provide or not) /using server and website platform
6. Webmaster and analytics access
7. Target keywords/suggest keywords
8. Social account access
9. Project progress report (Monthly or quarterly)
10. Payment mode and timeline

Hey,
You have asked a good question, as I can see you have got some nice replies.
In my opinion, if you are going to take the new SEO Project following question are must be asked to the Clients to understand their Business.

- First Question about the target Location of the Business.
- What is your level of understanding when it comes to SEO?
- Have you ever gone through Paid Services to Promote your Business?
- Do you have an in-house developer?
- What is the Estimate Budget?

"How much money would you be willing to spend in order to dominate Google and make automatic passive income, month over month, year over year? Wouldn't that be worth thousands of dollars per month? Well, for the low price of $199/month, you can see these kinds of results!"

You can take everything from your job provider.

Here are some questions you need to ask to your potential SEO clients -
1. What are your business goals and KPIs?
2. What are your current and expected Goal ROI?
3. What are the countries you are targeting? What are the demographics? What are the languages?
3. Who are your target customers and current customers? What is the lifetime value of a customers to your business?
4. What is the USP of your business?
5. Have you worked with an SEO agency before? if yes, can you please share the work sheet?
6. Have you been penalized by Google? If yes, any actions were taken to resolve the issue?
7. What are the challenges on your priority?
8. What is your budget for hiring SEO services?
9. Are you going to provide the content(Images/videos/text)?
10. What are your targeted keywords?
11. What is the expected timeline for the SEO project?
12. Do you have any brand guidelines? If yes, can you please share?
13. Can you provide access to Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Website/Blog CMS?
14. Do we need to take an approval before implementing changes in website?
15. what is your understanding when it comes to SEO?
16. What are your top online competitors?
17. What is the current traffic and the expected traffic of your website?
18. Do you keep records of your potential customers?
19. Does your business have presence on social media platforms?
20. How many business locations do your business have? Share the details.

I will ask. What you know about Digital Marking and SEO.

According to my point of view, few Questions should be as follows

Questions which should be asked before taking the project-
Business Sector (about business)
Duration for SEO service they want
there a budget for SEO Service
ask about the website is that website SEO friendly and Mobile friendly or not
Check website once and then tell your budget

I ask:
Domain age
If all content on the site is unique
Whether they've optimized the pages of the site for their targeted keywords
If they are currently doing any other backlinking

These are few questions you must ask:
What do you expect to gain with SEO?
What are your chief aims and KPIs?
Which audience you wish to target? (Education level, gender, age, etc.) Which are your targeting nations?
Do you have any other offices on this planet?
Who was your SEO agency/consultant in history?
What is your knowledge level when it is question of SEO?
Who are your most important competitors?*Do you have a domestic developer?

It's all depend on role you're planing to take.
Are you going to be site's ground zero developer or fulfill SEO functions
or marketing duties only or if you're going to manage that site after words?



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