In this week's episode, we chat with Billie Hyde, SEO Training Lead at The SEO Works about setting client expectations.

Where to find Billie:

Website: https://billiegeena.co.uk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/billiegeena

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billie-hyde-a0396919a/

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Episode Sponsor:

This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They are keen to support and promote technical SEO women in the industry, and would like to use this sponsor slot to offer an open invitation for contributors in the WTS community to write for the Screaming Frog blog. If you’re keen on being heard by a large technical SEO audience, then do drop them an email with a pitch via support@screamingfrog.co.uk.

Where to find Screaming Frog:

Website - https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/screaming-frog/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/screamingfrog

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ScreamingFrogSEO

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/screamingfrog/

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Episode Transcript:

Areej: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast. I am Areej AbuAli, and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about setting client expectations. Joining me today is the brilliant Billie Hyde, who is SEO Training Lead at The SEO Works. Hey, Billie.

Billie: Hi. How are you doing?

Areej: I'm good. How are you?

Billie: Brilliant, thank you.

Areej: It's so great to have you with us. You're super, super active in the industry, you're so active in the community. I'm really, really happy that we get to talk together today on the WTSPodcast.

Billie: Me too. I'm just fangirling over here.

Areej: Well, can you tell everyone a little bit about you, and what you do, how you got into the world of SEO?

Billie: Absolutely, yes. I'm Billie Hyde, or if you follow me anywhere online, it's Billie Geena. I can't use my real name because of SEO. There's a slightly more famous musician kind of guy with the same name,

I'm the Training Lead at the SEO Works. My job is to basically find ways for us to do SEO more efficiently, teach their student department, as well as training people that are new to the industry, and getting them their start here a well. I have a split role, so I am also a senior account manager as well. I look after a handful of clients and have the usual stress that every agency SEO has basically as well.

Areej: I can imagine. Have you always been agency side?

Billie: No. I did use to work in-house. I did that for about a year. I'd worked on the training side there, after working as a content SEO for a while. In-house, at certain places, there's just very little growth, and you're stuck in a rut, so I tried agency. I don't think I'm ever going to go back, I don't know.

Areej: Wow. I love it. I know it's very, very different for different people. Some people are more team in-house, and others are more team agency. I can imagine especially with your role being very training-driven, it completely makes sense to be on the agency side. I love that your company has a training lead role. That's really exciting.

Billie: It's really fun. Like most places, SEO just took off for our agency over the pandemic, and because of the skills shortage, it just makes sense of having me do this to get people who aren't currently in the SEO world into it. It's been working really well for us.

Areej: That makes a lot of sense because I know how difficult it is as well right now, recruitment, and hiring, and bringing on new people. The fact that you have dedicated time and resources to training people who might be new to SEO. That's such a critical role to have.

Billie: Absolutely. It just makes sense. I just can't believe we didn't think of it before.

Areej: What advice would you give for women who are starting in the industry brand new?

Billie: My best advice is don't try to learn everything at once. That's what I did when I first came into the industry, and I burnt myself out. I got confused with all the different acronyms and terms. I recommend specializing in one area to start with. I started in content, and now, I'm a technical SEO when I am doing agencies, that kind of work. Pick a niche to learn, but don't stick to it. Just take in as much information as you can from anyone that will give it to you, but don't just limit yourself o one area.

Areej: I think that's such great advice. You're right. It can be so overwhelming when someone is initially starting, and there are so many different types of SEO. It's important to take your time discovering different parts and then making sure that, "Yes, this is something I'd like to specialize in more," as opposed to trying to learn everything in such a short period of time.

Billie: Absolutely.

Areej: Awesome. Well, we're here today to talk about setting client expectations. I love that you put that idea forward. Was there a specific reason? I imagine you have a lot of clients that you tend to work with. What inspired you to want to talk specifically about this topic with us today?

Billie: I just think clients are wild basically. I think for any campaign, the first three months of it are just trying to make a client understand SEO and what they think is the ultimate goal potentially isn't. I think SEO is just a big education piece for really everyone. Having expectations there makes our jobs easier, makes the clients understand what they're spending their money on better.

Areej: 100%. In terms of your agency setup, how do you work with clients right now on a day-to-day basis?

Billie: I have between 5 and 12 clients at any given time, all with different-sized client hours for me to work on them. For me, I tend to work more on the project lead and the technical consultancy side, so we tend to work as part of a team, I'll spend a lot of my time talking to them, feeding back data from any reports we do, and just explaining the things that we're doing and why we're doing them. Yes, I just dock from client to client. I can't work on one website for a whole day. I get so bored with one task, so it suits me to have just a big range.

Areej: I can imagine then why the agency side suits you more than in-house. You would completely lose your mind if you were just looking at one website the whole time.

Billie: I think that's what happened. At one point, when I was in-house, I was just trying to get the team to play Pictionary with me most days.

Areej: You're the SEO account manager when you're working on specific clients. Do you have more SEO specialists who work alongside you on the account, or are you fully focused on that one client?

Billie: Since I tend to have other people on the account with me, there's normally between three and six of us. Everyone's got the things they prefer to do. For me, I like-- If someone prefers to do content to technical, I'll give them as much content as they want. That's my least favourite thing to do, so they can take it. It's really good actually because you know everyone's skillsets, but you can also-- It might be just my training side kicking in, but I try to push people to do the things that they're not necessarily confident in. I might give them a tech audit to do, and then I'll go through it with them. We do tend to try to put specialists on everything to fit the clients' needs, but for me, I just tend to push people into trying new things.

Areej: That makes a lot of sense. It's important to help others get a little bit out of their comfort zone as well and work on new things. Let's say you're starting a brand-new relationship with a client, you've just onboarded them, how do you go about setting some high-level KPIs from the start?

Billie: The first thing you want to do is to just talk to the client about their goals. Don't even put KPIs into it until you know their goals. Sometimes, what they want us to work on isn't realistic, isn't going to help them, there are all sorts of factors. I think have wider picture will help you set those goals. Most of the time, it's to make more sales, but the thing that they want you to report on could be revenue, but what you should really be looking at is, "Okay, where are people coming in? How long are they staying on for?" What they're asking for might not be what's right.

You've just got to delve into that and get as much data and understanding of the client, and the niche, and the industry, and then you can figure out your KPIs from there. I try to avoid KPIs where possible. I don't make any promises. Not every client likes that obviously, but I do find it helps to just not set anything concrete.

Areej: Do you feel that sometimes some clients would ask for KPIs that might be a little out of our control? Those areas are probably difficult to sign up for from the start.

Billie: I've had occasions where I've had a client come in who need a lot of technical SEO work doing before we can do anything basically, like the website's just a mess. The navigation doesn't work, things like