Work for SEO Clients Exclusively?

gobeyond · 01-13-2009, 08:19 AM

Hello,

This is a question for SEO professionals. I am sure many of you have been asked by clients to work for them exclusively and not for their competitors. If you offer exclusivity, you risk losing new business, but if you don't, you risk damaging your relationship with your existing clients.

How do you handle something like this?

fromthe5 · 01-13-2009, 09:02 AM

Aha! Another Minneapolitan. I'm originally from Brooklyn Center. Graduated from Osseo. In any case I've been in this discussion before. Some feel that it's not a conflict of interest to have more than one client in the same arena, and it's none of their business if you do. My feeling is that there is no chance for a problem if both clients know about it. Asking for exclusivity is like asking for a deal. They have the right to ask but probably don't really expect to get it. Someone has to be #1 and #2 for any given phrase no matter who does the work to get them there. You own the SEO phrases for the cities so it shouldn't be a problem to use your salesmanship to convince the company leaning on you for an exclusive that your results are going to be better for him than anyone else's, even if you have two clients in the same business.

Jeremy80 · 01-13-2009, 11:43 AM

This is definitely a conflict of interest. If you do not offer exclusivity, how do you decide which website focuses on which keywords? What if there is one really good keyword that they both want to be #1 for? In the end you will have to play favorites with one of them. It would be very difficult to promote them equally.

You would also have insider information about both companies. There is potential for that info to be exploited to help one of the companies.

Personally I wouldn't trust an seo company that was willing to do seo for competing websites.