During a presentation to members of the marketing team at work yesterday, one question kept coming out from account managers and marketers about creating Google Local/Yahoo Local/Live Local listings, and correcting them when they’re pulling from bad data:
Why aren’t we doing this FOR clients?
In some ways, some of the elements of setting up for local success are problematic for people providing SEO services. When Google insist on sending postal mail to a street address, an agency can’t do the work for a client, or needs the client to be far more engaged in the process than I think many clients want to be.
Beyond that, though, I think the clients who actually care to learn about what their SEO agency is doing, and demand accountability through dashboards, traffic reporting, etc., end up happier with the long-term impact of their SEO agency relationship.
Unfortunately, a lot of clients — and not just in SEO, but throughout marketing/advertising and professional services — want to hire and have done with it, save for complaining about invoicing.