I’ve had a very enlightening experience over the last few days. I’ve been trying to find an apartment to rent in Altrincham (don’t ask).
So, what would you do? Exactly. Google – apartment rent Altrincham. Right at the top of the organic listings, good old RightMove. Completely pointless.
So, I went on the website. Excellent design, good, intuitive navigation, excellent search function. Totally useless.
I quickly found several apartments that ticked all my boxes, it was then very quick and easy to contact the letting agents direct with my criteria, budget, contact email and phone number to arrange a viewing. Waste of time.
I then thought I’d give some of the agents in Altrincham a chance direct. Scrolled down Google a bit and there they were straight away. Good bit of SEO. Useless.
Yet again, they’d all got their act together on their websites. Good search, excellent pics and descriptions then simple functionality to leave your contact details. Rubbish.
I was left thinking what a huge improvement there had been in this sector’s online marketing. And what good work some agencies had been doing. So why all the negativity?
Well, it’s now 4 days and I haven’t had a single email or phone call back! None.
What is the point in all the time, effort and financial investment that have been put into these websites and SEO? I suggest not much. So – RightMove, Verve, Hallmark, Rooftop you are named and shamed. Yes, I know you are just the portal RightMove, but your credibility depends on the performance of your content.
A serious point is the role of the agency here. If you are developing a client’s website or SEO and social media strategy should you be analysing their response and customer service effectiveness? As a paid and trusted advisor I think you should. And sheer pride should drive you to make sure the assets you have created for a client are being exploited to their greatest effect.
3 Comments
Exactly, I mean I know many well optimized sites do it just to get to the top and then lease out space to the actual service providers and call themselves portals. But thats like going through to two search engines and who needs that?!
I think the era of “recommendations” is already upon us with sites such as Hunch leading the way and it should just be a matter of time before the quality of the service is a factor in SEO, and then agencies will have to look at a firm’s entire business model when providing SEO services - exciting times.
I’d respectfully disagree…a well designed and developed site along with a well managed SEO campaign will give clients the best change of attracting relevant traffic. This has been proven by the simple fact that you were able to find rightmove, verve, etc… (assuming you were searching for terms that weren’t brand related).
As an SEO I would suggest that it is our job to make the client aware from the outset of the importance of tracking their enquiries and of course acting on them, we’ve got more important work to be getting on with rather than being the client’s office manager and constantly check up that they are chasing their leads. This time is far better spent maintaining and improving the SEO campaign, rather than people managaging. We’re there to get clients rankings and traffic - not be their mother.
Fair comment, and I appreciate the time point. I’m not suggesting that you constantly monitor their customer service, but if you are aware that it is not up to scratch (and social media makes this increasingly likely) you should tell them. If not, you’re actually un-wittingly harming their business by driving more and more people to be disappointed.
Steve