I met a client at a diner in Boise who told me SEO was just 'fancy typing'

This was about two years ago, during a meet-up for a local business website I was working on. Over coffee, he flat out said, 'All you people do is fancy typing and guesswork.' He was serious. I had to walk him through a full audit, showing him the exact 47 pages with broken links and how fixing them helped real people find his shop. That one line made me change how I explain my work from day one. Has anyone else had a client start from such a wrong place?

4 comments

4 Comments

rayc941mo ago

Had a guy once ask if my web design work was just "making things blue." He thought I picked colors from a menu and called it a day. Showing him the code for layout and accessibility was a real eye-opener. It's funny how people reduce complex jobs to the one tiny part they see. That diner story is all too familiar, just with different words. Breaking down the actual work seems to be half the job sometimes.

nelson.mia1mo ago

What did he say after seeing the code?

evas411mo ago

Did he finally get it?

henryr4512d ago

Reminds me of a client who thought my copywriting was just correcting commas. Had to show them the research and strategy behind every headline, which is kinda like what evas41 was getting at with understanding the work. People see the end product and miss the whole machine behind it.