Nobody cares about your SEO audit – unless it does this

In this module, we're going to be talking about deliverables. Yes, deliverables. Why? Well, the work that you do is one of the biggest marketing assets you have in terms of promotion. It ensures that you keep your clients for a long time, but that, you know, the work may travel and speak for itself to other clients. What is the key problem with deliverables? It's your work. You're very comfortable delivering, for example, an SEO audit. However, do you know what your clients are buying? Because clients aren't buying an SEO audit. They are buying a solution to their problems. Meaning that when a client buys an SEO audit, they don't buy an SEO audit. They buy a concrete diagnosis of what's wrong with their website and a roadmap of how to fix it. Clients don't buy an SEO audit. They buy a concrete analysis and explanation as to why their traffic dropped and what they can do about it. Clients do not buy an SEO audit. They buy peace of mind. For things that they're not necessarily comfortable with.

Not everyone is comfortable with SEO, remember? So you are here to provide peace of mind. Now that you notice how can you improve your deliverables? Here's some advice. It's not from me—although I agree with it—it's from Chris Green, another SEO agency veteran. And Chris outlines the problem rather easily. He explains, we create very big, sophisticated, intricate, interesting deliverables. And the problem with that is it takes another SEO expert of the same level within the company to understand the work. This is not how you deliver your insights and your knowledge. You need to make sure that this content is going to travel well within the company because it needs to be easily decoded and easily put into action. Here are some concrete tips to help you ensure that this happens for you. Number one, there's money to be made in communicating things properly.

So, you need to vulgarize. Your slides, your Google Docs, or Microsoft Word—whatever the format is—needs to be easily understandable. Okay? Here's how you can ensure it stays understandable. Number two, tell me one problem per slide. Explain what the problem is. Explain why it's a problem. Tell me how to fix it potentially and give me the resources to do so. To do that, you have to remember, if you use tables, make sure that you leverage filtering and that you color code things. So insights just jump out from the page and are easily understood by anyone reading the document. Number three, make sure your labels are easily understood. And if you are not using labels, label things properly to make them once again understandable. Use consistent formatting as well. So, you know what a SERP is. I know what a SERP is. The notebook knows what a SERP is. Your client

doesn't necessarily know what a SERP is. Label things properly. Search engine result pages—that speaks to them. Okay? Now, if you know all this, let's go a bit further. What can you do to really, really make deliverables worth their weight in gold? Well, something that I like to do is truly capture the problem. They say that an image is worth a thousand words. Fantastic. Make it a video then. Here's why. By the time you outline a problem—say what it is, tell people to go check this URL—the URL may have changed. You don't know how long it takes for your audit to actually become actionable within the company. So what I do is very easily make a small video that I can embed in my slides, describing the problem as I go. This means that if for some reason things have changed, people still understand what happened or—or—can check if it got fixed. This is amazing documentation, so do not hesitate to go with

more interactive elements in your audits. The endgame is to make sure that everything travels well and is understood even years later. Here's why. You may do the work for a company, and then their relationship stops. And a few years later, a new director of marketing comes in, finds your audit and goes, you know what? We need another one of these. Or we need you back on board. I understand the work you did, and we need to take it further. This has happened to me very, very often because my deliverables are built this way. They're built to be understood by anyone that comes in, not just the one person who hired me this one time to do the work. And this also ensures that your audits are actionable. You need to make sure that people understand: okay, we have a problem. It's listed here. Who is responsible within the company? What department should be fixing it? And if you can provide, obviously, the thing that they need to fix, that will also help.

Here's a concrete example. We have a hundred images that need to be compressed. Provide the list of images within a little link in your audit to a spreadsheet that lists them all. If you notice that these images—well, they are usually, like, the uncompressed ones that happen to be in specific pages on the site—also talk about this. Give everything your client may need to actually fix the problem. That way, if they decide that, you know what? You explained it so well, you get to fix it, more money for you. If they decide to do it in house or you encourage them to do so, they can also do it. That is the point of a good deliverable. It helps you promote your services and showcases your work and its value in the proper light. Here's a recap for you for this module. If you want to improve your deliverables because they are your calling card, you need to ensure that they are easy to understand. So simplify your deliverables as much as you can to make sure they adapt to your audience.

Number two, make sure your deliverable is simplified. So label things properly: make sure everything is clean, make sure that the formatting pops, color code, filter—whatever you need. And number three, this deliverable will travel. So make sure it travels well. It can be throughout different departments or over the years. Make sure, you know, you list what the problem is, what the potential solution is, and who is responsible to fix it—and how, ideally. Bonus tip for you. Find the format that works for you and your client. Meaning that some clients really, really want a polished powerpoint. Something beautiful that will travel well through different departments. Other clients are a bit more mature, let's say, in their SEO knowledge, and they do not want the packaging. They may want a simple video that they can show to their devs or their in-house SEO team to fix the problem. They're buying your insights,

and they're not paying attention to how they're delivered as long as it's fast and usable. So once again, make sure that your deliverables work to promote, well, your work. Hopefully, this has been useful for you. Thank you very much.