As a modern digital agency, our ethical values are important in everything we do, from sending emails to scheduling meetings to designing a client’s SEO strategy. You may hear other agencies talk about the ethics of marketing. While that’s important, Search and Convert has taken it one step further. We market ourselves via our ethics. And, our clients love us for it.
The Ethical Code of a Modern Digital Agency
You might be asking, “what makes Search and Convert experts on digital marketing ethics?” Well, nothing, really. We’re guided by the ethics set out by industry leaders, such as the American Marketing Association and our own personal code of ethics developed over a long career.
Through a combination of experience and wisdom, we’ve built a set of expectations for ourselves, which in turn are promises we make to our clients.
Clear Expectations
We’ve found that the best way for us to ethically work with clients is to have clear expectations upfront — even before the work begins.
Our clients hire us to improve their SEO, increase their visibility, and find their ideal customer. With SEO and lead generation, there can be a lot of grey areas and misunderstandings. We make sure to tell our clients exactly what they can expect when they work with us.
At the beginning of a project, we lay out:
- What ranking growth a client can reasonably expect
- What strategies will be used to achieve that growth
- The scope of the project
- Exactly what the cost of the project will be to you
By laying out the expectations prior to the start of a project, we have fewer miscommunications and misunderstandings with our clients.
When is a Guarantee, Actually a Lie?
Unfortunately, there are some misconceptions when it comes to SEO. Many professionals make specific promises on what growth they can guarantee your company in search engine ranking or customer targeting.
We’ve found that most of the companies that make promises are lying. While SEO practices are well-grounded in research and statistics, there’s no way to guarantee exact growth or the ability to gain a top ranking within search.
When you work with us, we’ll be able to show you our strategy for improving your SEO and a range of projected growth you can expect to see.
The old adage steers you safely here: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Confront it When it’s Not Working
A modern digital agency must be versed in not only up-to-date SEO tactics but also client-relationship skills. Our relationships with our clients are as important to us as the work we do. Without our clients, there wouldn’t be any work!
A good client relationship involves prompt communication and clear expectations, but it also mandates that we confront a situation when it’s not working. Ignoring an issue will not make it go away.
At Search and Convert, we pride ourselves on confronting tough problems head-on with grace and kindness. Whether we’ve put an SEO strategy in place that’s not working or we’re having a communication problem with a client, we’ll handle it promptly and directly.
White Hat Techniques Only
There are many ways to improve your SEO — some of those ways are good and others are not so good. While there aren’t laws around SEO, there are practices that are recognized as ethical and those that aren’t.
Acceptable SEO practices are called white hat SEO techniques. (You might have guessed, shady techniques are known as black hat.) While you don’t need to know which techniques are which, it’s important you know that we only use white hat SEO techniques in improving your rankings.
SEO is an industry that sees rapid change, with search engines changing their algorithms frequently and often without much warning. Recent SEO updates by large corporations such as Google and Facebook have brought on penalties for black hat SEO techniques.
By only using white hat SEO strategies, we ensure that your content will always be findable by search engines and will not be excluded from the rankings after an algorithm update.
Up-To-Date
No matter the industry, it’s important to be up-to-date on the latest techniques and skills. As a modern digital agency, Search and Convert has a strong focus on continuing education.
How search engines read content changes often. If we’re not staying current with industry standards, we’re not able to offer our customers the best techniques to improve their rankings.
We recognize that we’re a part of a broader community and that we play a roll in making sure that community has ethical guidelines that serve us all well. By abiding and demonstrating ethical behavior, we ensure that others will follow. We’re helping to build an ethical community in Austin where unethical behavior isn’t tolerated.
How to Identify an Ethical Digital Agency
At Search and Convert, if we’re ever in doubt as to the value of what we’re doing or saying, we have a simple test.
“Would I be embarrassed to put this on a billboard, if I knew my mom was driving on this road?”
While it can make for an interesting mental image at times, this simple test is a guiding light that has yet to lead us astray.
When you’re looking to hire a digital agency to help you with your SEO strategy, you’ll be tasked with identifying the right company to work with. One of the qualities you want to look for is strong ethical values.
Compassion
While SEO is generally about numbers, statistics, and hard facts, it’s also about understanding a problem and seeking a solution.
Our problem-solving skills have also helped us to build close relationships with our clients and to show them our humanity through compassion and conversation.
When we’re presented with a problem, we’re not going to jump right to the solution. We truly want to understand your problem, what underlying issues it causing, and how that affects your business.
An ethical modern digital agency will wear its humanity on its sleeve. Look for their compassion in their communication and their ability to understand your problems.
Respect for Confidentiality
As with any business transaction, you should expect a reasonable level of respect for your confidentiality.
A good test for this is when you’re interviewing a digital agency, ask about their other client relationships. If you like how they speak about their other clients, then you may have found your match.
You can and should expect confidentiality from a modern digital agency. This should be evident in how they speak about their other clients as well as in the contract that you sign.
Follow Through
Another subtle cue you can look for to understand an agency’s ethical code is their follow through. Will they follow through and meet the deadlines they’ve set?
This will be evident even in the first few email exchanges you have with someone. If they respond to emails in a timely manner, send the contract when they say they will, and show-up on time, you can assess their ability to follow through with their promises.
At Search and Convert, we’ve put protocols into place to make sure all of our staff meet deadlines and communicate promptly so that you don’t have to worry about projects getting done on time.
Understanding of Underlying Factors
One of the harder ethical values to look for in a modern digital agency is an ability to understand and be aware of underlying factors.
Our job at Search and Convert is all about improving your search engine rankings and to ensure you’re targeting your ideal customer. But, sometimes numbers lie.
We’re aware that algorithms can be biased in how they target what might be perceived as the ideal customer. Facebook has struggled to create non-racist algorithms for targeting customers. Part of our job is to be aware of these changes and the inherent racism and bias that’s happening in the system.
Ethical action in everything we do is important to building the type of community we want to live in. As a modern digital agency, we’re not just using white hat techniques to signify that we’re ethical. We wear our ethics on our sleeve by using it as a guide in every action we take as a business.