Sometimes being able to put a smile on your client’s face is the biggest win you can have.

At Elite Strategies, we try to establish great relationships with our clients and sometimes just touch base to talk about things totally irrelevant to their campaigns.  Some might say those are poor boundaries, but we just like people.

Here are a few tricks that we’ve picked up over the years that will “wow” your clients while you are the phone with them.  Some of these might seem obvious, but they can be a really cool way to show some savvy skills when you are in an awkward situation.

Show Them the Past

Give your client a history lesson with what their website used to look like.  Have them navigate on over to archive.org and tell them to enter their URL.  This is particularly impressive if your design company has made several designs for them over the years.

With clients who are really attached to their brand, this will really hit home for them.  We love showing clients how far they’ve come, and this trick can really come in handy if you need to use it.

Take Them on a Google Easter Egg Hunt

Next time you are on the phone with a client, show them a Google Easter Egg.

Most computer programmers don’t know about Easter eggs, heck – a lot of SEO’s don’t even know about them.  No matter who you are, if you use a computer, an easter egg will put a smile on your face.

Here is a list of our favorite Google Easter Eggs and how to do them:

  1. Google “zerg rush” and watch what happens
  2. Google “titlt” and watch your screen tilt slightly
  3. Google “do a barrel roll” which will make your screen split
  4. There are others such as “recursion” which will correct you with the correct spelling, kind of a math/computer science joke.
  5. You can also do a pirate, Elmer or a Klingon Google search.

Freak Them Out by Reading Their “Digital Palm”

Another cool thing you can do while you are on the phone with a client, is to tell them what settings/type of computer/location they are using with a little analytic trickery.  “Mr Cooper, I see that you are running Windows 7 with Mozilla Firefox on 1920×1200 resolution and you are logged in from Flint, Michigan.”  Do this by having them reference something on your website and logging into their analytics and checking what they are running.  By the end of your conversation they will be convinced that you are the world’s greatest hacker and be scared to ever cancel on you  :)

Fun with Search operators

This is more of a “smart kid” thing to do, but still impressive to non-SEO’s.  Show them smarter ways to search.  Show them how to search for results inside of one domain only.  Show them either, or, and, all, and any. They will thank you for this but watch out it will step their game up and make them smarter searchers.

A fun thing to do is to show them how to use allintitle: and site” along with a combination of “”‘s to show them how to dig deep and find more of their competitors in the index.

Play With Google Insights

This is a really fun tool to show off to clients particularly if they are a brand that show’s up  on Insights. Have them navigate on over to the page and play with some of the filters, this is a little bit more well known then the other tools but still interesting.

 

I hope some of you took a way some cool tricks that will impress…or at the very least put a smile on the faces of your SEO clients.

If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to add them in the comments below.

I’m out!