@Mary – I know exactly what you mean. I do; however, try to keep an open door for industry peers, twitter friends and the like and have always found that these guys will eventually walk through the door, or drop-kick someone through it for ya! You’re right though. Smelling the difference is a big part of it. (Trust your gut.)

Educating SEO prospects on ‘what you’re going to do’ and ‘what to expect’ is time-consuming enough, then when they ask for you to tell them exactly what you’re going to do, they’re often interested in doing it themselves and will walk away with free advice. I’m on to them now. I can even smell them!! When they ask ‘what exactly are you going to do?’ I now request some consulting time. Either they sign the contract, or go away. If they go away, its a win for you because you know they were just after free consulting (which I’m just not interested in). And as we all know, SEO is not rocket science, but its also not ‘easy’.

Besides adding a disclaimer about ‘we cannot promise you 1st page rankings for your keywords’, I also mention in almost all emails so there will not be any misunderstandings.

You’re exactly right: We can only go so far. Thanks for pointing this out again.

Thanks. Nice post

Viz Rules, SEO rocks, Darren Bent should play for England and Nichola Stott should guest post on my blog

@David, thanks for highlighting the highbrow references. Chaucer was a formative literary influence (and Viz.)

My desire to not “argue the toss” in this post, was to avoid the debate as to whether it is ethically or commercially correct to turn down business, and to avoid a banal bit of padding and cut to the meat (or chocolate – Judith). Turns out you’re all load of ruthless mercenaries anyways.

@Darryl – agree. We have a very similar philosophy too.

@Alex – thanks for bringing up something that I hadn’t got to. If a negative margin client creeps in, don’t be scared to call time on that relationship. Good point.

@Lisa – if only there were 30 hours in a day, we could muss up the rotation and you could get that GhostPost in for Halloweeeeeeen!

Fantastic blog post – well done for your first and a VERY important concept! It’s so scary to turn down or turn away business but soooo essential. I remember the first time I did it and how scary it was but it was something my grandmother taught me.

Sometimes no matter how much they offer, no matter how well you think you’ll do, the cost of the client is greater than what you’ll ever make. My grandma is really wise… weirdly!

After 8 months running my own company I am only beginning to come to terms with the importance of trusting my gut feeling and turning something down when it just doesn’t “smell” right.

On a smiliar thought, I have also started enforcing a no “Ghost SEOing” rule, this might be an entire new blogpost. Dibs on writing a “Why you shouldn’t Ghost SEO”, I keep on getting contacted by agencies wanting my agency to do all the work but they get to take the credit. It just ain’t rockin my boat…I say; sisters (and dudes) you should be doing it for yourself…halleluja..