SEO Client Questionnaire: 20+ Key Questions to Gather Vital Information (+ Free Template)
Congratulations on closing that SEO sales deal!
Now it’s time to kick-start your client’s path to success by organizing a top-of-the-line SEO client onboarding process. This will set the tone for future collaboration!
As the owner of the Loopex Digital SEO agency, I have worked with more than 500 clients and have witnessed the power of an effective and smooth onboarding process firsthand. You can take my word for it that it is a powerful way to ensure your project starts off on the right foot.
In this article, I will take you through my personal process of holding an onboarding call. I will discuss the key elements of a comprehensive SEO questionnaire and share a set of helpful questions to ask the client.
Download our template with a categorized list of SEO questions to use during your onboarding calls!
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An SEO client questionnaire is a detailed set of questions used to gather information about a client’s business, target audience, current online presence, and marketing goals.
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A targeted client SEO questionnaire provides invaluable data to create customized strategies that directly address your client’s specific challenges and maximize their online potential. Plus, by gathering key information upfront, agencies can optimize their resources and build trust with potential clients at the earliest stages of collaboration.
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An effective SEO questionnaire should incorporate a section dedicated to the client’s company overview and unique selling points.
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The questionnaire should explore common objections and misunderstandings customers have during the sales process. This ensures the SEO strategy can proactively tackle these concerns through content and messaging.
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A thorough SEO questionnaire should also dig into audience demographics and psychographics—such as age, gender, income, region, and job roles. These insights help align content with the audience’s needs, interests, and behavior.
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Including questions about how the client’s product or service benefits customers and solves their problems ensures the SEO strategy highlights real value. This allows the messaging to connect more effectively with the target audience.
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A well-structured SEO questionnaire should contain questions related to business marketing and performance metrics to understand the client’s revenue, profit margins, and conversion rates, allowing for alignment of SEO efforts with financial goals and effective marketing strategies.
What is an SEO Client Onboarding Questionnaire?
An SEO client questionnaire is a structured document or form used by SEO professionals or agencies providing SEO services to gather essential information from a client regarding their website, business goals, and digital marketing needs. The questionnaire typically includes questions about the client’s business objectives, previous marketing efforts, target audience, website structure, monthly SEO budget, and expected results.
This questionnaire serves as a foundation for the overall SEO strategy, helping the professional understand the client’s needs, preferences, and current challenges. This is critical in formulating a customized plan for optimizing the website’s visibility and performance in search engine results.
20+ Questions to Ask Your New Clients During Onboarding
Now, let’s dive into our SEO questionnaire that can guide you on what to ask a client during the onboarding call. I ask these questions to ensure we have all the details needed to craft a successful SEO strategy.
Note that I’ve categorized the client onboarding questionnaire into thematic sections for your convenience.
Business Overview
This section of the onboarding process helps us get to the heart of the business. It’s not just about understanding the products or services on a surface level—it’s about uncovering the story, motivations, and unique aspects that drive the company. When we know why the business exists and what makes it different, we can craft a personalized SEO strategy that really aligns with the brand’s vision and resonates with its audience.
By asking the right questions, we can gather insights that shape everything from keyword research to trend forecasting. These questions also help us identify competitors, predict seasonal shifts, and tailor SEO efforts to focus on the products or services that matter most.
Here are some of the questions we ask to get a complete picture of the business:
- What factors influenced your decision to start this business? Is there a particular reason or story that led to it?
- How would you describe your business to someone who is unfamiliar with it?
- Could you provide a description of the products or services your business offers?
- What motivated you to focus on your primary product or service? What specific desire or need does it fulfill?
- What sets your service and product apart from alternatives, including the option to not use any similar offering at all?
- What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)?
- What are the common reasons why customers stop using your service?
- Are there any seasonal trends that we should be aware of?
- Are you considering a website redesign, migration, or re-platforming in the coming year?
- Do you have any established brand guidelines or preferences that we should be aware of? What are your content requirements and expectations?
The answers to these questions help us fine-tune the SEO strategy to highlight what makes your business stand out. For example, if there’s a compelling story behind the company’s founding, we can weave that into the content to build a stronger connection with your audience. If a product fills a unique niche, we’ll focus on optimizing for the keywords that reflect that demand.
Note: To deliver precise and impactful SEO recommendations, you’ll likely need access to your client’s Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, and Google Ads accounts. This access will enable you to review historical data, track the progress of your SEO work, and generate SEO reports. Additionally, obtaining login credentials for the website’s content management system is crucial for making necessary on-site optimizations. Be sure to request these permissions early on.
Common Customer Challenges During the Sales Cycle
Understanding what objections our clients’ customers might have is vital when planning the strategy period.
Being aware of potential customer objections helps us craft a comprehensive and effective SEO strategy that directly addresses them. Some questions we might ask:
- Are there any limitations or disadvantages associated with your service, product, or business model?
- Do you frequently encounter any common concerns or objections from potential customers during the sales process?
- Are there any common misconceptions or misunderstandings that customers often have about your industry or the solutions you provide?
To handle these concerns in our SEO strategy, we create a data-backed, high-quality content strategy.
For example, let’s say a client offers an innovative product, and customers are worried about how well it works compared to more traditional solutions.
What I would do is create data-backed articles that compare the innovative product to traditional ones in the niche.
An in-depth comparative analysis shows why our product is better. It also targets existing competitor keywords, educates the audience, and raises awareness about our product’s effectiveness.
Demographics & Psychographics Information
This part of the SEO onboarding process is all about getting to know the client’s audience on a deeper level. Who are their customers? What’s their typical age, income, or occupation? And more importantly, what are their interests, values, and behaviors? When we understand these things, we can build content that really speaks to them.
With the right insights, we can pick topics they’re interested in, write headlines that grab their attention, and match the tone of the content to what they find relatable and engaging.
This also makes keyword research much more effective. Knowing the audience’s interests and behaviors helps us identify the exact search terms they’re using, making it easier to connect with them organically.
Here are some questions we’d ask the client:
- What’s the target demographic for your business?
- What is the age range of your target audience?
- What income level does your target audience typically fall into?
- Does your target audience include a specific gender or is it more diverse?
- What industries or job roles are typically found within your target audience?
- What occupations or industries are commonly represented within your target audience?
- What are the primary psychological factors that influence your ideal customer’s buying decisions?
Collecting detailed answers to these questions enables us to optimize not only the content but also landing pages and conversion funnels.
Service/Product Results
We also want to get clear on how the client’s product or service helps their customers. The goal here is to highlight the specific ways the business delivers value and solves problems. Once we know what customers love about the product—and what pain points it solves—we can weave these benefits into the content, blog posts, and landing pages.
This isn’t just about saying, “Hey, we’ve got a great product!” It’s about framing it in a way that directly addresses what potential customers need, increasing the chances they’ll take action. For example, success stories and measurable results (like time saved or money earned) make the product more compelling.
Relevant questions:
- How do your clients benefit from using your service/product?
- What specific advantages or improvements do your clients experience as a result of using your service?
- How does your service address your clients’ pain points or solve their challenges?
These insights not only help us create SEO-friendly content but also ensure that the messaging throughout your site—like product pages and calls-to-action—feels relevant and aligned with what your customers care about.
Business Marketing Strategy and Goals
To create an effective SEO strategy, we also need to understand the bigger picture of your marketing efforts. How does SEO fit into your business goals? Are there certain products or services driving most of the revenue? What’s working in your current marketing efforts, and where have you hit roadblocks? Having this background helps us focus on what matters most, so we don’t waste time on strategies that don’t align with your goals.
Knowing which marketing channels you’re already using (like email, social media, or paid ads) lets us coordinate efforts and avoid duplication. And understanding past challenges—like campaigns that didn’t perform well—helps us adjust our strategy so we don’t make the same mistakes.
Here’s what we typically ask:
- How much revenue does your business generate annually? What is the percentage of profit you typically earn?
- Could you provide additional details about your most popular products or services?
- Apart from SEO, what other online marketing channels are you currently utilizing?
- What challenges have you encountered in your marketing efforts? Could you share any past strategies that did not work and explain why you believe they were unsuccessful?
- Can you give a list of your top competitors?
- What is the conversion rate for your website traffic?
- What is the AOV (Average Order Value) for your sales?
- What is the average Lifetime Value of your customers?
Why Agencies Should Create a Client SEO Questionnaire?
A client SEO questionnaire is a vital tool that can enhance the efficiency, clarity, and overall success of SEO projects. By gathering key information from clients upfront, agencies can streamline their processes, set realistic expectations, and create tailored SEO strategies that align with the client’s specific goals.
Optimize Resources
A client SEO questionnaire helps agencies significantly reduce the time spent on repetitive administrative tasks. By collecting all the essential information in one go, agencies can eliminate the need for prolonged email exchanges, frequent calls, or in-person meetings to clarify details. This not only speeds up the onboarding process but also ensures that both the agency and the client are on the same page right from the start.
Moreover, with a questionnaire, agencies can ensure they capture comprehensive data in a structured way, leaving little room for oversight or miscommunication.
Set Realistic Expectations
A well-crafted client SEO questionnaire allows agencies to gauge the client’s expectations regarding SEO results, timelines, and potential obstacles. This helps agencies avoid the common pitfall of overpromising results that may be difficult to achieve within the client’s desired timeframe or budget.
In particular, setting expectations early through a questionnaire minimizes misunderstandings about what the SEO strategy will deliver and when. Agencies can use the responses to educate clients on SEO best practices, potential challenges, and realistic timeframes for measurable improvements.
Tailor SEO Strategies
No two businesses are alike, and a tailored SEO strategy is essential for addressing the unique needs of each client. A client SEO questionnaire helps agencies gather specific details about the client’s business, industry, target audience, competitors, as well as overall goals and objectives. With this information, agencies can craft SEO strategies that are directly aligned with the client’s business model and goals.
Furthermore, a questionnaire helps agencies identify critical pain points or areas of opportunity within the client’s existing SEO landscape. Whether the client needs local SEO, link building, technical optimization, or content marketing strategies, the information gathered allows the agency to develop a highly customized action plan.
Build Trust and Transparency
The process of creating a client SEO questionnaire demonstrates the agency’s commitment to understanding the client’s business on a deeper level. By asking detailed and relevant questions, agencies show their expertise and willingness to invest time in understanding the client’s goals, challenges, and expectations. This proactive approach helps build trust by reassuring the client that the SEO company is genuinely interested in their success.
In addition, a questionnaire creates transparency from the very start, as both parties have a clear record of the client’s needs and the agency’s proposed approach. This document serves as a point of reference throughout the relationship, ensuring that both the client and the agency remain aligned on goals and SEO campaigns.
Final Words on SEO Client Questionnaire
So in this article, I revealed the exact same onboarding process that I use to start partnerships with potential SEO clients.
This initial questionnaire I provided is also a helpful tool for any SEO consultant, freelancer, or digital marketer aiming to set up fruitful collaborations with their clients.
As you move forward, be sure to use this free template for all its worth. It can help streamline your onboarding process and ensure a seamless experience for both you and your clients!
