… the same ones seem to all come at once.

For some reason we seem to get batches of companies from the same industries appearing together. One month all the calls seem to be from mortgage and loan sites, the next they are all job agencies, the next it’s the turn of the Spanish property sellers.

This would merely be a minor curiosity were it not for one important consideration – conflict of interest.

Strangely enough potential clients seem to take very differing views on this. Some are worried that there may already be a similar site to theirs’ being optimised by the SEO, while others look explicitly for such relationships on the basis that “if they can get them to the top of the rankings they can do the same for me”.

In my experience most ethical SEOs look at it something like this:

If the potential second client in the same industry is looking for different keywords/phrases from the first then there’s no conflict of interets and it’s ok to take them on.

If they are looking for substantially the same keywords as the first client then it’s potentially a conflict of interest and both the existing and the potential client should be made aware of it and have the right to respectively veto or withdraw from the project if they object.

Try asking your shortlist of possible SEO companies what approach they would take. It might tell you a lot about them.