How to start and Grow an SEO Consulting business

list of different types of clients who seek optimization services from SEO agencies

1. Clients with Local SEO Needs

Since Google is offering local search results, more companies are coming up with Local SEO requirements. In our experience, a majority of these clients have a physical business with tangible products or services to offer.

As an SEO executor, you need to make their business appear at the top of Google for keywords that are related to their business and locality.

The best way to fulfill their requirements is by ranking in Google My Business, which is relatively easy to set up.

Even if the client asks only for local listings on Google, try to convince them how making relevant changes on their website can result in top rankings on SERP. Also, make them aware of the benefits of submitting their business details to local business directories.

Importantly, it would help if you strived to get local reviews through both Google and other websites such as Glassdoor, Yelp, and Facebook.

2. E-commerce Clients

Entrepreneurs who have tangible products to offer are now joining a long line of people who seek an online presence. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is; they want people to access it online and, of course, buy them without going to their brick and mortar stores.E-commerce clients are considered to be the best targets in the current search industry scenario. Bringing the product pages of such clients on Google’s first page can lead to increased ROI and long-term client relationships.

If you are approaching an e-commerce client, there are a hand full of SEO services that you can offer them.

3. Publications

With the proliferation of the internet, major print publications have made a transition to the web, since they found it as monetizable as regular papers.

These publishers earn revenue from the internet through their ad campaigns – both exclusive ad inventories and Goo. Moreover, some publishers also offer paid services through subscription.

Since publications have content pushed online every day, they tend to seek the help of professional SEO companies.

A publication that does a good job producing unique, high-quality content may be ranking well on Google. However, they will approach you for technical SEO help or recommendations regarding improving their ad revenue or subscribers.

4. Small Businesses

Many companies offer services online. Stan is one such company; we provide SEO services to clients using our web platform.

These companies require quality content and landing pages that can lure customers into signing up. They seek professional SEO assistance to create the best content strategy, manage blog content, and build links through outreach programs.

In addition to this, some companies sell software online. They also fall under the category of potential customers since they require an SEO expert to increase the number of downloads, subscribers, and signed up users.

5. Other Businesses

With the rapid growth of the Internet, businesses across the world now want to extend their presence online. As a result, SEO agencies often come in handy for business owners who wish to rank in their specific niche.

If you are an SEO company already targeting the businesses mentioned above, you should have a separate strategy for each industry and individual brands.

This is because clients have different expectations, and your SEO agency should be able to offer them a customized solution for better ROI.

How do top SEO companies win & retain clients through inbound marketing?

A majority of clients who reach out to SEO agencies assume an excellent website alone can bring in traffic and sales.

On realizing the truth, they seek help from SEO professionals. Clients require assistance from SEO experts in troubleshooting issues related to lead generation through the website.

This is usually the pain point where your SEO agency will meet the client, and naturally, it is worrisome.

Some of the common questions that they want you to answer are:

1) How can you help them to generate more leads through proper implementation of SEO?

2) How can your SEO efforts make their target users contact them often?

3) How to convince users to signup/register, or just fill-up forms?

But the most critical answer that they want is to the question: how will your SEO services bring in more customers and sales?

Your first sales pitch to any potential customer should be answers to the questions mentioned above. Once you understand the client’s requirements, your response should be framed as a solution to their queries.

As an SEO agency, you already know that proper implementation of SEO can boost traffic and sales. Even though this requires technical expertise, you can explain the process to clients without bombarding them with SEO jargon.

Simply put, the whole pitch should be about your efforts to bring the client website on Google’s first page for selected keywords.

SEO resellers and agencies are everywhere. So how can you make prospective clients choose your SEO products and services instead of your competitors’?

If you are starting an SEO business, here are 10 ways to find new clients and grow your business.

1. FREE SITE AUDIT

When you start an SEO business, provide your visitors with an option to do a free site audit of their website. If you don’t want to lose users after the examination, make sure you collect their details before giving out the result.

Such details, collected over time, can be used as a resource for contacting potential clients. Once the audit is complete, release details of changes required on the site. Do not forget to appreciate all the things that they have optimized on their website.

If you think the user is a good prospect, try contacting them and build confidence in your product.

This will also help you identify sites that have been impacted by Google’s penalty for implementing black hat SEO techniques.

These sites will need lots of time and effort to regain traffic. On the other hand, websites that have duplicate content issues, over-optimization of keywords, etc., can be fixed with less effort.

Understanding the weakness of the client will help you assess the project’s longevity and cost.

If you feel that the issues with the site cannot be rectified despite all your SEO efforts, it is better to back out of the project.

It’s highly advised to buy an API from a third party company to integrate on your website. Here are some of the most commonly issued APIs for site audit:

• SEMRush
• SEOProfiler
• SeoSiteCheckup
• WooRank
• Website Grader
• Seoptimer

2. OFFER FREE TRIALS

If the visitor is interested in your products and services, try giving them a short trial, where they can use the essential features.

Please make sure they get enough data during the trial period. You can ask your potential clients to even sign up for a paid package to get an in-depth analytical report.

If you are about to start an SEO business, try offering the first few clients a free add-on package. This will bring more value to your SEO services.

3. PROMISE WITH CARE

Don’t follow the conventional SEO practice of over-promising. This practice can lead to clients considering you spammy and never returning to you.

Therefore, ensure that you under-promise and over-deliver. The SEO industry is highly volatile, so promising first position on Google within days is not a readily achievable target considering the complexity of the current search algorithms.

4. WRITE COMPELLING BLOG POSTS

Make sure you have a well-maintained blog for the site. It can highly benefit you in achieving traffic from the target audience.

Grow your blog by posting articles based on the services that you offer. This way, you can get a link to the service pages of your website and then direct users to buy one of your packages.

Keep in mind to share the same on social media channels. If your blog post is unique, it will most likely go viral. Using social media campaigns can result in more like-minded people visiting your site and becoming your customers.

5. A NOSE THAT SMELLS OPPORTUNITIES

Always have a team for checking SEO issues faced by your prospective clients. Do a regular site audit and see where they are falling behind.

Let them know the SEO issues that are currently hampering their ranking within the search engine, and offer them a solution through your agency. This is a job that has to be done smartly, as clients may feel you are an opportunist.

5. PUBLISH FIRST AND GAIN AUTHORITY

One of the successful tactics for building the authenticity of your SEO agency is by publishing the latest updates in the search industry through your blog.

This will give the users a signal that you are a serious contender. Once your blog gets established as a resource for authentic information, more people are likely to subscribe to it and visit it. Always keep in mind that some of these visitors are your future customers. So make sure you have enough CTAs for your blog posts.

7. WHITE LABEL SEO

As we discussed earlier, many companies are looking for White Label SEO solutions. Offer them your resources for completing SEO projects and provide them with a completely customizable report.

8. CASE STUDIES AND SUCCESS STORIES

When you start an SEO business, many clients will come to you with a skeptical mind. It is your responsibility to make them feel confident about the services that you offer. Case studies and Success Stories are the best way to instill confidence in them.

Tell them how your agency met the expectations of clients. If you are offering it in the form of PDF, make use of the analytical data and charts. This is a very successful formula for winning customers.

9. TESTIMONIALS

Testimonials have remained effective confidence boosters for clients since times immemorial. This trend continues unchanged, but the difference is in the medium.

Earlier, most testimonials were in the form of written text, but now, text-based testimonials are, at times, considered fake.

The way out of such a situation is by having a video testimonial. This will increase the credibility, and your visitors will feel assured. Try to have an influential company CEO to speak for your service to gain more advantage.

10. WEEKLY NEWSLETTERS

Do you already have an excellent database of people who have either opted for your SEO service or prefer to download the free pdf via registration?

These are people who are interested in the SEO products that you offer, which makes them highly probable clients. Therefore, send them a weekly or a monthly newsletter, giving a sneak peek into what has happened in the world of SEO.

Also, include details of the discounts and benefits offered by your company from time to time. This will keep their interest in your SEO agency.

Please make sure you don’t spam the subscribers with unnecessary emails, as they might mark you as spam and never return.

Going out in the search industry and finding clients is a daunting task. Stan, as an Indo-American SEO agency, knows that such an exercise is like finding a needle in a haystack.

However, clients are our bread and butter, so quality effort should be put in to attract and, most importantly, retain them.

If you want to know more, read our blog on how to win and retain clients for SEO agencies.

How do the best SEO companies convert users into clients?

Now that you’re aware of the techniques needed to drive people to your SEO agency website let’s now see how you can convert these prospective buyers into customers.

After implementing the various techniques to attract prospective customers, the next step is reaching out to them with your sales pitch. There are many ways to contact customers. Here are a few tried and tested ones.

1. OVER THE PHONE

The best way to connect with your future customers is through face-to-face interaction. However, many times, this is not a practical approach. So, the second-best alternative is to reach out to them via phone calls.

Calling a client doesn’t mean that you have to start the conversation like a typical sales pitch. Instead of pulling out the catalog of packages and pricing, provide the client with insightful information.

Tell them about their current SEO status and also detail a few things that they are doing right. Pointing out mistakes will create a negative impression, and since this is your first ever interaction with the client, you don’t want to mess it up.

 Tips that you can use while talking to your SEO clients:

Begin asking them questions about their business, market, and the target audience they want to focus on.

Understanding the business and the requirement of the client is essential before launching your pitch. This is one way of getting to know what they lack, their target audience, what packages they need, and, most importantly, their competitors.

Ideal questions should be:

• Can you brief me about your business?

The answers to this question will provide you with the essential details about the focus of the client. It will also help shed more light on the troubles faced and the terms used in their specific search market, which will come handy at the time of keyword research.

Have you sought the help of other SEO companies?

This is an essential question where clients specify their expectations. Here, you can gauge their SEO knowledge, which will be crucial for all future communication. Also, you can scrutinize whether their previous SEO support indulged in spammy stuff.

What is your current conversion rate?

If your client is focused on selling products online or signing up for services, it’s necessary to ask this question. This will provide you with details about their expectations and how to scale their ROI.

What are the keywords you are targeting?

If your client has SEO knowledge, they might have already found the keywords that their competitors are ranking for. This is highly beneficial as you can create a list of keywords before researching other tools.

Where do you think you are lacking?

Some clients might be producing excellent SEO content but struggling with backlinks or vice versa. Get to know from them what search engine optimization business plan they look forward to achieving by partnering with you.

  2. Over Emails

The second best means to contact a prospective client when you want to start an SEO business is by sending a personalized email. If you find a customer leaving your website without completing payment, this usually is because of a lack of trust.

In such cases, an email written with well thought out content can bring trust in your buyer, and he may convert as a customer. Here are a few elements that should be present in a business email of an SEO agency:

Your target audience is already receiving tons of business emails, so why should they read your pitch? Unless the first few words of the email catch the attention, your email will also end up in the list of unread ones.

To make a client read your email, you should have high attention seeking subject line. Since we are offering them an SEO service, the subject should speak more about the solution to their problem.

Once the prospective client decides to open your email, the first few words should address their problem and introduce your solution.

Always include the USPs of your SEO services and tell them how your services are a standout among the SEO crowd.

Nowadays, most of the emails are read on smartphones, which means the first few words of the sentence should be crisp and offer some value to the client.

It doesn’t matter if you address the client by name; all that matters is convincing them about the benefits that they get. So, make sure your first sentence speaks about how the SEO solution can assist them in achieving success.

Consider that one of your signed-up users visited the store and selected a package. He/she left the page without completing the payment.

This scenario is quite common within the funnels of SEO agencies. The best way to do re-marketing is by sending them an email listing the benefits of your service and, if possible, offer them a discount. This way, you can reconnect with a broken lead and turn them into customers.

Conclusion

You can easily run this SEO business from home (or anywhere in the world with an Internet connection)the points mentioned above are some of the secrets most successful SEO agencies hesitate to reveal. Now, you are left with one thing: Implementing it.. It can be very lucrative. The start-up costs for this business are very low. Normally the service is a long-term arrangement as clients need to maintain their rankings. You can increase your earnings by offering additional related services such as website creation and website design.

However SEO consulting business is an entirely performance-oriented service. You have to be dedicated and perform as per client needs. You have to master communication skills to understand what exactly your client expects from you. You have to be patient in your approach and constantly work in building a good reputation as a reliable SEO consulting professional as clients will prefer working with people whom they can trust.