How do people really make money with SEO services?

[Kyle787]

I was wondering this for the longest time now. I make good money on adsense so I know how hard it can be to rank a niche site and how you need to look for a keyword with 30-50K competing sites max, etc. Now just thinking, if a client like a small business asked for SEO services, in a major city like New York, and wanted to rank a pizza shop for a keyword..

Do SEO companies/indivuals:

Actually find ways and work to outrank the other 100K+ competing domains for let's say "best new york city pizza?

Do they search for more targeted keywords like "best pinapple pizza in nyc"?

Or do they just BS things like get the restaurant name keyword ranked #1 and then charge lots of money?

I know people charge a lot of money for SEO

 

[aStroke]

Find the keyword(s) that receive the most traffic. They are usually variations of ""keyword city" or "city keyword" and we help clients rank for those keywords.

 

[christoss1959]

I was wondering this for the longest time now. I make good money on adsense so I know how hard it can be to rank a niche site and how you need to look for a keyword with 30-50K competing sites max, etc. Now just thinking, if a client like a small business asked for SEO services, in a major city like New York, and wanted to rank a pizza shop for a keyword..

Do SEO companies/indivuals:

Actually find ways and work to outrank the other 100K+ competing domains for let's say "best new york city pizza?

Do they search for more targeted keywords like "best pinapple pizza in nyc"?

Or do they just BS things like get the restaurant name keyword ranked #1 and then charge lots of money?

I know people charge a lot of money for SEO

Usually you just go to the client and tell him how would you like to be 1st for these keywords and charge him for xxxx price, tell him that he will need to pay maintenance if he wants to remain first and charge xxx.
You can also tell him that you can find more related keywords also high traffic and charge him extra for that. However I would only offer this to large companies which are interested for a lot of keywords and can afford to pay, for example a pizzaria may be interested to get "pizza new york" and "best pizza in new york" but wouldn't want to pay more to also get "best margarita pizza in new york".