Anyone Else Have SEO Clients?

Stressfree is right on! Right now I have 8 Million Dollare per year companies paying over $1000 per month. Don't waste your time with a guy trying to promote an ebook or an affiliate website unless he has the cash.

You have to realize for your clients to get results it takes a lot of links, so they will have to invest in the links as well.

I know that my company is surely not the cheapest, nor do I want to be. I'm always raising my prices. This allows me to keep my margins at $100 per hour. The secret is that you have to prepare your business to look successful before it ever is.

When I started doing SEO for clients 2 years ago, I had website, logo, professional email, toll free phone number, audio testimonials, video testimonials....

Let's face it... Nobody is going to hire you if your new... so you have to do some SEO on your own site and learn how the business works.

Cheers,
Matt

there is another way of doing seo for small business; most of the time they dont have the budget or won't pay high for internet marketing but all business want leads.

Another way of doing it is setting up a site, optimizing for whatever your area business is thriving on for example second hand car or music course in your area.
Talk to these companies that you will offer them few leads for free and if they are interested work with them how much each lead will cost and it will be exclusive to one company only and if the leads convert you get additional bonus. Since you have the customer details, you can actually call them up to verify if they used the business or not.

So for initial this is exactly what i did, i optmized a site for music class, dance class, piano class, drums, almost everything related to music in my area. Within first 2 weeks I got about 5 leads which I gave 3 biggest school in my area who had a website but not optimized. in total generated about $500 sales for the month so I worked out with the best company how much each leads cost and what additional 15% of their sales purchased for a year. Meaning if my lead converts a student who learns guitar class for 6 months and the course is $350, I get paid 20% of it. Further upsales i wont earn anything.

Now I know this is a lot of work for the start but few things I can earn from one site
1. leads
2. % of sales
3. Google adsense clicks (my area is small so google adsense is not from competitiors)
4. and I plan to sell the site to the highest bidder in 6 to 12 months time and earn a good income from it. One business I know generates almost $8000 average in sales from the leads I gave them constantly for 3 months. (average 3 business a month) How much you think this site is worth to the highest bidder? I would know soon.

Business lose nothing but everything to gain, and if you are damn good at what you do, you can actually owned google for all the local keywords you need.

I agree with stressfree, those type of low-end clients will take tons of handholding and expect the world in return. I have been fortunate so far in the last 5-6 years where i don't have to solicit business but i can understand how someone new getting into providing seo services may jump on the smaller areas just to build a portfolio.

Also trolling CL seems to be an area for people looking to get seo work but keep in mind that type of client as well has low budget and will take allot of "seo concept" done on them since they probably get in 500 replies for seo services from all over the place.

If you have a portfolio and can provide proof on what you have obtained for clients , start with that and don't devalue yourself, large clients see no value in cheap pricing...that's what i have come to in the last 10 years.

I wouldn't at this point even take 1000.00 a month as a contract, but for some, those are great ones to land and they will feel good to close on the sale. I have found that you really need to get into networking in your area (closest large city) and see what design firms, ad agencies, interactive agencies, marketing associations, retail associations...etc are doing

About 6 years ago what i did was run a morning breakfast seminar, went from 9am till noon and I provided breakfast. I went around to small business and agencies that had clients and said I was doing a seminar on search engine marketing and optimization and it was free and a light breakfast was offered. I booked a small conference room in a hotel near by and started networking to get people to show up. The whole thing, if i remember correctly cost me 3-4k.

As the people showed up ( i had been making this a work in progress for 4-5 months) to assure myself people would attend, I took everyone's business card and at the end of it a raffled of a couple of cell phones by pulling their cards out of a hat. What that gave me was a list I could generate as an "seo mailing list for prospective clients"

I put on a presentation, had documentation they could take with them and managed to obtain over 40 cards to follow up with. That 3-4k investment returned me over 60k in business.

Point being, like any business you have to spend money to make money. If you're low on budget get involved with as many panels you can get on to start speaking. Target one vertical as an example and go after that client base for example real estate agents, there always up for a free meal

For larger seo clients, they base issues on project management and development, the rule of law being:

Scope + Time + Cost = Project Launch

The three main areas I would say to focus on would be:

1. Sell the client the concept in a presentation or meetings, don't sell them the solution that's what they will pay you for.

2. Speak as an authority. If you are meeting with a client who is the "skin cream" business do your homework, know what competitors are ranking where , express terms you have researched that get clicks and finally find out as much info you can on the prospective client.

3. Under promise and over deliver. Your biggest client base will always be your existing client base if you know how to up sell properly.

The clients you want to avoid are clients that respond to these questions with these answers:

Question to Client: What is your timeframe for this project to achieve the rankings you want to see ?

Answer: As soon as possible

Question: What budget did you have in mind ?

Answer: As little as possible

Those two statements will tell you allot out the client. Chances are this type of client has no idea or is just looking for someone to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

This industry already is loaded with snake oil salesman that will jump on it and end up destroying the value of SEO to a client like that, thus, giving the importance of SEO a bad name. To be successful you have got to deliver over and over. Dont tell them what they want to hear or try and sell the magic 199.00 solution ( it doesnt work and never has), deliver them what they need to have and the retention sales will keep coming and word of mouth goes real far..

2 cents

How much do you guys think that you should take from a members who want to get indexed on a particular KEYWORD ( i think thats called SEO too )...

I have someone with a small biz that wanted to be ranked No.1 for a KEYWORD which has searches ranging from 5- 6 lakhs ( by gooogle ) and my client wanted to be the no.1 for that keyword??

Any ideas??

Is the KEYWORD one word ?

Or

Is it a Key Phrase with 2-3 words in it ?

and what is 5-6 lakhs ( by google) is that hundreds, thousands, miilions ......

Because this is the only relating thread I could find on the forums & has some people already in this specific industry, I'll post here.

I see that consulting and making yourself to be a professional is where it's at with getting some high end clients and being able to scale this immensely, but what I've been thinking about doing is different from the norm of 'promoting other peoples websites' then if they drop you, it all stops.

My idea is I personally create & own the sites from the beginning and get them ranked for the keywords that I find that have some possible high $ converting leads, possibly having adsense or cpa's in the meantime for cash. Then later on, when the keyword is starting to rank, I go to businesses that I think would like a spot on the site and sell them having their info on my website or on a per lead basis for what I find is a good % of what they could get from the future customer. I could then use my own 800 phone # forwarders to track the visitors actually converting. Then later on the business can't just drop me because I own the site. After a while I could: either keep the site & keep earning, sell the site to a relating business or I could just keep selling on per lead or having their info listed.

Just wanted to know what you guys thought about this idea, good or bad, and if there's any other similar companies or ebooks doing this or any better ways that could be thought of to scale this larger & better.

I just started my own local SEM/SEO business. I just landed a client and it's a $20,000 gig with a doctor. The best thing to do is find clients who are already spending money on advertising or using PPC because they are the ones who will spend money. Make sure you get in touch with all your local web designers and pay them a finders fee for getting you biz.

1.) Charge them a setup fee for keyword research and ad setup
2.) Monthly fee for maintaining their adgroups, split testing all that good stuff
3.) after they see you are getting them leads or clients then sell them on SEO for the keywords that are making them money. charge them for website design for each group of keywords (outsource if you want)
4.) I meet with them quarterly to educate them and re establish our plan of attack.
5.) I also create videos and content that I can send to them with my reports. adds great value.

The main thing is to get them paying monthly. Make sure you educate them about what you are doing and how you can add value to their business. I also sugest you join a local netowrking group via Meetup.com I am part of BNI its done wonders for me. This is a great for getting great experience for PPC without using your money and it can fund your affiliate marketing or whatever you are trying to accomplish.

I mostly read here at BHW but I freaking love this site. Good luck to all yous. Go make that money..

I have run my own SEO/PPC business, been an in-house SEO as well as run an SEO agency for an employer. Lots of good info posted above, so I'll mention some ways to pick up business:

Participate in SEO forums and newsgroups. I picked up many clients, some lasting as long as 3 years.

PPC is a good way to get ongoing income. Most high-end SEO is now sold as a monthly service. It is easy to convince a client that their website is always changing, Google is always changing and competitors are always trying harder at SEO, so they need someone who can keep them on top.

I work for a web design agency and we've started doing serious SEO. It's quite easy really. SEO is really easy once you know how to make consistent results.

Just wanted to know what you guys thought about this idea, good or bad, and if there's any other similar companies or ebooks doing this or any better ways that could be thought of to scale this larger & better.

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There is an ebook but its very basic - just telling what you already did - setting up websites getting them ranked and then approach business owners and offer them to "advertise" on your site - if you are able to generate leads for them they should be happy to extend their stay...should be working in any G7 country

offer them a free month or maybe two if your are confident enough that the site will produce leads

just deal with high marging profit businesses. They'll spend $10,000+ on SEO/PPC no problem. Mom and pop will want blood for $300. Too much hassel.

What about selling them packges on SEO/PPC/Social mrekting etc? Or do they simply want to hire an expert to get them results?

web_i said:

I have been taking on clients for SEO and PPC for over 10 years now and its my only form of income. In these 10 years I have managed to support a family of 4 and love every minute of the career.

I will recommend that taking on clients, that you make your reporting top notch, there is allot of eductaion needed for most clients and the more clear and concise the reporting is, will cut down alot of hand holding.

I have worked in every possible vertical over the years and the 2 main areas that you must push through are:

1. Educate the client to understand that SEO is a long term play, instant placement or exposure calls for PPC. Traditionally a combination of both works best

2. Deliver the results. Educate the client about expectations. for example, if your client sells " coffee beans" you have to instill in the client that, out of the gate they wont beat "Starbucks", educate them in who they may want to target

Just 2 cents, good luck with your business

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Great Info! I just went from 1 client to about 6 clients this pastmonth and this is a great start so that you don't have your customer calling every day asking why they aren't #1 on every major search engine.

Scubachadd

i have a furniture shop in germany, i normally dont take customers but they wrote me because they liked my seo blog. Payment is pretty good and i get % of what they make + monthly money.

The real good seo customers are the companys painting houses and such things. Easy to rank for local shit and you get constant money.

Guys,

I love this thread and even subscribe it when there's new things coming out.
However just one question though, i manage to get a client but i am not sure how to charge so i ask him what's the budget for his website.

Do you guys always ask them their budget first before making your first move? Or you will just shoot your price first and justified it?

I am curious to know this. Appreciate someone can help me. Thanks!

P.S: Understand that working on offline is not as easy as everyone think. You have to really know how to speak well and most important think fast..plus you are helping them to rank. BUT it's much better than working on other company knowing that you are taking SALARY not having your own CASH.

I have a question about what percent of your seo fee pays your overhead cost for outsourcing?

For example:

Lets say you get a client that is paying you $1000 per month.

Do you spend 25% ($250) on the actual outsourcing for articles and links, and then the other 75% ($750) is profit?

I think the answer is important because:
1. It sets the kind of income you will actually live off of
2. It will help to scale your price to your clients needs.

An example on scaling your price:

If a client needs 500 articles per month to keep ranking, and I am paying $5 per article for quality content, that means it would cost me $2500 in overhead to get the job done. At that point, if I want my overhead to be 25% of my fee, I would have to charge the client $10,000 per month.

any assistance would be appreciated.

Lumien

The easiest money for me is to try my hardest to avoid having anything to do with onsite SEO and instead I focus on building links for them. As soon as you get involved in their website coding it becomes a huge time suck. It's much easier to show them that you built 500 links to their site. If your good you can show them how to install google analytics and then they can watch their traffic increase as you build links. Google analytics has that pretty traffic graph that all managers can understand. If the right hand side is higher than the left hand side then they will keep paying you every month.

boffmaster, how are you building the links for them? Are you outsourcing that or are you doing it yourself? If you outsource it, to who? How many links are you usually building? Aren't you worried about google sandbox if a clients side is relative new for example or had very few backlinks at the beginning?

bluet said:

Maybe this tips will help:

1.Provide the complete analysis
When your client need a keyword or seo analysis, research their url. The alexa rank, the PR, and how many times the keywords appear in the main page and sub-page

2.Ask for their target
Usually they would say " top ten rank in google" or "get me a great PR". Compare the keyword analysis with their competitor, how many backlinks that your clients would need?

3.Details..details...
Give a good suggestion for the onpage and offpage SEO. Lets say change the title and description. Some sites dont have the main keyword in their title, that's too bad..

4.Build backlinks
Build a lot of backlinks and watch how the rank move. When you have a good result dont forget to add the site to your portfolio. New clients will need a good portfolio

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Good strategy.

Really good.

We do SEO and Advertising for a living here. We have a variety of clients from a few hundred per month to over $100k per year retainer agreements. Monthly fees are the key. Without recurring revenue, your business with either fail, or require so much constant "firewood" to keep the fire burning that you will indeed burn out.

We sell websites/blog sites that lead into SEO work for the client, or SEO work to help a site that often leads into blog/writing/PR work. Our packages are usually around $3000 per month, but it differs. For $3,000 we do the following:

-Write unique articles for client
-Create/Update a blog 2-3x per week with targeted articles
-Submit ePress Releases (1x/mo, 80 sites)
-Submit Articles to articles sites with SE Nuke (1x/week)
Submit blog articles via Social Network sites (wetpaint, tumblr, wordpress, etc via SE Nuke)
-Link Building via Link Farm Evolution
-Deep Social bookmarking (internal pages) via Bookmarking Demon

Managed all in-house except for some writing