Anyone Else Have SEO Clients?

poodeedy said:

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

Click to expand...

Thanks for share your strategy.

It is really good to know what people who work with SEO do to earn money.
I like White Hat strategies.

For me, the reports are what keeps the client happy. Every month I have Raven spit out a polished report with all sorts of...stuff. You can upload a csv file of links you've built via whatever, tie in GA, twitter activity, etc... clients really don't know what's up, so yeah educating them is a "thing"...and I think an overloaded 75 page report makes them feel like "well, something is happening at least"... then when they see they are ranking well for their terms on top of that, you've got a client for life. I sell an $850, a $1500 and a $2500 package. mo money mo stuff. We guarantee nothing, but try to hit a certain number of twitter followers /FB fans friends/ blog comments / blog writing / social profile set ups / links and a lot more. I think they like to see a lot of stuff happening. So, even if it's just a combo of 3 things that actually work, they see "Wow, it sure takes a lot to do this". Like directory submissions - yeah, maybe they help a little, but the sure help my case in looking like a hard working piznimp.

I spell out my strategy in the beginning, got a cool mindmap of all that's going to be done, got a sales guy full time hitting my niche (predictive dialer keeps his ass busy with incoming calls) - and he does some client contact. I'm a dick head, so I try to keep away from too much client contact. But when they do get me, it's like bringing the troup to see mr Oz -- gotta set yourself up as the expert.

too late for me to offer anything much of value - but honestly, Raven and it's dopety dope reports are sorta my big thing.

Oh, and that idea of a $250 analysis is something I also thought of and might do - I actually came up with the same price point for whatever reason. If I did that I'd make the competition look so damn overwhelming that, uh, yeah insert something clever here. Had another thought but lost it...

Peace, the sort that leaves you in pieces

Squelsh, educating the client is important but from experience managing their expectations is crucial. Particularly when you complete the on site optimisation and start generating a few backlinks, they will see their website rapidly climb up Google and continually expect that not realising that the higher you get to position 1 generally the harder it is to achieve.

Other than that just breaking down for them what you have done to earn your money each month helps in keeping the business relationship ticking over - obviously don't say built link wheel and any other grey / black hat techniques, be creative with that!

I started out as an SEO client myself around 6 years ago. Then made some friends and pals along the way and end up reselling the entire brand.

Now expanding to SMM after tagging SEM, SEO and other areas of it. It really helps having the right connections and being a jack of all trades.

Seems fun doing it for a while now.

The key is get your hands dirty to know how to clean it.

working for clients involves creating systems and learning how to delegate and use resources to get "organic" campaigns launched; and you have to be able to report results; i prefer to report conversions rather than rankings. working for yourself, nonetheless, you have no one to answer to but your landlord.

gosh.. nice thread. quick question, my client always ask " what if all these fail? how you gonna compensate me/us".. to be honest my answer always different to each, and most of the time give me a hard time since i cannot promise anything, while in the other hand kinda hard to sell a "potential" results.. any idea how to pass this?

Cheers

Does anyone have any good SEO presentation templates? This is a PDF but I need to edit it of course. 3.ly/K6PN