Doing SEO as a service has never been easier before!

You may be wondering how I’m able to make such an affirmative statement when SEO agencies across the globe are breaking their heads thinking, “how to get SEO clients”.

If you’re confident with the quality of the SEO services provided by your agency, trust me, getting new SEO clients is just a few miles away. Giving up now could mean leaving high-value treasures behind for your competitors to pick up.

Was your agency built around the ideology to serve businesses with quality traffic, leads, and sales. Let me give you some awe-inspiring tips that will change your SEO business forever. 

Here are 9 tips for increasing your SEO clientele.

1. Offer Free SEO Audits

Many companies, especially small businesses, overlook SEO and do not update their websites frequently. What if you can genuinely tell them that it’s time to concentrate on their website’s SEO?

Do Google search and handpick such companies that need to optimize their websites. Perform free SEO audits and get in touch with them with the results.

Now that you are already delivering value to these companies, there is a greater probability of them wanting to avail your SEO services.

So, that’s a smart way to boost conversion rates while translating opportunities into a profitable business.

2. Pick A Specific Niche

SEO is a competitive space and there are a lot of SEO agencies out there. So, how do you stand out and tell your potential SEO clients that you deliver exactly what they are looking for?

One way of doing it is narrowing down your niche. For instance, if link building is your cup of tea, you can pitch your services for “powerful contextual link building”.

You can also choose to target SEO clients based on industries where you have expertise or see profitable opportunities. For example, pitching your services as SEO for law firms or SEO for e-commerce will help you attract the attention of a specific set of SEO clients. 

Listen to our SEO On-Air podcast episode with Chris Dreyer, CEO & Founder of Rankings.io where he talks about how his agency became successful after finding a niche within a niche.

3. Develop Industry Partnerships

Partnering with the right people can do wonders for your agency in terms of gaining new SEO clients.

Before you initiate collaborations, make sure your customer base meets your partner’s at one point or the other. For example, when you partner with companies providing services such as web design, content and social media, they can fetch potential clients for your SEO agency.

This way, the two of you can reap mutual benefits and it is a win-win.

4. Leverage Marketing Conferences

Always make it a point to address people at or at least attend marketing conferences. 

Why?

These events make way for you to establish your expertise while creating opportunities to come in contact and have discussions with prospective SEO clients.

Yes, nothing is better than someone coming up to you and asking, “Do you offer SEO services?”.

5. Build Pillar Content

Your content should educate your audience. That’s a fair point.

But how long do you stick to topics like “tips and tricks for SEO success” and “ SEO strategies to follow”?

After all, these are what everyone talks about.

You need to be one step ahead.

How about educating SEO clients while opening doors for them to explore all related resources within your website?

Creating pillar content is the key.

This way, you provide your readers with everything they want while disclosing your expertise so as to drive sales.

6. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Social media is a hub of online users. Create social handles for your SEO agency and make sure you put up posts in them from time to time.

First, your social media posts help your followers to learn something new while allowing them to know about the offers and discounts you provide.

Second, a potential client wanting to avail your service will check your social media presence. At such times, your social media actions speak for your credibility.

If you have created social handles but haven’t been there in a while, you will miss out on your clients.

7. Reach Out on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most trusted networking platforms at the moment. Send genuine outreach messages to your potential clients on LinkedIn. 

Since people send spammy/promotional messages on LinkedIn, your message may go unnoticed if it is not drafted in such a way that it stands out.

One, personalize your message using the corresponding profile information.

Two, make sure you deliver value to your prospects. For instance, as said earlier, offering a free SEO audit or providing innovative SEO tips can create a positive impact. 

You can also send a follow-up message in a while if you haven’t received a reply. Make sure you don’t pester people with frequent follow-ups. Otherwise, you might end up annoying them, which, in turn, creates a poor impression for your business.

8. Offer Monthly SEO Packages

Most of your SEO clients would want to know your agency pricing. So, it is a good move to help them start their journey with you using a transparent monthly package.

Why offer pricing packages at all?

Let’s consider two websites; A and B. While website A says,” contact us for pricing”, website B actually displays a pricing table with a wide range of plans to choose from. 

A client visiting these two websites is likely to opt for website B because it offers more transparency than website A.

Given the scenario, offering pricing packages can improve the chances of your potential clients choosing you over your competitors.

9. Include Reputation Signals

SEO Clients often pick a reputed agency over the ones that haven’t established a robust presence in the SEO realm.

So, it is essential to add reputation signals to your website.

How do you do that? Here are some instances.

• Case Studies – Case studies are proof that you have helped similar clients eliminate pain points and achieve SEO success.
• Client Testimonials– A brief note from your clients explaining their first-hand experience of working with you can add to the credibility of your SEO agency.
• Location and Address- Your clients would certainly want to know where you operate from. So, include your office address on your website.
• Industry Awards – Pin your awards and accolades on your website where your visitors easily get to see them.
• Featured Posts – Letting your potential clients know that you got featured on reliable sites such as Forbes and others is an additional perk.
• Expert reviews – This could be the best reputation signal as you get a micro or a macro SEO influencer to talk about your service. Check out the video below of an expert review we got:

If you’re struggling to find SEO clients, in the next three months, we guarantee you will be flooded with requests from top businesses seeking SEO service. Ready to take the challenge? 

30-Day Plan to Get SEO Clients

Day 1 – 5: Select the Target Audience

As an agency owner, you should know that the industry is abuzz with companies that promise improved traffic and sales. Not all companies do what they say, and websites like to get bespoke solutions that work specific to their industry.

There is a growing demand for SEO agencies that cater to a specific niche industry — for example, seo for dentists, real estate seo, etc. 

There is a growing demand for niche-specific SEO services, and this trend has been growing amongst industries that fall under the YMYL categories, such as Insurance, Medical, and Banking. 

If you have prior experience bringing success to a particular niche, ensure that your website has a separate service page for this niche. 

Day 6 – 8: Google’s Second Page is Your Goldmine

Businesses, be it of any niche, want themselves to be found on the first page of Google’s search results page. Achieving this requires a lot of SEO attention, but not all agencies are capable of achieving this feat. 

It would be beneficial if you understood the target audience and their business goals better and what it takes to rank a website in the niche that you’re focusing on. Simply conduct a Google search for buyer intent keywords specific to your industry and see the second and third pages of Google Search Results Page. 

These are the low hanging websites that can top the rankings if you optimize them. Additionally, each one of them is a prospect for you. 

Day 8 – 18: Get the Assets Ready

Before you do the final step, which is reaching out to the prospects, ensure that you have a list of assets ready to be delivered for free. 

Business owners are inundated with emails and calls from other agencies. However, your agency is special and you want the target audience to understand the value that you provide. 

This is only possible by providing them ample result-oriented data and reports of how your agency helped other websites reach the top of the Google rankings. 

Assets Required

Blogs: One of the easiest ways to get niche-specific SEO clients is by doing the most effective content marketing strategy- blogging. Website owners, despite their incapacity to conduct SEO practices, like to read a lot about how it works and how it can benefit their business. 

If your agency is focusing on niche-specific clients, ensure that you have blogs that answer the frequently asked questions of the target audience. 

There are SEO agencies that hesitate to reveal the SEO optimization process they follow. One of the prime reasons for this is the fear of the prospective clients implementing it without signing up.

We have strong reasons to conclude that clients who read such blogs tend to signup 50% more than clients who land on service pages. The simple reason being their lack of SEO knowledge and resources. 

Case Studies: Business owners are looking for a lot of inspiration online! Decision-makers, who have spent on SEO, are inclined to learn how their investment churns revenue. Since this goes with all niche industries, having a case study to refer to will increase the probability of clients signing up for your services. 

A case study must have appropriate data and stats that show how the client website was performing before and after you did the optimization.

The increase in organic traffic, lead generation, and sales must be given more focus as niche businesses are interested in knowing more about the conversion part rather than the amount of organic traffic. 

If you can include the name of the client (of course, with prior consent), your case study can stand strong and the trustworthiness will skyrocket.

Free Templates: Providing free templates to clients is yet another controversial topic in SEO. However, templates have proved useful for us as clients usually find it hard to fill the on-page, off-page, and technical audit templates by themselves. 

With that said, the prospects get good vibes about the process you follow for each SEO strategy and will come back to you for fixes. So, consider the free templates as an asset with immense capability to attract clients. 

Video Testimonials: If your SEO agency is still building its reputation, consider testimonials as an important asset that you cannot live without. Website owners are usually confused when it comes to trusting SEO agencies, especially if they are yet to grow as a brand, which, of course, will take time. 

The strategic way to wriggle out of this is by including genuine testimonials. I, once again, need to stress on the word ‘genuine’ because fake testimonials are a big no-no if you want to succeed in the SEO industry. Detecting fake testimonials is as easy as doing a simple image search on Google.

A more rewarding approach would be to have video testimonials of clients as it adds more trust than the traditional text-based testimonials. 

Day 19-25: Reach Out

Once you’re ready with the list of 100 sites and with the minimum number of assets mentioned above, the next step is to reach out to the website owners. 

Over email: It’s imperative to identify the decision-makers who are running the websites that you’re reaching out to. 

Most websites provide an email address that is usually handled by people below the hierarchy. However, what you need is the email address of decision-makers who are always on top of the hierarchy. That is why you may want to use a tool like Skrapp.io, which can provide you up to 150 genuine and verified email account for free. 

Draft the email with a focus on the missed opportunities and how you can help them beat the competitors and rank on top of the Google search results. 

Now, strategically place the assets within the body and try to provide a free audit report generated using any of the tools that you’re comfortable using.

The assets, though given for free, must be sent only after the user provides the information you require to convert him into a warm lead.  

Also, send the email through a mailing system like MailChimp or even MailChimp alternatives to keep track of the open rate and the bounce rate. 

Over Call: 

It is not easy to convince clients, especially when you are pitching for SEO services via a call. The decision-makers that you are going to deal with possess very little knowledge about SEO. As the saying goes, a little knowledge is dangerous!

The usual questions that we hear from prospective clients range from “Can you rank me on the #1 Position in a Month?”, “I didn’t get results from my previous marketing agency; how can I trust your service.” Another most common question that is popping up nowadays is “I heard SEO is dead, why should I invest if it doesn’t work anymore?” 

Even though these are double-edged questions, a well thought out answer can seal the deal. Educating the client is a task that your digital marketing team has has to do daily, especially if they are connected via a call. 

Never promise things that cannot be done. The best answering formula to poke interest in your service is by first accepting their claims, if any, and then contradicting it with reasons. 

The search engine algorithms are so much trained that ranking on #1 in a week or a month is now a thing of the past. Even if this is achieved, maintaining the #1 position requires a lot of systematic SEO marketing campaign efforts. 

A majority of the clients business that you reach out may have already invested in SEO, but without the desired outcome. In such cases, it’s crucial to present them with an SEO audit of the website, explaining the missed opportunities. 

Day 26-30:  Follow Up

You are now seeing positive responses from the majority of the sites that you reached out to. However, there are chances that some may not respond. Ensure that you follow up with each email based on the data provided by the mailing system. 

Wrapping it Up

SEO is a systematic process and likewise is onboarding new SEO clients. There are challenges that you may face in the on-boarding process, however, these impediments can be dealt strategically by showcasing the impeccable strength of your SEO agency. 

The more SEO clients you want to on-board the more you have to educate them about SEO with evidence. The evidence in this case are the assets and reports that you create. This will speed up the new client onboarding processes with realistic expectations. 

Comments