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Setting up an SEO Consultancy

tb987

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This is something I am mulling over and was wondering what tools people use to offer these services professionally. e..g directory submission software, keyword research, rank checking and reporting etc
 
@ tb987;55223 This is something I am mulling over and was wondering what tools people use to offer these services professionally. e..g directory submission software, keyword research, rank checking and reporting etc

Firstly before you start & i am sure OWG may agree is that you need a provable background of what you can do in the terms of Seo. So many people now a days can pick up a piece of Seo software & claim to be the next best thing in marketing. Seo software makes life easy but can you do it with out it? Personally my Seo Consultancy is ranked number1 on Google & it takes work not just a piece of software!

Anyway back to the question a good free directory submitter software & a real good bit of free seo software.
 
Couldn't agree more :)

I'd say I've got a pretty good record for SEO terms for a number of clients, but that was a support of 3-4 people. If I was to go it alone....meh, not sure.

SEO though is a great industry to be in, as largely a lot of people who are in it are rubbish, and affiliate marketers are peddling their wares. Get a half decent non-affiliate to promote and you can get it to the top with relevant keywords relatively easily :)
 
Firstly before you start & i am sure OWG may agree is that you need a provable background of what you can do in the terms of Seo.

I have been doing this in earnest since 2004 and have a provable track record for a few of my company's main sites and have a good story to tell. I also know that a lot, if not the majority, of small businesses would benefit from some very basic SEO advice and they are not getting it.

Get a half decent non-affiliate to promote and you can get it to the top with relevant keywords relatively easily

I have done this for my own sites and feel I could help others, although these may be easy niches.

Thanks for the software tips

Tony
 
It will be quite useful to get at least two reference/testimonials to convince prospective clients that you indeed verifiable evidence that you have done SEO for others before. This will be quite good when pitching for business.
 
Testimonials are alway a great idea. In another sector I have also asked customers to blog about their experience for a discount.
 
[FONT=&quot]Firstly, to be quite brutal, the fact that you ask about what Tools to use (directory submission software etc) suggests to me that you maybe aren't yet proficient enough to undertake this task as a wage earning activity. I specialise in SEO and use very little software for anything appart from Word, Excell, Weblog Expert and Google online Tools.

Now to be a bit more constructive, there are rank checkers that use APIs and therefore offer less risk of offending Google etc TOS. Advanced Web Ranking has good words written about it. Keyword Research can be done using Google Keyword Suggestion Tool which works very well. Auto Directory Submission (IMHO) should be avoided. There is no substitute for doing this mandraulically for numerous reasons.

As for obtaining Clients, research a Market Sector that you have a good understanding of. Then use SEs to find underachieving sites for Relevant and potentially productive Search Phrases. Then make a pitch to improve their SE rankings. DON'T get suckered into making firm guarantees, use phrases such as significantly improve etc.

You may also need to consider doing a few freebies or cut price SEO jobs to get the references/testimonials if you can't come up with any already.[/FONT]
 
Good advice Smeagin, you hit the nail on the head with rank checking and this is in my mind. It is certainly something I would expect if I were outsourcing this for my sites. A before and after ranking check across MSN, Yahoo and Google based on keyword research and I guess you also need to insist on access to web stats to demonstrate traffic improvements.


Cheers,

Tony
 
I have been doing SEO/Online Marketing since 1997 and I have been, and still am a freelancer. I think the best think you can do before you even think about setting up a consultancy is think what you can offer you're prospective clients. It's pointless offering email marketing if you simply can't or don't know how to do it.

A good thing to do is when you get you're first client per se, take along some testimonials from previous work along with all the keywords you have that site ranked for etc. Even if its a personal site, it gives the prospect something to see.

As for software, I don't really buy it to be honest just because I'm old school and you have all the information you need at your fingertips from the server log files.

I think the only piece of software I have is SEO Elite and that's purely for tracking my US clients. Even then I always do a manual search on there keywords just to be sure.

The thing that I am seeing more and more these days are a lot of snake oil media companies out there, I did write an article on what to watch out for if you're a business/person looking or an SEO'er (not sure if I can put link in here) but it might be handy reading that so you know not what to do.

Always educate your clients because a lot of them know nothing about how SE's work. Taking the time to educate your prospect can go in you're favour.

Tell you're client exactly what you are doing on their website. You don't need to go into great detail because the probably won't understand but a good summary will do the trick.

At the beginning make not of where they are in the search engines under what keywords and every month shoot them a nice sexy PDF of where they are and what you have done to the site. If you can incorporate some graphs and stuff like that. The business men/women love that kind of stuff and it also spices the report up.

Never ever tell them how much traffic they expect to receive or where there likely to rank. Why?, thats just asking for trouble because if you get a client that is calling you everyday wanting to know where they are in the SE's (which you will, I think every one has a client like that) and how much traffic they are getting, if you don't deliver what you said, it could go against you're reputation.

Never promise never guarantee rankings or traffic.

Hope that helps a little.

KP
 
KingPin fantastic post, i could not agree with you more on it.

Rep added :goodjobsign:
 
I forgot to mention about contract time scales. This is probably more of a personal thing than anything but every single client and prospect, I put them on a 12 month contract.

Why? well if you're like me and specialise in organic SEO then you will need time for the keywords to kick in. and a yeah should be more than enough time to start seeing results, plus it gives you a window just in case G,Y,M make any algorithm changes.

I have heard that some companies charge on an hourly bases. This is for research and doing a simple task but a whole SEO campign? seems pretty silly and the client getting ripped off.

Another one I have heard is 3 month contracts, again, you really can't do a lot in that short amount of time.

They are just some examples, of course time factors are also industry dependent and how competitive each keyword is.

KP
 
Great post Kingpin most useful.

Advanced web ranking does this:
"At the beginning make not of where they are in the search engines under what keywords and every month shoot them a nice sexy PDF of where they are and what you have done to the site. If you can incorporate some graphs and stuff like that. The business men/women love that kind of stuff and it also spices the report up."

The problem is it seems expensive to me for what it does. It is also client based. A simple server based script would be perfect to do the following:

Position for keyword in Yahoo, Google and MSN (UK and .com). No keywords at no1, top3, page 1, top 100 captured monthy

No backlinks, indexed pages and PR captured monthly
 
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