Providing precise SEO services is always a lucrative venture.
According to the SEL report of 2016, the SEO industry is estimated to be worth $79 billion by 2020.
Whether you want to work as a solo consultant or if you want to run your own SEO agency, you always have plenty of scope in the SEO business.
However, SEO business has its own share of problems. So, if you want to have a strong foothold in this business, you should start learning it.
You need to understand how SEO really works and the ways in which you can develop your business.
Starting your own SEO business may seem lucrative and simple. But, trust me running an SEO business is a serious task that needs utmost dedication and complete focus.
Now, this article is for you
- If you want to start your own agency, get some big clients and develop your company into a profitable business.
- If you want to freelance, get a good head-start and create multiple niche sites that generate good passive income.
If your answer is ‘YES‘ to both these points, we shall now review some of the aspects that need to be followed to start an SEO business and run it without any glitch.
So, how are we going to begin?
Tips to Start an SEO Business:
1. Begin by learning the basics of SEO:
Begin your practice by learning or going through the basic aspects of SEO for Google.
Google is one of the undisputed players in the cyberspace. So, reviewing the tactics of SEO for Google will help you to gain clients sooner.
Regardless of the niche that you work upon, you should always
- Learn what are the expectations of the end customer
- The target customer and their general needs.
- The types of keywords that attract the customer and their corresponding keyword density. Learn how to gather these keywords and get them on your page.
- How the competitors in the considered niche fare and how to outwit them by writing superior content with enriched SEO keywords.
2. Start a website and lure clients:
The first aspect you need to begin your SEO business is to have an appealing website.
Yes, you heard it right!!
Hire a professional (affordable) website developer and create a website that suits all your needs. You can also build a WordPress website within 10 minutes.
A simple Google search will aid you with the necessary tools to build your WordPress website. There are so many domains hosting agents like BlueHost to register your domain, get a domain name and host your website.
Once you have built the skeleton of your website, you really need a crisp professional looking design. You can buy a fully customized professional theme too.
Join an email management professional service to build a good rapport with your clients. That means, through an email management/subscription service, you can make your customers subscribe for your new contents.
This will allow them to be aware of your latest developments and avail of your services.
You can provide them lucrative offers, free SEO audit tools so that every service of yours will be known to a wide range of customers.
3. Build your own core SEO strategy and principle:
When starting a new business, it is advisable to have a thorough, well-researched and foolproof business plan.
Although, in SEO business; it will be better if you can come up with your own core SEO strategies. This is very crucial since it will serve as the axis upon which your entire business would function.
Whatever your core SEO strategies are, make sure that you follow all these aspects:
- A well-optimized website that has enough power to generate site-specific, content-driven traffic.
- Meet the needs of the customers.
- Exemplify the brand names of the customers and improve your expertise.
- Encourage site-specific conversations.
- Increase the customer base by providing them freebies at the initial stage of your SEO business.
- Attract and earn links for your website.
While creating core SEO strategies, a rule of thumb is to:
- Determine the keywords that your client needs you, to rank for. Make sure that the keywords are simple and are rank-rich.
- Build the best content in simple English, making use of the provided keywords.
- Promote and build your links to increase your assets.
4. Get ranked on page #1 of Google:
What? Do I even need to do this even at the inception of my business?
Yes, you must…!
Getting ranked on page #1 of Google is not a simple task. You need to fight like crazy and toil yourself to achieve a place on page #1 of Google for SEO services in your current geographical area.
Usually, the best combination to attract customers and elevate your Google ranking is to use “SEO + city name”.
For instance, if you are in Mumbai and a person needs to avail SEO services in Mumbai, then the best combination that the person would use be, “SEO services in Mumbai” or “Best SEO services in Mumbai, India”.
So, if you are fighting your way to secure a place in the first page of Google results, then your keyword combinations must be Best SEO services in Mumbai, SEO services in Mumbai, SEO in Mumbai, etc.
Your potential customers do not have an inkling about the keywords that would improve Google rankings.
So, these types of combinations will help you to secure a place on page #1 of Google, which means your revenue will skyrocket just after a few months of your SEO business launch.
5. Tone your content to 2000+ words:
This is probably the next important aspect that we need to focus on. Most of the SEO people tend to skip this step because they are either lazy or are unaware that writing contents of 2000+ words always work like a charm.
Suppose, if you are targeting the keyword SEO services in Mumbai, then write a content that has 2000+ meaningful words about the nature of services that you provide.
This is a sure shot way to increase your transparency in Google because serpIQ says that, there exists a direct correlation between having more meaningful words on a page and higher rankings in Google.
After writing such contents, create a URL that is relevant, has your targeted keywords and is also simple to read and easy to find.
For instance, for our keyword ‘SEO services in Mumbai’, the URL can be domain.com/seo-services-mumbai or domain.com/seo-mumbai. These simple changes will make you jump to higher spots in Google.
6. Create an SEO audit checklists:
By now, you would have decided the type of services you are going to offer in your SEO business.
There are many SEO services and as your business grows, it is impossible to monitor all your services at the same time.
Hence, it is high time now to develop a comprehensive SEO audit checklist for efficiently operating your business.
SEO checklist providers like LocalSEOchecklist.org provide you an idea of developing your own checklist. These checklists will sort out the set of tasks that you need to start, develop and build on.
7. Offer freebies initially:
You have to offer freebies (free audit checks, free SEO scans, etc.) during the initiation of your business to attract potential customers.
According to the form conversion report of FormStack in 2015, only around 1% of the total visitor population of a website shows interest in filling up their contact forms. The rest of the visitors peruse through the website. They hardly contact the concerned people.
This signifies real trouble.
How??
If only 1% of your visitors contact you for SEO services and the rest do not attempt to contact you, then you hardly get clients and your business will witness a downfall.
So, you need to prepare yourself by giving them freebies (like those mentioned above) for luring potential customers. Relying on your contact form alone to attract customers will never serve your purpose.
Offering some white-label SEO tools for free will surely attract the customers to audit their own SEO keyword contents and you can try building a rapport from thereon.
Your visitors will love to get a complete SEO audit of their own content or website as soon as they enter all their contact details.
Apart from these, you can also place strategic downloads that your visitors would love to download and utilize.
A one-page or two-page comprehensive research report about the pricing of the SEO industry or the best SEO hacks or the black-hat techniques can serve as a better idea for free downloading.
8. Learn web analytics, gain PMP certifications:
SEO tactics are the secret sauces that aid a content writer to reach a wide range of audiences. Stuffing keywords, writing meaningless words will put your business to doom.
So, you really need to understand the pros and cons of your target business and create SEO keywords accordingly.
Web analytics will serve you as the key to understand where the big opportunities are, what works for the business and what is not.
Both concise reporting and precise communication skills are needed to generate data-driven insights and provide recommendations to the clients.
If you are right with all your SEO processes, then you can witness tangible results and the seamless integration of your results with the strategies of your client.
Gaining proper PMP certification is considered as a big positive move in the SEO industry because the PMP certifications are the highest echelon and are one of the certifications that are universally respected in the digital world.
Displaying your PMP certification at the right place always ensure that you are one step ahead of your competitors.
9. Write in digital forums and provide backlinks to your website:
There are popular forums like Reddit, LinkedIn answers, Quora wherein there are plenty of opportunities for you to answer questions, interact with members and help them out.
Who knows? Helping a member can also bring you some clients. Just by being helpful, chivalrous, you can land some good clients.
Even if you do not get opportunities, the backlinks that you provide as your identification will help you to increase your site traffic.
Do not try to pitch your business ideas in these forums. They are just digital forums where people help each other and solve others’ queries.
It is not a business medium. But, answering questions and solving other members’ problems can make you popular in these forums and increase your online presence.
10. Process your payments properly:
Fixing standard rates to charge your clients and deciding the modes in which you are going to accept payments from them can be quite challenging.
You can personally invoice your clients at the end of each month or you can set up online payment gateways for easing up the ‘payment troubles’ of the clients.
A PayPal link, probably the oldest yet easiest way of paying can be added to your website after setting up a merchant account.
Other payment gateways like Payoneer, Payza, Citrus Wallet links can be added to your website for greater convenience.
All these aspects will help you to start your SEO business quite successfully. If you do not see tangible results in the first few months of the launch, do not feel disheartened.
Can we do SEO for free?
Start doing SEO for free for a limited number of clients. Take some handful of competitive keywords (say 4 – 5 keywords) and generate site-specific content for these keywords.
Sure, doing SEO for free has its own share of limitations. I agree. But, this technique will work for you in 2 fronts
- This free work will help you to evaluate your own portfolio of ranking keywords. You can identify what keyword combinations work best and what does not.
- If you can show great work for free of cost, there are greater chances of securing a permanent client. There will be no hassles in making them pay what you demand.
So, with these our list comes to an end. I am sure by now you would have learned all the techniques that are needed to start an SEO business and run it successfully.