For SEO Guys: A Quick And Dirty Guide For Getting Clients

He hasn't implemented because he's working closely with a source of referrals.

Best,
Ewen

If you look at the number of keywords they are using in their Adwords,
you'll see only a few ads which keep repeating and therefore the others
are wasted.

Also you will notice that many of their ads are well down on the listing
placements.

Now if the management is based on the number of keywords,
then there is BIG wastage.

Hence overpaying for the number of clicks they are getting.

Knowing this you can fine tune their Adwords campaigns or
do SEO where there is very few clicks are coming off the natural listings on Google in caparison to the PPC clicks.

This means there is BIG opportunity to get more of the available traffic.

Best,
Ewen

Haha I noticed that too. Hopefully he just missed it. I'm curious too.

I answered your PM about it.

Best,
Ewen

Matt, using Spyfu like I showed, is a tool one can use
and give your own meaning to the data.

I'm not a SEO guy, yet extracting that data seems to
been the most valuable to people in the game.

Best,
Ewen

So basically I use spyfu all the time to research my prospective clients and decide how I am going to go about attacking their online marketing.

We have shifted our business model entirely from web design/SEO to Inbound marketing either as a service or as consultants...

In my experience, lets take as an example the spyfu example above, that niche would typically hire a person in-house to perform these things for their company.

So the company is spending money on a new payroll (for anyone that's done that you know it can be expensive) AND they have to give the new "internet manager" a budget to spend as well. $40k a month is a lot, and if you could "tweak" their adwords campaign and get them off low converting high cost keywords and save them $10k per month, you could transition them into a marketing package (either online, offline, or a mixture) that they would be happy to continue spending that money with you now.

Essentially, someone who is using adwords and doesn't have a professional online marketer with PPC experience that is managing it for them is wasting money and overpaying. I guarantee you will spend less money if I run your campaign vs you running your own campaign. Without going into an 8 page "Adwords 101" post, if you understand how it works, you will definitely see where people are overspending.

The problem with this is the business owner has now way to hold the "internet manager" accountable because they just don't have the knowledge to do so. What ends up happening is the business spends a ton of money on things like PPC that is being managed by someone who really just googled it one day on the job while they were tooling around on facebook on behalf of the business they work for.

It's my firm belief that no "internet manager" that is willing to go work for a salary for one company is going to really understand what it takes to do the inbound marketing for that company. They just don't have the experience, and to say you have the education, i.e. a degree, is going to be seriously lacking because by the time you finish learning something in this industry things change.

Businesses just end up just delegating it to someone they currently employ or trying to do it themselves. This results in various levels of understanding, and a ton of wasted money on companies that are just out to "build some backlinks" and bounce.

So, all that being said these are some various methods I use offline to generate business.

1. Walk in, introduce yourself, offer a free consultation to see if you can help them generate more clients/customers/leads etc... You would be surprised how many times I have walked into a business and the owner is at the front desk, looks at my card, and says "We were just talking about our website/social media/needing to print something, what can you do for me?"

2. Call ahead and basically offer the same as number 1. I try to schedule a quick 15min sit down with the owner/DM and during that appt I will just converse with them a bit about what they have done in the past, try to gauge their knowledge level, see if I can identify any pain points I can use to show how I will fix that in the program I am recommending to them.

3. Of course I have my own website and other networks I have built as well. I have several people in town that refer business to me. I try to build relationships with people who are going to do business with integrity so I don't send my client to someone that screws them over because that will cost you a client. Merchant services, commercial internet/phone reps, etc...

As far as research goes here is the abbreviated version....

1. marketinggrader.com to generate a free report on their current site
2. Check them out on spyfu.com see if they are doing PPC, this will also give you an idea of their PPC budget and Organic traffic
3. Google their competition, and plug the top 5 into marketinggrader.com and spyfu.com to see what they are doing that gives them a first page ranking. This will give me an idea of how much work I am going to need to do to get them to the first page and start getting them some phone calls.
4. I then put a 10-15 min video together for them that I am recording my screen while I do all this research. I also put in there some possibilities of what their site could look like, show them the backend (we typically just use wordpress for about 90% of our clients) and how easy to use it will be to make changes, we use an SEO plugin that has a green light if we did our jobs so we show how we are going to get a "green light" on all their pages. Talk about the importance of blogging etc... whatever pain points I have figured out I will add into their video and show them how they won't have that problem with me.

5. I follow up with them about the video in person and collect a check for anywhere from $1400-$2400 to get started, and if they are already paying a bunch of money on PPC I put them on like a 90 day plan with me where they will pay about $400+ per month depending on the industry, and we'll do a 30,60, & 90 day video to show progress, where we look at the analytics, SERPs, etc... Sometimes I will put a tracking phone number on their site that just forwards to their number if I feel like they are going to be really picky.

Now if they say no, well, I already did a bunch of research on their top 5 competitors, so I call them up and set appointments to help them maximize their online marketing budget and generate more leads.