Starting your own SEO Business? HELP

My first question would be, have you had any success of your own, or any succesful clients? It's very hard to sell something like SEO if you don't have a successful track record.

That's an awesome head start.

Plus if it's your success then you can certainly use it as a case study. The first thing I would do is create either a webpage with this case study or printed promotional material if you want to attract local business clients.

Clients really only care about two things: results and price.

If you feel you can delivery those two things best using a package system, do that.

I personally prefer to offer customised solutions to each clients individual needs. But it's certainly not required.

First step is to collect case studies and solid results based testimonials. Steer clear of of sugar sweet testimonials about how nice you were to work with. Get to the brass tacks with testimonials and use the formula:
What was the problem.
How did I fix the problem.
Show me the results.

Hi,

I started up my SEO company in November 2010 and it is still going strong today.

First step you need is SUCCESS!!!

Make sure that you REALLY understand SEO and don't just listen to a lot of the bull$!&% that can be on this forum (although for the most part it's full of truthfull and awesome advice, you'ce just gotta know what's what).

Once you KNOW how SEO works and you have proven to yourself that you can rank a website highly in the search engines you need to bundle that into a package.

What are the minimum requirements for YOU that GET YOU RESULTS?

Once you figure that out, it can be your baby package (and probably the most popular!) Pricing all depends on what you can offer.

BACK TO BASICS!!!

If you are using other peoples 'services' to get results it really isn't 'doing' SEO, you are just giving people other peoples SEO service and making some cash on the side. - For me, this ISN'T doing SEO.

If you use certain services, try to discover HOW they are doing it themselves. Maybe they have hired a fleet of oDesk workers? Get to the basics of each solution so that you can reduce your bottom dollar expenditure, this will allow you to offer your service for CHEAPER and get MORE clients on board!

Once you get the basics down and you have a system get started straight away, don't wait until everything is perfect, you need to adjust your systems constantly so get some money coming in to cover this.

AUTOMATION!!!

Automation is the key to scaling up.

With the way you will be at this point you will only be able to manage around 10 clients on average while still giving them support, so you need to outsource and automate every little tedious job in your business.

Once you get to a point when you can send an email to a VA saying "set this new client up", "update the keywords for this client based on his email below", etc you can scale up further and further.

It gets bigger from there but it is VERY hard work!

In terms of profits, personally I don't set my margin too high at all. Just enough to pay for their SEO expenses and time. I rely on quantity to make a decent amount of $$ and automate all the tedious jobs so that I can focus on customer service and give close support to all my clients.

Feel free to check out my site and how I run things (signature).

It is hard work and a rollercoaster of a ride. If you are serious about this business model I say go for it. But trust me, there are a lot of easier and and more $fruitful business models than SEO.

Cheers,
Dave

Hi

Dave thanks for the great post, just wondering if you would be able to share anything on outsourcing and the prices you pay your outsources.

thanks

What type of SEO business are you thinking about? Local SEO?

Yeah just for local business, I would offer a local listing (places) and just normal seo services.

Hey mate,
Take a look at the link in my signature below "start an seo business". Im sure you will find the information and resources there quite useful.