SEO (search engine optimization) has become a buzzword over the last couple of years. While some entrepreneurs and small business owners may have heard of the term before, they might not know what exactly SEO means, what it entails, and how to go about achieving it for their business. As an expert selling SEO services, it’s up to you to educate these business owners as part of your SEO elevator pitch.
Now you’re faced with the challenge of selling SEO services, which can be difficult if your clients and prospects don’t understand what exactly SEO is or how you can help them implement an optimization strategy.
To help fellow SEO experts understand how to sell SEO services, we’ve compiled a list of tips for how to prepare your strategy to sell SEO services.
How to Sell SEO to Clients
If you’re at a loss for where to start when you’re strategizing how to sell SEO services, consider utilizing the following tactics:
- Educate your client. First thing’s first, if you’re trying to sell SEO services to your clients, but they don’t know what SEO means or what those services will entail, you’ll need to educate them. Some clients and prospects think SEO is solely to help their website rank higher for specific search terms. However, part of your process of selling SEO services should be to explain the real value of investing in SEO is to drive more traffic to their site. More traffic to their website can lead to more sales.
- Be transparent and honest. To help set your clients and prospects at ease about beginning their optimization endeavor, make transparency and honesty touchstones to incorporate into your strategy to sell SEO services. Be prepared to show your client all of the work you’ve done on their site and why.
- Manage your client’s expectations. You need to set and manage your client’s expectations about what you’ll be able to achieve with your SEO services, especially how quickly clients can expect to see improvements. As Search Engine Journal stated, “SEO typically is a lot of work. It isn’t something that is just done overnight (or even in a week or a few weeks). It’s an overall strategy that takes time. Because of this, the client should understand that some competitive niches (or topics/industries) could take years to get good organic visibility.” Here are some caveats you should share with your client as part of your SEO elevator pitch:
- You can’t perform SEO magic on their website to make it rank well overnight.
- There are SEO best practices, but some web designers don’t always comply with those best practices. As part of your SEO services, you’ll go through your client’s website to fix any potential issues that might be hindering your SEO ranking and performance.
- If your client isn’t ready to commit to ongoing SEO services, one of the best tools in your arsenal to sell SEO services is to perform an SEO audit. The audit can showcase your SEO expertise and how you can help improve your client’s SEO ranking.
Selling SEO Services to Local Businesses
The challenge of selling SEO services to local businesses is presenting the potential obstacles they’d face when it comes to SEO. Here’s what you can do to shore up your pitch to sell SEO services:
- Know who you’re selling to and understand as much about their business as possible. You won’t be able to successfully sell SEO services if you don’t understand your client’s or prospect’s business. You should understand what industry their business is in, how their business operates, who their customers are, and what products and services they offer.
- Analyze their current digital marketing and social media presence. This can help you determine if they’ve had an SEO strategy in the past and what you’ll have to work with should you succeed in selling SEO services.
- Research their competitors. Researching competitors can be an effective tactic when you’re selling SEO services to local businesses. Suppose their competitors have invested in a comprehensive SEO strategy. If that’s the case, they might be more inclined to make the same investment to ensure their website is performing as well as, if not better than, their competitors’.
- Prepare a set of SEO-specific questions. Prepare a set of SEO-specific questions to get a feel for how much your prospect understands SEO, how much of a commitment they’re willing to make, and if your agency is the right fit for them. Some questions you can ask include:
- Have you ever worked with an SEO service provider or agency before?
- If so, how satisfied are you with your current SEO partner?
- Do you have a marketing budget?
- What’s your measurement of SEO success?
Providing Leading Private-Label SEO Services
When it comes to selling SEO services, Stealth Search and Analytics is a leading provider of private-label SEO services. Our SEO services are never cookie-cutter, and our proven custom strategy development process brings an individualized approach to each project. For over ten years, we have worked with marketing agencies to provide their clients with the most SEO-friendly websites and content. Contact us today to discuss how we can do this for your clients on a private-label basis.