Building Reputation as an SEO

Do you find it hard to build up a solid reputation in the SEO industry?

[jakegotmail]

Do you find it hard to build up a solid reputation in the SEO industry? How exactly as an SEO freelancer do you convince clients that you are reputable and will produce results without doing two things:

1. Showing who your past clients were (b/c of the confidentiality nature of the business) whereas to prove to them the gains that they might see themselves.
2. Giving away too many articles/ secrets whereas the person would learn enough from your knowledge base so they wouldn't need your services.

It seems like a tight rope to walk. How do you go about it?

[MyPersonalBest]

Hi Jake!

First I'd like to say in answer to your question about past (or current) clients...what about your OWN site on SEO? SEO in and of itself is a very competitive field. Surely if you run your own site on SEO, then your website is optimized, correct?

You can use that as an example, or any other website you've built in the past.

Heck, build one from scratch if you need to protect the confidentiality of your clientele.

I do have to say that many clients (not all mind you) would be happy to show off their new position in the search engines - it gives their business exposure as well.

If anything, see if they'll write a testimonial for you.

Additionally, I don't believe that there is a thing as "giving away too much". People love information, and free information at that, but rarely do they do anything with it. If you're really concerned that someone may steal some of your secrets, just don't write about those secrets.

Quite frankly, anything you would want to know about SEO is available already, people simply don't want to take the time to learn all of it themselves - it's simply too overwhelming.

As long as you're willing to provide a service that they don't have to worry about or keep up to date on, I wouldn't worry about giving away too much information.

Hope that helps!

- KW

[DXL]

Showing clients how my own site ranks in all major search engines is usually proof enough. I don't have confidentiality agreements with my clients, so I can generally show a prospective client results that I achieved for others.

With respect to sharing SEO secrets, I've been burned once. I generally haven't gotten into much detail when explaining to a client what goes into SEO. On one occasion, I provided a number of SEO techniques to a prospective client during a casual meeting in which he asked me a number of questions. Sure enough, the client hired another firm with no SEO experience, and my techniques were used on his new site. Since then, I've learned to not discuss SEO techniques with anyone, that includes business associates.