How to find the SEO Clients

[abovenbeyond]

My question is ....How do you search the targeted customers who will use search engine optimization service offered by you...I do some keyword search in search engines and jump to 50+ pages result, where I suppose site owner are deprived of traffic.

after landing to their websites I see they don't have any woeful PR and many times those are run by enthusiast who are not doing it for full time business purpose and think that they themselves can do pretty good search engine optimization...

[vincevincevince]

How about finding a competitive term (money term) and then finding a company just under the fold (i.e. #6+) or near the top of page two (i.e. #11, #12)? They are the people who have targetted the keyword and are getting some traffic for it, probably their biggest traffic source, and will really see the value in your services. Going from position #6 to #1/#2 should seem them get at least 50x more traffic for many terms.

[rytis]

Hmmm, use your SEO skills to rank in SE's for queries, that will bring you some clients, uh? ;)

[pageoneresults]

Hmmm, use your SEO skills to rank in SE's for queries, that will bring you some clients, uh?

Or, you could always join a community like WebmasterWorld and over time, potential prospects will find you. No, not because you are promoting your services, but because you are giving back to the community that you avidly support. That in turn tends to have a positive effect down the road in regards to people "finding" you. ;)

[abovenbeyond]

How about finding a competitive term (money term) and then finding a company just under the fold (i.e. #6+) or near the top of page two (i.e. #11, #12)? They are the people who have targetted the keyword and are getting some traffic for it, probably their biggest traffic source, and will really see the value in your services. Going from position #6 to #1/#2 should seem them get at least 50x more traffic for many terms.

You mean to say: target those people who are already in good position wouldn't be they too much scared of disturbing their existing traffic that they will not let others touch their website...also i don't think page rank 6~12 will be desperate to call a SEO.

[pageoneresults]

You mean to say: target those people who are already in good position.

So, your plan is to perform various keyword searches and then go through the top 20-30 results correct? And then, you are going to select a few websites from those results to send an email to, correct? That email will contain something to the effect of...

"Hello, my name is such and such. I was performing a search in Google for your product and noticed that you are not on the first one or two pages of the search engine results. Did you know that you are missing out on an enormous opportunity to get more visibility to your website?..."

I can tell you right now, you've already set yourself up for an arduous journey. Good luck...

[abovenbeyond]

pageoneresults advice is really thinkable. but this is long learning curve and showing your knowledge here to get client from this forum instead of directly getting the customer and learning more from experience....

[martinibuster]

abovenbeyond, it's not just getting clients from this forum. It's about demonstrating that you know something. SEOMoz got to where he is by showing what he and his team knows, as well as giving back to the overall community.

I get the feeling there are many out there walking into this the way a lot of people in the nineties walked into web design, with just enough buzzwords to make some people think you know what you're talking about. I've had people come to me who were burned by these SEOs who had essentially no knowledge and experience.

I strongly suggest you keep your day job and build out successful websites, as well as unsuccessful websites. Build your experience and your income by driving traffic to your own websites first. If you can't do even that for yourself, to prove it to yourself, then why bother offering services to someone else?

[sem4u]

Well said MB.

[mattieo]

My two cents:

One idea you could consider is to do a few 'freebies'.

This helps you:

* Practice your sales process
* Build clients
* Build case studies for other potential customers
* Gets you (and your staff) some practice in working in that process

I've done that a few times, usually I find it generates work, particularly because after three-six months of providing paid service, doing everything the right way, delivering handover docs, your 'free' customers become paid.

Anyway, hope that helps.
M

[HiHo]

my two cents here...

be careful about your sales pitch, because 1000s of people received a phone call about seo services! :) I know something because I am in sales for online marketing services.

they will surely ask you if your service is guarantee, if they can pay you on results, while you are on the phone with them they will google you and ask you "why you are not first in google for" and so on so for...

try to be different and to give real value to your prospects.

Otherwise, treat your actual SEO clients better than your son, and ask for referrals!

I hope it helps!

[jaffstar]

be careful about your sales pitch, because 1000s of people received a phone call about seo services! :) I know something because I am in sales for online marketing services.

Agreed :)

Its far easier to convert people who are willing/looking for SEO services than ones that you need to sell it to.

MY advice:

Get a good track record with SEO. Get good results for clients.

Initially you might need to charge less, but when your portfolio speaks of results, then good things will come.

You will have amazing success when you can prove your capability, otherwise you are like many SEO companies who over promise and under deliver.

I see many companies offering incetive bonus for results, you can try hook a client and if you reach target, then he pays you the bonus :)

[KaloVast]

It's pretty simple to find SEO Clients if you know how to do it. The most important thing, in my opinion, is to find a niche' i'm interested in learning more about. You can find plenty of areas where competition is more scarce, or where it may be easier to make a greater impression. I take some keywords from that area and then add some local cities which normally narrows down my results to local sites in that field. Many local sites do not have their SEM together and if your price points are right, you should be able to get your foot in the door.

I find my clients this way, i contact them with a free consultation, then i offer them a ridiculously low amount ($250 per month for 15 hours for example). They usually respond pretty well to this. Only problem is that between my full time job and my side gigs i don't have enough time to take on more clients. I also don't have enough experience to charge my current clients more money. Not yet at least!

[purplesoda]

Any advice for SEO freelancers on finding SEO clients? :)

[CainIV]

MB has a good post. You have to know how to sink in order to swim. Building your own websites, helping out, spreading your wings in terms of what you know and keeping positive, while contributing gets you noticed, shows you know what you are talking about, and helps karma give you a little boost:)

[piskie]

Most of that are into SEO, have a bit of a specialism whether it be locality or market sector. Try searching for:

"Untitled Document"+location
or
"Untitled Document"+widgets

You would be surprised what comes up.

[pbradish]

^^ Good idea.

I Google'd "Untitled Document"+SEO

for fun and found way too many "SEO consultants" that haven't even optimized their title tags.

[piskie]

Keep it to yorself and don't for goodness sake let on to any SEOs in my part of the world. That search gets most of my cold call clients.

[bilalseo]

I think to find SEO clients is never a difficult work, but It can be if your capabilities are not matching what you speak to. There is in dire need to understand what you are going to sell out. If you are telling people or promissing that you will bring their sites under top 10 results within a 6 month, it is not a real commitment. To commit you have to explain your clients that SEO is a slow process of building and getting right prospect. Whatever the ranking are, the real meaning of SEO is getting targeted users and better prospects. So whenever you going to put SEO proposals to your client, you be careful while commiting anything that you never deliever. So in my point of view it is better to commit what you understand that you can deleiver. I'm SEO Expert having 7 years of my search engine optimization and marketing experience, but I never explained my clients top 10 ranking, but I always asked them if they can give me some time to evaluate the results and then give me free hand to move around. Most of them reliaze the facts, but many :( But I would like to suggest you to take your client be polite and ask him or her if they can give you some time to make sure high SERPs.

Thanks,

Bilal Qayyum

[Heartlander]

I'm trying to figure out why there are so many SEO topics in an SEM category.
I've come here to read and react regarding Search Engine Marketing (which I'm pretty sure was the intention of inclusion here)...NOT Search Engine Optimization.
2 completely different animals.

[purplesoda]

@piskie: great suggestion there. i found a lot of sites in my location.. even the website of a prominent broadsheet without a title tag!

thanks!

[WannaKnowSEO]

If you actually have the chops, and you really need the business, you can pitch yourself to clients with a payment-for-success contract. Any shrewd businessperson will have a good idea on how much a customer is worth, so you just need to arrange a situation where they pay you a portion of that profit when (and only when) you succeed with your job.