A case study of how an SEO agency built their clientele base

An SEO agency was the second company I ever founded. I had no intention of starting an SEO agency… I just happened across it. Let me give you a little history on how I came onto SEO and how I started an SEO agency and earned millions from it…

I established my first website as an employment board. I was attempting to rank the website for phrases such as “job search” and “tech jobs.” I engaged a couple of SEO agencies to assist me, but none of them delivered any results. After losing tens of thousands of dollars, I had no option except to teach myself how to optimize for search engines… on my own.

I began to understand how an SEO agency works after reading sites such as Search Engine Watch and SEO books. By chatting to folks like Patrick Gavin on a weekly basis, I was able to make on-page improvements to my own site and learn how to develop connections.

Eventually, I began to rank well on Google for job-related phrases, but the company collapsed due to these factors.

When my first business failed, I resolved to give up entrepreneurship, get a college education, and find work after graduation. I began taking college courses while still in high school to get a jump start on things.

Speech 101 was my very first college course. The lecturer requested that we deliver three talks on any subject of our choosing. One of the subjects I selected was SEO… “How search engines operate” was the title.

A sales representative from Elpac Electronics was one of the males in the room during my address. After my lecture, he approached me and informed me that the organization he worked for was seeking an SEO specialist. He referred me to the company’s marketing manager, and I was recruited as a contractor for $3,500 a month.

After a few months of working with Elpac, their Google rankings for phrases like “power supply” went up to number one. They were so pleased that they referred me to other businesses they knew about. I was earning about $20,000 per month from SEO consultancy within months.

That’s when I decided to create an SEO agency, and here’s how I grew it to seven figures:

Referrals provide the greatest clients.

This should go without saying… As an SEO agency, the greatest clients will come from prior customers, friends, or even family members. You have a very good probability of completing a transaction if someone suggests you.

However, if you treat that customer badly, not only will they stop paying you, but you’ll discover that the number of recommendations you get on a regular basis will gradually decrease.

As a result, you must maintain a good reputation and be renowned for looking after your customers even when it doesn’t seem necessary. You will get new customers via recommendations in the long term if you do this.

Referrals were my biggest source of income when I initially established the firm, but as I discovered how to get consumers via marketing, it became our fourth most popular channel.

You can’t depend just on referrals I used to rely on word of mouth for most of my business. If you can supply the service, building a six-figure SEO agency is simple. However, turning it into a seven-figure firm is really difficult.

Be results-oriented.

I’ve had this mentality from the beginning since I’ve been burned by other SEO agencies. They stole all of my money and gave me nothing in exchange. As a consequence, I only took on customers for whom I could provide results… However, I never articulated this to prospective customers in a manner that they could understand.

I began by calculating how much additional traffic I could drive to the businesses. I’d use the multiplier from this table to multiply their existing ranks. So, if they were presently ranked #6 for a term that brought them 1,000 visits per month and I felt I could improve their ranking to #1, I would estimate that I could bring them an additional 9,400 visitors.

I’d then take their current conversion rate, say 2%, and their average value per transaction, say $100, and show them that 9,400 more visits might generate $18,800 in extra income each month. I’d then repeat the process for each of their keywords, estimating how much more money I might generate every month. Click here for more about Avoiding these mistakes when looking for an SEO agency.

You may make it easier for prospective customers to choose you by showing them how much more money you can earn them vs how much you charge. The only concern they have is whether you will be able to provide the outcomes. To counteract this, you might offer testimonials and case studies to demonstrate your previous achievements.

You should ideally utilize extensive case studies that indicate how much money you have produced for other businesses as well as what you did to attain those outcomes. You should also highlight all of the major companies with whom you have collaborated, as this establishes your reputation.

During this process, I also discovered that, despite the fact that the bulk of our clients were mid-sized firms, they wanted to see all of the giant Fortune 500 companies we dealt with, despite the fact that they were nowhere near that scale.

When we showed our prospective customers all of the small and medium companies we worked with instead of simply showing them the major brands we dealt with, our conversion rate fell by almost half.

We began working with as many huge companies as possible after learning this, even if the large brand was unwilling to spend money on us… We were even ready to take a loss or labor for nothing.

Boost your company’s growth

You will lose money on company growth in the near term. However, you’ll be able to make it up in the end. Being the outsourced arm of larger agencies is the easiest method to raise your income.

Look for ad agencies to collaborate with as an SEO agency, since there are many ad agencies that are much larger than SEO agencies. Feel free to contact them on the phone and give free online assistance. They’ll drive a lot of customers to you if you perform well.

It’s a time-consuming procedure, but it’s effective. We used to do this and obtain a continuous stream of leads from advertising firms. You just must be ready to lose money upfront since you will be doing their SEO for free in the near term. Visit https://dictionary.cambridge.org/example/english/time-consuming-process to read about Examples of time-consuming processes.

When negotiating with an SEO agency, tell them your minimum pricing is six figures per year, and they should have no trouble securing you sign contracts. They’ll most likely attempt to white label your service, which you should accept since they’ll be bringing in income and taking care of a lot of the legwork by communicating with your customers on your behalf.