How I plan to go about getting business - what do you think?
-
I prepared a real professional looking website analysis packet.
The emphasis is on it being VERY professional and classy, nothing cheesy about it. (If you want a copy send me a p.m. and I will email you one).
It will take me about 8 minutes to look at their site and run it through a couple tools and and have a quick list of things that are missing. Another 10 minutes for my office manager to edit the template and print a good looking copy.
My plan is to take out and deliver about 10 of these a day and call and follow up on them over the phone.
My hope is that when they see the quality and professionalism of the report the chances are low it gets thrown in the trash and when I call I have a REASON to call and not some random idiot cold calling.
**What do you think? Any suggestions? **
I have a lot of sales background and don't mind talking to people and I know the key will be in FOLLOWING UP which is what MOST people are NOT willing or able to bring themselves to do.
I realize that giving away a 'free' report may devalue what I have to offer in some peoples minds...... thought about that.
I am just getting started and only have a few clients but I HAVE produced great things for those few but I need to get the ball rolling a little quicker.
Thanks for weighing in with your two cents!
Have an AWESOME week!
Matthew
-
Thanks Kyle, I may have gotten a little defensive last night, it was late and the last thing i want to do is anything that lumps me in with the idiots selling seo that dont know the first thing about it.
when I ask for help I should listen to whoever is willing to give it!
Matthew
-
I think you misunderstood that way EGOL is using the word screen. He is using it like:
Screen: The evaluation or investigation of something as part of a methodical survey, to assess suitability for a particular role or purpose.
That's what you're doing, your screening websites to find mistakes / errors. Just thought I would clear that up
-
Thank you for your responses but a 'screen', really?
I'm not offering cookie cutter seo plans and I understand what quality seo work is. I realize what you are saying and agree totally but when I look at an incredibly high % of the sites in my city of 500k people its incredible to me how many of them are missing the most basic items.
I'm just trying to give them enough value to get in the door IN A WAY THATS EASY TO UNDERSTAND. I spoke to a chiropractor last week who truly believes seo is just pulling up your domain and clicking on it over and over, one guy was insistent that coming up in the search engines was dependant on how much you paid them.
Matthew
-
If you are targeting sites that have minimal SEO work in place then this is a good screen.
For sites above "minimal" you might consider the idea that for many sites 90% of the revenue comes in through 10% of the pages... and if you can increase the rankings of those pages by just a few positions you might be able to double their income.
If you can identify those pages and move them up then the website owner would be maximal return on the SEO instead of getting the cookie cutter plan that is commonly offered.
Great return is also available for a narrowly targeted business such as "auto glass in Scranton PA". There, getting the biz visible in local search can bring a huge payoff.
-
So can I and I have.
I'm not 'doing' Seo or fixing anything in 8 minutes but it doesn't take long to see that the different pages don't have different titles, the content isn't optimized very well for any particular kw, they have no social links or video on their site, number of backlinks pointing at their site, number of pages google has indexed, if the images have alt tags or not. (I include a very brief, simple explanation of each and why it matters).
Im not pushing thats all seo is or all it takes but if those are missing its a great place to start.
Matthew
-
It will take me about 8 minutes to look at their site and run it through a couple tools and and have a quick list of things that are missing.
Eight minute SEO?
You are going to tell me what is missing on my site in 8 minutes?
This hits really high on my BS meter.
I can spend more than eight minutes writing a title tag.
Just sayin'.
-
Matthew, you are very welcome. I think putting those two ideas together would come across nicely. Best of luck to you!
-
Dana,
That's a GREAT idea! I never thought about fixing or offering to do something small for free. I might head in that direction all together. I have spent to much time on my pretty packet to toss it now and my new bride will kill me if I don't at least try this approach but if it doesn't work like I hope I will try that one!
Thanks for the great response.
Matthew
-
I admire your pro-active ideas and ambition greatly. As someone who fields SEO sales calls every day, I'd just toss out a word of caution.
Most businesses have spent a lot of time getting very good at what they do. They understand their vendors, their products, their customers, their bottom line. There's no way a gung-ho SEO can look at a site for 30 minutes and pretend to waltz in as if they know the first thing about the business, its goals or its customers. I've had SEO's pitch me keyword lists that were completely wrong for the business because they had no idea who the customers really were (and most likely they didn't care).
I get so tired of people calling me and saying "Hey I took a look at your Web site and did you know you don't have any [insert select SEO term here] ?" The last one, just two weeks ago said "Hey, did you know you are missing all of your meta keywords tags on your Web page?." I should have hung up, but I played stupid and strung him along just to see how green he really was, poor chap! lol
I don't like it when people call me and say they've been looking at my Web site source code. It's almost like they've been lifting up my skirt to see what color my underwear is!
IMHO it's bad manners to offer an opinion unless asked for it. To me, the best approach is to give them a compelling reason to ask you for help. That way, they've invited you into their "space." Show some genuine interest in their business. 30 minutes of prep time just isn't going to do it, and they can see right through that.
The only SEOs who've ever gotten my attention were the ones who offered to fix something small for free just to show me that they were competent and could produce results. To me, that's the best hook in the world.
-
Matt,
Sounds like a great plan from my end. We've pushed in the same sort of direction since most of our cold-calls lead to dead ends. Our company targets the legal market, and those guys and gals receive a TON of spam for SEO and the like from what I would call 'terrible' SEO companies.
We've found much more success after providing something along the lines of what you mentioned. Our focus is brand trust, so we derived a brand authority blueprint that goes over their current brand reach, and we rate their competitors in terms of their logo, website, rank factors, content and social reach. By our experience, when people can see in plain English and easy-to-digest numbers exactly what is going on in the tech portion of their marketing budget, they become immediately interested.
I would just say to make sure that what you provide doesn't resemble what other SEO's are sending out. There's soooooo much crap collateral being thrown around that what you provide is typically going to look like something they've tossed out before. Being creative with the delivery is what its all about.
Good luck!
-
I love the idea of a packet. My experience with SEOs (especially locally) has been so-so, so knowing that you know what you are talking about is a big plus. These days, it seems to damn easy to call yourself an SEO just because you know how to edit title tags. I don't think sending "free" info is a big deal, because most clients will be unable or unwilling to implement your changes.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How can we get follow links from Pinterest and Instagram
While using Open Site Explorer from Moz I came across follow links from Instagram and Pinterest. Now my question is how can we get follow links from Pinterest and Instagram
Moz Pro | | rakesh10 -
Is there a report I can run to get a list of all pages indexed by Google for my website?
I want to get a CSV file of all the pages that are indexed by Google and other search engines so I can create and .htaccess file of 301 redirects
Moz Pro | | etraction0 -
How to get the total external links to a page and total external links to the domain using Mozscape API? I could not see an option in the bit flags
Hi, I was trying to get the data for total external links to a page and total external links to the domain using Mozscape API but I can't see a bit flag which can do that. There are bit flags for external followed links to a page and external followed links to a domain but I wanted the total external links data, is there a way to do that using Mozscape API else I would end up copying the data manually from OSE which would be cumbersome and time consuming. Your help is highly appreciated.
Moz Pro | | HQP0 -
<bs>Will someone give me a "thumbs up" so I can become an Authority and get my SEOMOZ T-Shirt?</bs>
<bs>I have helped many people (probably 100s) here in the forums. My fingers are swollen and I can't answer questions right now. I want my SEOmoz t-Shirt for becoming an Authority, but I'm a few points shy. Any help would be appreciated.</bs> Watch people give me a thumbs down. LOL
Moz Pro | | Francisco_Meza3 -
How often does the competitive link checker get updated?
I just found a link in the competitive link checker that links to a couple of my competitors. The checker says that i do not have a link on that page, but there is one.. i recently (last week) obtained that link. So that raises the question: how many times is the competitive link checker updated? kind regards
Moz Pro | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Getting relevant keywords from URL with Google KW Tool.
Hi, When I first start researching a site, I like to see what Google "thinks" it is relevant to. I use the Google KW Tool and enter the website URL only. I sort the results by relevance. I can then show the prospective client what Google thinks his site is optimized for and use that info to show him what opportunities exist to rank for terms more relevant to his business. I show him keyword, volume and I also get current SERP rank for his site. For larger sites, I do this for the top pages based Domain Authority. I want to automate this process using excel and APIs but Google refused my API token request. I told them I wanted to use the "Google AdWords API Extension for Excel" from http://seogadget.co.uk/google-adwords-plugin-excel. The Google API token team replied: Please note, after reviewing your application in detail, we are sorry to let you know that we won't be able to approve your token. We understand that you are planning to use the AdWords API mainly for Targeting Idea Service (TIS) and Traffic Estimation Service (TES) such as 'keyword research'. Please note that as per the Required Minimum Functionality (RMF) outlined in the API Terms & Conditions, using the AdWords API exclusively for TIS and TES type of services is not allowed. Q1: What does the KW Tool relevancy data mean, anyway? Q2: is there another way to get it or is there another way to do this? Q3: Is there a better approach I should take with the Google API team? Q4: Are there other APIs and Excel plugins that can do this, including the SEOMoz APIs? Thanks,
Moz Pro | | phersh
Phil0 -
Why did Domain Authority go up so much? Did you change your measurement?
Our Domain Authority has been at 42 or 43 for a couple months and it just increased to 54. Why did this happen? I would like to think that it is because of out SEO and linkbuilding work. However, I suspect something else may be involved because the 3 competitors we track also all increased between 10 to 25 points at the same time. What happened? Did you make changes in the way you score DA or is this the result of changes in what pages you crawl? Or what?
Moz Pro | | rickt0070 -
Getting SEOMoz reports to ignore certain parameters
I want the SEOMoz reports to ignore duplicate content caused by link-specific parameters being added to URLs (same page reachable from different pages, having marker parameters regarding source page added to the URLs). I can get Google and Bing webmaster tools to ignore parameters I specify. I need to get SEOMoz tools to do it also!
Moz Pro | | SEO-Enlighten0