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
-
I have a duplicate content on my Moz crawler, but google hasn't indexed those pages: do I still need to get rid of the tags?
I received an urgent error from the Moz crawler that I have duplicate content on my site due to the tags I have. For example: http://www.1forjustice.com/graves-amendment/ The real article found here: http://www.1forjustice.com/car-accident-rental-car/ I didn't think this was a big deal, because when I looked at my GWT these pages weren't indexed (picture attached). Question: should I bother fixing this from an SEO perspective? If Google isn't indexing the pages, then am I losing link juice? 6c2kxiZ
Moz Pro | | Perenich0 -
Rankings go up and down, up and down, up and down
Almost every week we have more than a two dozen keywords that will all suddenly increase in rank only to then decrease in rank right back to where they were the previous week. This happens constantly despite the fact that we are doing very little SEO-wise on a week-to-week basis. What might be causing these constant shifts?
Moz Pro | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Wher is the API id and key? I tried generating it several times but I get nothing...?
Wher is the API id and key? I tried generating it several times but I get nothing...?
Moz Pro | | breezego0 -
I keep getting Authentication Failed on the API
I have the credentials in the URL correctly but it will continue to fail authentication. I will not post them obviously but is there a problem with the API currently? I tried creating new credentials Also I have used this before so I am sure it is not a problem with the credentials. I somehow managed to get Chrome to show the data. Firefox will not and the code i have written also return authentication failed. This is a bug on your end. Please fix it ASAP.
Moz Pro | | ColumK0 -
Does anyone know why some keyword rankings go from nowhere in the top 50 to ranking 1st to then nowhere in the top 50 in the space of 3 weeks?
SEOMOZ told me to ask the question here because they say their ranking programme now works correctly and the problems I was having before with keywords changing so dramatically, even though nothing had been changed with regards to optmisation, is now to do with google rather than their ranking tool do google really change their algorithms on a weekly basis so that rankings can go up by more than 50 to ranking 1st to then going down by more than 50? Any hints or tips from anyone on I can keep the rankings more consistent (maybe dropping or increasing by one or two places week by week rather than changing by over 50 positions?)
Moz Pro | | KateNZ0 -
My page has a 302 redirect and I don't know how to get rid of it!
I use Internet Officer tool to see the 302 redirect but I check the redirects in the CPanel and there are none. In the .htaccess there are none either. I don't know where else to look 😞 The url is http://servicioshosting.com Can you guys help me? I can't set up a campaign because Google can't crawl the website. I can't setup the Facebook OpenGraph because of the redirect. error.jpg
Moz Pro | | vanessacolina0 -
Do you think Seomoz is worth the monthly fee if you're not a professional SEO ?
I just want to ask the people who subscribe to Seomoz on a regular basis, I just paid for my first month subscription but to be perfectly honest I'm trying to work out whether
Moz Pro | | whitbycottages
somebody who is not rolling in cash and trying to make a living can afford to
pay the fee each month. I'm not a professional I just have two business websites and I'm learning the subject and finding it interesting. The tools do seem very good but I just wondered how people see this service on which aspect is the most important of them. I like to continue, I have been impressed the quality of the forum topics and discussions I just wonder whether I can afford to justify the fee.1 -
Yo-Yo-ing rankings - what's going on?
I'm getting a little fed up and exasperated - if I'm honest! Our seoMoz rankings are yo-yoing on a weekly basis - extremely. One week we're in the top 3, the next week, we're not in the top 50. The week after that, we're back in the top 3. Then we're outside the top 50 again. I understand rankings go up and down sometimes - but this is every week, without fail. Not only that, but I also check my rankings with cuteRank and Firefox's Rank Checker and while those rankings are consistent with each other - seoMoz's rankings are always different and the only ones that Yoyo. Further, it's not just our rankings that Yoyo - it's those of our competitors too. They follow the same pattern except that when we go up, they go down, and vice versa, I'm just a little lost and unsure what to do, and I can't believe really that this is a true reflection of what is happening to us on Google every week. I know rankings change but surely Google aren't throwing us around like this? It is making doing any SEO on the site impossible because I never know where I stand. Any ideas or help would be wonderful. Thanks.
Moz Pro | | JetBookMike0