How to find non stingy clients
-
I was browsing around other SEO websites and seeing how they charge upwards of $2500 a month...
In Australia things are a little different, many potential clients gasp in shock at the prospect of paying just $500 a month...
Because of this it seems all the SEOs in Aus have taken to undercutting each other to the point where you can get 'guaranteed' 1st page results for just $200 a month - its become a necessity of doing a guarantee and having a low price just to compete...
How do you find clients that actually have decent budgets? Most of the clients I have so far are from referals from web developers or from my participation on business forums etc. I have thought about trying a telemarketing campaign or a direct mail campaign to try and snag some lawyers, and cosmetic surgeons etc
Has anyone had experience with these methods or can offer any other suggestions to snag clients with deeper pockets?
-
Maybe for these jobs you eliminate the admin work. Then strike a deal with the client.... he pays $250 up front and then another $250 after you have doubled his traffic. Sweet deal for the client and he should be happy to pay $250 after your work makes a kickass impact.
-
Our policy at the moment accomodates and gets results for everyone, I think we even have a $170 client
It is frustrating though because of the increased admin load (reports and client contact etc). It is annoying when a client will spend $5000 on a radio campaign but thinks that a similar value SEO campaign is too risky or not worth it.
I enjoy working with small businesses from a personal aspect but I feel it is not the best for my business financially
-
It really comes down to the overall revenue and industry. Mom and pops gasp. The Target and Deloitte type companies do not.
In my opinion, as a small business owner who gets contacted by SEO folk on a weekly basis, I would hate to hire anyone who thinks I have deep pockets. I am also of the opinion that chasing people/companies because you want the big score is the best way to ruin your SEO business.
The key is being able to explain the value of SEO and internet marketing in a way that makes sense. Whether that is to a mom and pop business or a multinational company, they have to see the value. If you are turned down often by these "stingy" folk, you may be doing or saying the wrong things.
-
In Australia things are a little different, many potential clients gasp in shock at the prospect of paying just $500 a month...
I think that this is true in the USA also. People think that you just tweak the code and the site goes up.
However, in the USA most SEO jobs are either a local job such as "Scranton Auto Glass" which doesn't usually cost a lot - a few hundred a month might do it, or a national campaign selling "brass widgets" that will probably need at least the $2500 budget to become competitive.
Perhaps most of the people advertising the $200 are doing SEO for a small company targeting a single city?
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
-
Using Google Reviews for non local business
Hi All, We are deciding on what site is best to capture reviews from customers and I'm just not sure what is the ideal option. We are a SaaS business with multiple offices in different locations but the specific geographies are not really relevant to our customers. Is it worth focusing on google reviews so that when our brand is searched there are plenty of nice shiny stars (plus maybe they can be added into adwords adverts as well...). Search volume for the keywords we don't yet rank for are not massive although still important. Alternatively should we be thinking about something like G2Crowd. None of our competitors are doing anything so there's no real need to our muscle them on a review website and I don't think our end user will visit these sites before buying but we would point to them and say 'hey, look at all these great reviews'. Finally I searched my old company recently who and just under news results were facebook reviews. Maybe that's another option. All advice welcome. All advice appreciated.
Industry News | | jafayeh1 -
Need your professional feedback for a client
Hey everyone! I have a client that got a $500 proposal from some agency that summarized their work as follows. I'm literally copy and pasting this: Directory submission - 100/mo Targeted keywords - 5 Blogs writing - 1 per month Articles writing - 1 per month Blog posting - 10 per month Article posting - 10 per month Deep linking - 20/month Classifieds - 02/month Press Release - 01/month Yahoo Answer - 02/month Local Listing - 01/month Comments on blogs - 02/month Social bookmarking - 10/month Social media optimization - 10/month Regional directories submissions - 20/month Search engine submissions - 10/month This is a national company with a strong brand. Nowhere in this "proposal" is any mention of onsite optimization, any real content marketing, infographics, brand mentions, nothing... I have explained at length that the tasks they are suggesting are a terrible idea, that they will likely get penalized and that most budgets at this range are usually ill advised. The agency has even admitted that they source this overseas to illegitimate firms. I would love it if I could go to this meeting and have some community feedback as to why this is a bad idea. Please share your experiences, best practices and why most of these tasks are going to get them penalized. Thanks everyone 🙂 Kevin
Industry News | | GuestBlogPoster.com0 -
Is there a really good place to find high end, cutting edge web developers online.
My issue is that I know there are a lot of web developers in the world and all of them are great just like all the great SEO's in the world. Does anyone know of a great place to find really top talent that is the kind where the people are constantly stretching and trying new things, etc.
Industry News | | RobertFisher
Is there a web dev board the better ones are on, etc. Any luck in other areas? We have a position available, but will not fill it with anyone average or above average. I really would love to know what boards, forums, etc. I can find them on, but every search lists 50 boards and, the is not my everyday world. I just do not know which are the ones that will put me in front of the best in the world. Any help is appreciated. Robert0 -
Has anybody used Yext or Universal Business Listings as an automated approach to getting clients into all of the many directories? If so does it work? Or does Google penalize in using these automated services?
I'm trying to figure out if using either Yext or Universal Business Listings is worth it. They have reseller programs for SEO agencies. I just am curious what other SEO folks think of these services as I'm considering using one of them to automate and save time for clients. If you go to Yext.com or universalbusinesslistings.org you can see these. Curious what others say about these. Thanks
Industry News | | SOM240 -
Clients Slow to Publish Content
Hey Mozzers, Recently i have been working with some larger corporations and i have quickly found that publish new content is a nightmare. Whether re-writing current content to be more targeted or getting brand new content published on their blog it goes through an insane approval process something like this: Approval from Marketing Manager (main point of contact) Revisions Approval from Legal/Quality Control Revisions Approval from someone on the C team (CEO or CMO) Revisions Depending on content, translation for other language sites Then go live With this crazy process i have barely gotten 5-10 pages of content approved and live since the launch of the project. Now I am getting the questions of why we aren't seeing any results. The quickest and most direct answer is - we aren't publishing any new content! But you can't always blame the client. Does anyone have any suggestions, approaches, or strategies to help slow moving clients speed up? Perhaps other techniques to show your value other than publishing new/targeted content? Cheers - Kyle
Industry News | | kchandler2 -
Where do you job post to find someone specific like video optimizers?
So we have a job opening at our company for a video optimizer and we're looking to fill the position, but we can't seem to get anyone really qualified. If you happen to know anyone or a place to post we would appreciate the help. We're also located in LA so if you know of sites that base things off of location that would be great as well. Here's link to our current posting: http://www.makerstudios.com/jobs/video-optimizer/ Thanks!
Industry News | | KateGMaker0 -
Where do i find Local SEO Clients?
Hey, So i've been doing SEO for a while now and know a lot of tactics and a lot of ways to get my/others sites hire. I know good software (and have that software with full licenses and know the methods to use it in whitehat ways that will work well), internal content linking, title/description, webmaster tools (both google and bing), sitemaps etc... I have clients and my own sites that i have managed to get high in google, as well as my own local site that is number 1 in Google for my hometown + SEO, but that only gets about 80 searches a month and gets me very little if any phone calls a week. I've also just ordered 250 high quality business cards, that i spent ages designing to look awesome.. If these work well i'll print some more and stick all over the place... I currently have 2 local clients, 1 is a local web agency who every client they have they pay me a specific amount to boost that company in Google and the other is just a family friend who pays me a small amount a month to build links for him. I'd like to have 10-15+ clients all on my payroll with a nice amount of income that i can live off. I just finished full-time school and am just coming into the big wide world and have for paid for my new laptop, desktop, 2 monitors, SEO software licenses and SEOMoz account from niche blogs, software and SEO coaching and such.. I've built a brilliant online portfolio for people and have had a lot of great feedback from online clients. But i can only earn around $10-$110 per online client for SEO and around $8/hour for coaching... I'd like to be able to make that a LOT more. I do web/graphic design as well and have built a nice portfolio for that as well. So back to the main question, how did you and how do i get local clients? Thanks!
Industry News | | pompano210 -
Why do most Local Directories turn around and lie and try to steal your clients?
OK, it'ssssssss RANT TIME! I am quite accustom to clients sending me emails they have received stating how their site is not optimized and the spammer can get the site ranked number one on Google. They all have @Gmail.com so I am assuming that is a very large SEO firm. Occasionally I send them an email from an anonymous account asking about their site and phone number and they have neither due to exigent circumstances (I assume prison left them broke). But, I am ready to declare war on some local directories! I have now had several clients call me regarding inquiries they received within minutes or days of local.com or merchant circle or SuperPages etc. having us post a listing for the client. Ten minutes ago, I get a call from a pleasant young fellow who introduced himself as being from Web.com. As he began to talk (or read) he stopped all of a sudden and said, "Oh, I see you do most of what we do....." I stated hold on a minute, now who are you with?" It finally came out that my local specialist had listed our company or changed our company with them a few days ago and they were calling to tell me how unoptimized we were." NOTE: I am always pleasant to the caller as they are just doing a job. I said, understand that what I am going to say is not about you, but about your company. I sign up multiple clients with you which helps your business and you run around behind my back and tell them I did not do a good job and you can help them. They just need to leave me. He responded, "Sir, we never recommend anyone leave a company." I said, I am sure you don't. In the end he stated that it probably was not a best practice to mess with people who bring your site business. So, here is the question: Why do we put up with this crap?!?!?! When are we going to say: If you have a directory, be a directory and not a cover for a web sales firm? Why don't we start a couple of directories that are exclusive to those who can answer basic SEO questions and have an email address with the same domain as their marketing web site. Why do we keep letting these clowns do this? Imagine, having built my wife a site, she comes in at the end of the day and says: "I got this call from these people who said the site was not optimized correctly and we are not ranking in Google?" That was Local.com, I believe. My favorite was the rep who called and the more I questioned the SEO and ranking knowledge they were professing, she said: "I think I should let you speak to our Google expert." I said, Great. Three minutes later she returned to tell me he had gone to lunch and would call me back." I am still waiting. Hope I hear from a few of you, sorry for the long rant. I do feel better now though 🙂
Industry News | | RobertFisher2