Hi

Not sure if the software in this post is too 'artistic' but maybe something there will work.  From SEOgadget / Richard Baxter

-Dan

Hey, thought I'd chime in! Those are all great ways of selling SEO.

I try to show the prospect a real pain point in their specific situation.

For example, for one local business I actually took a screenshot of a search for their brand, where they were not even showing up, and printed it and brought it to them. When they saw a search for their own business didn't even bring a result, that was motivating!

Or I'll do a really quick competitive analysis (nothing very scientific, just a real good guess at a desired keyword) and find where they don't rank well but a competitor does, and show them that.

Or, if a slightly more tech savvy prospect, I'll find a few things really wrong with the website, some 404s or crawlability issues.

If you can present these things in a way where you don't alarm people too much but generate that reaction of "wow, we need to do something about this". Present them in a way where you're also helping, educating and can provide a solution.

So my angle sometimes isn't "here's why SEO is important" it's "here's why YOU need SEO".

-Dan

Hi

Use the Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis tool - run a full report. It will give you all the ranking factor metrics of the top 10 results (plus an 11th site you can add).  The major things I always check first are;

• Linking root domains
• Linking C Blocks (there should not be a giant difference between root domains and C blocks)
• Exact and Partial match anchor text
• Facebook Shares
• On Page Optimization Grade

Chances are you may need to beat some people in the top 10 in any of these metrics.

-Dan

This tool is a great extension for Chrome

Check My Links

Hi

Great question! Stumped me a little, but I found this article.  Safe to say it seems as if google ignores the apostrophe (and other characters including hyphen etc) so in effect "men's fashion" and "men s fashion" is the same thing.

-Dan