Starting an SEO Business in 2023 : The Ultimate Guide

How to Start an SEO Business in 2023

First I’m going to show you how to pick a niche to land an seo client in , then I’m going to show you exactly how to get real seo results and how to build a portfolio as fast as possible , thirdly , I will show you how to use the outbound system to land seo client quickly. Fourth, I will show you how to stack the inbound system with the outbound system to take your income to another level. Then I will show you how to convet your prospects into paying seo clients. And lastly, I will show you exactly how to make your clients love you, so they will stick around , and continue to pay you for years

Remember that the key to succeed with this SEO system is to ACT on what yo’ve learnt. I’m giving you the framework and the steps . But you’re the one that is ultimately responsible for your success. I belive in you and I’m super excited to help you through your journey  

1.    Master your Mindset

I’m going to explain the seven midsey hacks you need to use to increase your chances of being successful in the seo industry

Don’t take that lesson lightly . having the right mindset is the fundamental piece to break in the 1% of wealth commulators in the world

Think about that for a second.

And if you make 6 figure per year . you will make more than 92% of the people in the united states according to the whallstreet journal.

Now . why I’m throwing that fact to you . because these number prove that you have a different internal operating system that almost the entire world .

You literaly have to have a 1% mindset

Now that might seem like a big undertaking but it’s actually not . you just need to understand the core minset priciples of success and then you just need to practice them every single day. And that’s it. So now let me show you the seven mindset hack I’ve personally used and many others have used to achieve their financial success in the seo industry 

1.    You have to know that it’s possible for you to be succefful.

Thinking and knowing that you could be succeful and can differently live than almost the entire world  are two different things

Knowing require confidence , knowing requires proof . now I’m living proof to achieve a level of success  in the blogging industry . and I’m not saying this to brag .  I’ve never had any funding except the credit card and my own pocket . but despite all of this , I had one thnign . and that one thing is that I knew I can be succeful.

I didn’t think.. I knew . and I’m telling you this because I want you to know that :

You don’t need special advantages superior advantages superior intellect, or  huge loads of cash to be successful .

So the first step of being successful is actually know deep down inside that you can be successful .

2.    What happened before today doesn’t matter

Everything you done or haven’t done that put you in a position that you’re in today but her’s what’s impotant . what you did or didn’t do or anything that happened yesterday can’t stop you from what you wanna do today

Today is all that matters

That means that your successes or your failure don’t matters . all that matters is the work you’re doing today to reach your goals in the future .

3.    You don’t need to be an industry leading expert.

Now this one sound intuitive , but it’s one of the biggest  mistakes that you can make . you don’t need to be an industry leading expert to get client or to start a successful website .

you just need to know more than the average person 

 and what you will lean in this blog is to take action , I’m gonna give you the knowledge to be at least one of the top 25% in the world at blogging .

Now trying to get into the top 1% of blogging experts is a cool goal. But it’s not important fo making money

SEO and blogging skills are just a small piece of the money making equation. 

Seo or driving organic search traffic from google is nothing more  than a vehicle . this blog you’re reading is giving you what all you nned to be successful as long as you take action

Don’t worry about being expert . Just focus on getting results

4.    Realize that it’s not as Complicated as Your Mind Will Try To Make You Believe.

When you are new to a skill or trying to learn it . Everything seems complicated. And that’s only happened because ther’s a punch of information and varying opinions . And you don’t have enough experience to know what’s right or what’s wrong.

What’s interesting is : When you actually learn and understand something . You’re able to see how simple the process actually is.

Seo used to seem confusing, technical and challenging to understand when I first got started, and that’s totlally normal because here’s what you need to realise:

Getting SEO results or making money is rarely as complicated as you believe

We as humans make it more complicated.. we over analysed.. we make asuumptions.. we act irrationaly much of the time. And I’m guilty of this too!

But I have one simple principle I live by and that’s:

When in doubt, Simplify.

 And I actually have the word” simplify” on a letter board in my office to remind me  of this principle. Nothing is more important that just simplify.

My goal is to make the process of getting seo results and making more money online is simple and straight forward as possible. That’s what this article is all about.

5.    Become a Person of Action

Want to know something crazy?

You don’t actually know anything until you have experienced whatever you’ve tried to learn.

Forexample. You could go through this entire article .. read every SEO book in the planet and even get an MBA and still “technicaly” Know nothing. But how is that possible?

 It’s because: You only learn when you take action.

And to be honest, Knowledge is worth nothing without action.. Action is the key to real learning Becasause it forces you to make decisions and see the impact of those decisions.

And overtime Each little decision build upon itself and you begin to see the connections and build real knowledge

That’s why I always recommend when you read an article , you immediately need to take action of wht you’ve learnt.

Now just to be clear what I’m saying has nothing to do with working hard which bring us to point number six

6.    Understand That Working Hard isn’t the Key to Success

Let me say this just one more time, working hard isn’t the key to success.. taking the right actions is the key to success. People that work long hours, chose to work long hours. They choose not to delegate. They choose not to build systems. Working hard is a choice.

On the other hand, you can also choose to only work on the projects that will have the biggest impact on your business and life.

That’s where you should focus because everything else is just noise.

7.    Be Patient

So Is along-term game, not a getting rich quick scheme. Making sustzinble long term of income is a long game, Not a getting rich quick scheme.

What I’m teaching you here in this article is help you to take actions and put in the work. And if you’re looking in the getting rich quickly without any work . then:

1. this article isn’t for you
2.  Good luck with that

Because I haven’t met a single a legit enterprenuer  who hasn’t done the work every single work for extended amount of time.

You  need to be commited and patient if you want to be successful. Success take time but it also take consistency, the truth is being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone.

You have to be willing to take action, fail frequently, and be incredibly patient.

Everyone achieve what he’s defying the success and different speeds and some people will get that before you and that’s totally okay. You can only Control your situation by taking actions

Just write out your primary financial goal and then when you write your dialy to-do list, ask yourself if those actions are getting you closer to your goal.

If you believe thay are then take action and learn , you won’t always take the right actions but approaching you day in this manner will accelerate your success.

That’s all for mastering your mindset, and I promise that’s the only self helping tricks and I wanted to share them with you because they have such a profound positive impact on my life and I want the same for you

2.    Establish Your Client SEO Goals

Now , you’ve understand what Client SEO actually is and how it can help you groe your income online. And you alos have understand how to have the right minset going into it. Now what you want to do is figure out what your goals are going to be for client SEO.

Full-Time VS. on the Side?

Si first thing you’ve to figure out and you may have this figured out but for a lot of people who are just getting stared.. you need to figure out whether you want to do client SEO full time or on the Side.

There may be some people who want to quit their dialy job and go full time in the client SEO. And there are pros and cons of doing that

And ther are also people who may be want to keep their day job but also get some clients on the side.

So if you choose to go full time in the client SEO or that’s your ultimate goal , then you need to be prepared for a lot of ups and downs  because your income is gonna be completely dependent on your ability to generate new business .

This is different from having a day job , because when yu have a day job. Then you have income coming in , and any client that you aquire will have your day job or  just additional monthly recurring revenue .

With that said I’m going to assume you’re going to be a full time in the client SEO.

So if that’s the case .. next what you’ve to figure out is whether you want to be a  Soloprenue vs. Agency

Soloprenue vs. Agency

Do you want to be a solopreneur or you want actually buid  an agency?

So basically . a soloprenur means that you are the only employee of your company . that also means that you’re responsible for everything that goes on on your company.

So if your starting out that’s the way it’s gonna be and ther;s nothing wrong with this. But I highly recommend if you do go as a solopreneur of staring out this way . you should eventually start to branch out and hire help.. either in the form of contractors or in the form of employees because it ‘s just gonna get to be too difficult for you to scale and be able to generate more revenue if you’re trying to do ervything yourself. I’m gonna be covering a lot of this element of business later on the article . but for now . just understand the beginging . it’s totally fine doing everything your self and in fact it’s necessary  in many cases because you simply don’t have the capital to do otherwise.

And the big distinction you’re gonna want to have figure out is : if you want to just stick to being the solopreneur of your business , you’re gonna have a little bit more of freedom to do what you want and if you decide to go for the agency  route, your freedom kind of dimishes because then you have employees that you’re responsible for and ther’s a lot more responsiblites that are come with that.

So that’s something that you need to consider. But to be totally honest , you don’t need to have a solid goal on this right now if you’re just getting started  and you can really adapt as you go along . so may be right now  . you might be the only person in your busniness . but may be in two or three years from now , you may decide” You know what? I want to grow an agency , I want to get really serious about this.”

That’s really for you to decide for later on but you can always adapt . so don’t feel like you’re commited to whatever you decide now.

Let’s move to the third goal you need to fiure out

How Much Money do you want to make per month? (MRR)   

MRR is you monthy recurring revenue. This is always my personal preference because I feel that you can track your progress on a monthy base when it comes to revenue . so when I first started out . I wanted to get to $4000 per month. That was my goal. I belive that if I got this number per month , I’d be able to live at least decently to pay my bills any anything like that . once I hit that goal , abviosly , I moved that goal to a higher milestone.

So fo me personally, it’s always been better to measure my progress based on how much I’m making per month as opposed to making per year. And it all end up working  out the same  per year if you focus on what you’re making per month .

If you’re thinking about it this way . let’s say you want to make  six figure a year. Well , you have to make $8333 per month to make six figure a year. And if you want to make a million dollar a year , you have to get to $83k per month .

The nice thing about having monthly revenue goals is that those number are actually a lot smaller because if your goal is : I want to make a million dollar per year , that’s aprrety scary goal to have .

In that said , “ I want to make $80K a month , you can look at it .. well, I need to get 8 cliets who are paying $10k per month to reach that goal . or you can do all the different types of formulas to reach that amount but it’s a lot easier to see that number as opposed to seeing a huge 7 figure number that can be scary from starting out.

So you can figure out how much money you wan to make per month . you need to write out your goals.

You may have ssen me talking about this before that you should have SMART goals   .

SMART Goals setting.

That’s a great formaula to follow when you’re crearing your golas. And SMART formula is pretty simple . it just means that your goal is

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely

So the example for going for Stating out a client SEO business would be:

“ I will easily make $4000/mo from client SEO by December 31, 2022”

So as you see at this goal is that I out line specific amount of money that I want to make , and then I aslo choose  a date which is deadline for the goal I want to acjieve. And most impotantly I picked the goal that I belived was realistic .

So when you’re stating out . you don’t want to find a goal that is redicolos because you’re gonna just ending up getting more lies when you don’t reach that goals.

You should se goals that challenge you but also are not totally unrealistic that they just end up demoralizing you and making you want to quit. You just really need to avoid that.

But don’t e afraid to create goals make you alittle bit nervous as well. But I’ve been seeing this mistake made so often even when it come to crearing just SEO goals. I have seen someone who has never driven traffic to a website , has never ranked for a single keyword , and asked me how he can get a hundered thousand vistors per month . but they have never gotten 10 vistors per month. So you don’t want to do that . you need to first set your bar lower when you haven’t even reach that bar yet.

Just be intelligent in what you’re doing . don’t be unrealistic and do your best to create goals that do challenge you a little bit but most importantly are realistic.

So that all ther’s to setting goals. That’s not complicated . How much money you want to make per month and when do you want to do it ? and is it a realistic goal? And then ultimately  look at the futue. Where you want to be . do you want to be a solopreneur? Do you want to have an agency with puch of employees? And a physical location and all that good stuff that comes with a big agency . so that’s for you to figure out . but the nest thing that I want you to figure out quickly is you Client SEO Expectations.

Client SEO Expectations 

What you need to really know . and what to expect is your expectations about engaging in this type of business . So , first of all the number one factor that’s gonna determine how you’re doing Client SEO is you taking action!

It doesnot matter if I give you every single step that you  need to take . if it’s all in your head . it doesn’t do anything . what you have to do  is to take what I give you and take action on it. Because other wise , it’s useless because honestly you can get information from anywhere , but if you’re not taking any action on it then that information is really useless .

so I have structured this blog to be very actionable so you can literly take what I show you and you can put it into action and you should see results very quickly .

But I personally can NOT take action for you , you have to take action . and that’s what gonna halp you learn the most  .

So I can give you that base knowledge , I can give you that guidance . but ultimately , your success is gonna be completely  credicated on the decisions that you make and the actions that you take  .

As I say before , you need to take accountability for you Client SEO business because ultimaltly it’s up to you to determine where you are going to go and sure ther’s something out side of your control but those things don’t really matter. All that matters is what you do and what you have control over .

And the biggest thing that you have contrl over in your life and in you Client SEO business is your ability to take actions on the information that you are given . that’s my number one tip for this section is .. Please don’t just rush this course and try to just cram your mind with a punch of information because it’s not gonna really help you . what you need to do is . study what I’m giving you and take action on that before moving on.

May be you’re a little bit further ahead. That’s totally fine but the rules still applies . that’s my big tip. Just follow mt steps , follow what I’ve learn from experience and then just take actionand goyour own path and figure it out in your own unique experience . that’s all                    

3.    Pick an SEO Niche

Let’s know how to pick a niche for landing an SEO clients.

The first question I need to cover is whether you should niche down or have a general focus .

 ther’s no wrong answer here but it’s going to be easier to niche down because there will be less competiton and your marketing and sales process will be more targeted

now that doesn’t mean you can’t take on client to another niche. It just mean that your brand’s identity will be centered around one or a few niches , now what most people don’t realise is that there are many different ways to niche down.

Ther are few ways to niche down

With that said let’s start with the most common way of niching down which is on:

1.      By  industry level: chsing industry with high customer valuse

So you want to target niches that have a high custi,er value

Forexample,a single customer for personal lanteur could be worth hundereds of thousands of dollars.

That means you can charge a premium for SEO, because the ROI for personal inderwor is substantial .

On the other hand , companies with the low customer values won’t be able to get an ROI on SEO services and less be able to make for low customer value with sales volume.

A supplement company I worked with a low customer value but they had enough sales volume to justify their investment and premium seo services .

That main takway her is : Target industries that can get an ROI from using your SEO services.

I have a list of some industries with high customer values here:

The second way you can niche down is :

2.      Target a specific locations: Fucs on smaller wealthier cities

So instead of choosing a niche you just choose locations to go after . when I first started , I choosed smaller cities that were high in the wealth scale.

For example. Instead of targeting los anglos, I would choose sand monica and bavery hills. These cities have a lot of money through them but the competition is lower than loss angloss.

So when we determine how wealthy these city is , look at how much police officers and find a fighter to pay

For example. If we look at indeed  on average, police officers make $80,000 per year and this 37% above the national average . police officers is usually public records that you can find this information quickly with some google searches . that’s said. If you are new , you should target lower competition , high value cities in the begingn. Just like I did. 

And as you beging to build a portfolio and website authority. You can venture into more competitive cities.

The third way to niche down is on :

3.      both the industry level and location level

forexample, you could target lawyers in bavery hills or even get more specific and onlt taget person endry lawyes in bavery hills. Now abviously. You’re pulling a prospect so be much smaller  with this approach but it can be effective when starting out .

in general , focus is always the best

And the final way to niche down on :

4.      the service level

so instead of offering full service seo is your primary solution . you could splinting your services into microserives .

forexample you could specialize in technical seo, seo content creation, link building . or just local seo

and what’s interesting about this approach is that microservices can be used a foot-in-door tactic to land larger full service seo contracts.

And this is my favouvorite one for landing my client , you can also become known as link building guy or whatever identity you want . many seo agencies have been successfully sing this exact approach  .

And the great one to study is page one Power. Focus is good.

4.    Build an SEO Portfolio and Get Results

There are three reason why you need to prove that you can do SEO before to taking on clients.

The first reason are

1.      Ethics

Company that ivest money with you or any SEO company under the impression that you know what you are doing .

You don’t have to by an industry-leading expert to take on clients , but you should at least some results to prove your competence.

And if you don’t have results right now . don’t worry . because I will be showing you ways to build your portfolio as fast as possible .

So with that said, it’s higly and ethical to provide seo services , if you’ve never ranked or got results . 

Thinks about it this way. Would you know hire a supposed plumber to fix your pipes if they’ve never fixed a pipe before ?

Well. It’s highly unlikely, super risky for you

And when you hire a plumber, you’re under the assumption that they :

1. They know about plumbing than you do and
2. They’ve actually practiced plumbing and have experience.

Now imagine that you did hire a supposed plumber and had now experience or knowledge. And he or she ended up destroying your pipes or flodding your house . you would be fuming if you found out that this person lied to you and made you believe that they were competent.

That brings us to the second reason is to protect your reputation

2.      protect your reputation

if a company pays you to do SEO and finds out you have no experience and have never done results , then your reputation will be in the line .

Now sure it’s possible to figure it out along the way and get the client results but it’s highly risky for you and them. And if you don’t get them results . they might rich your reputation . that’s why it takes time to truly understand how to do effective SEO and then actually taking what you’ve learnt and practicing to get results fundmental to your long term success in this industry . the best way to think about this is the quote from warren buffertt.

“ it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. “

From this you should know that reputation is everything and you should think about what actions you should  and shouldn’t to protect it

3.      it makes your sales process 10x easier

 there no great way to persuasuion vehicle than demonstrating that you actually know what you are doing

building adeep portfolio of SEO results should be a priority if you’re planning to work with clients for the long term

with that said, let me a few methods that you can se to build you SEO portfolio as quickly as possible.

Methods to build an SEO portfolio

a.       Work for free

Now I know that you probably just rolls your eyes at this idea but hear me out for a second

Fisrt , it’s easy to close a deal if you simply say: I help you rank for some low competition keywords for free because I’m trying to build my SEO Portfolio , then once you got these clients some results , yu can convert them into actual paying clients .

Now the key is to choose a small number of very low competition keywords 

And the goal in this process is to get results quickly ( So you can add it to your portfolio) and to demonstate to the client that you know what you’re doing.

And if the client has a  decent website. You should be able to rank for some low competition , micro long tail keywords pretty quickly .

And after you’ve achieve some results , I recommend pushing for referals as well . you can say something like . I help you rank for XYZ for free if you send me some referrals.

This is the fastest way to snowball your portfolio and monthly income.

And the send method which take much longer is :

b.      Build a niche website and rank for low-competition keywords.

This is similar to the example above and this is the approach I personally use . now technically you still working for free but you are in complete control . you will be the one to reep the benefits of the success of your niche website.

And remember that each keyword you rank for        is a success that you can add to your portfolio

Just keep in mind that: The goal is to demonstrate you’re mpre competent at SEO than the companies you’re pitching. Thay’s it. If you’re doing that right. You’re gonna land clients.

c.       Build a local website and rank for low competition keywords that your target market wants to rank for.

Foreaxmple if you’re targeting hfak companies , you could rank for super long tail keyword phrases like best hfak compay in baveryhills CA. and this is an extremely powerful method . because you are actually demonstrating in their taget market.

So those are the best ways to build your portfolio quickly . all you need to do now is focus on demonstating your SEO by getting real results just by using these stategies

5.    Getting SEO Clients: the Outbound System

First let’s see:

What is the outbound marketing system

 Outbound dmarketing is often refer to as push marketing but it means that you are the one pushing from your clients

You are thr one reaching out to qualified prospects and trying to persuande them to become a client .

Now this is different than the inbound system which is refer to as Pull Mareting which is the process of attracting leads to your business using inbound marketing

Outbound means you’re going out to get clients and inbound means they are coming to you.

Now before I show you the outbound methods , I need to show you how to get contact information . that’s because you will be sending emils. This is critical.

Getting Contact information

Hunter.io is my favourite tools . just enter the target companies domain and let Hunter.io work its magic .

Sometimes it wouldn’t produce any results . and that’s why you need to use norboy as a backup option.

Just open up vianorbot and enter the first name and last name and the domain of the prospect you’re trying to reach.  And if these two tools don’t produce any results then I recommend using linkedin to find the point of contact you’re trying to reach  .

Those three tactics should help you find most compnies point of contact information .

Now let me show you the process .

The process

First

you’re going to identify          a point of leverage , so possible leverage points you can use on the following:

1. The company is ranking on page 5 of google or worse for their most important keyword.
2. The company is paying for google ads but has no organic search visibility.
3. The company doesn’t have an SSL certificate installed.
4. The company website isn’t mobile friendly.
5. The company’s website loads slowly.
6. The company’s website doesn’t have google analytics or a Facebook pixel installed.
7. The company hasn’t claimed or properly setup their google My Business listing.
8. The company has inconsistent NAP W information (Name, Address, phone or website information.)

So what you’re doing now is grab a large list of prospects . then go through each of these items . it’s see if their website or company is spling any of these points of leverage.

Then from there , you will develop a customized pitch based on the issue they have.

For example, let’s sya the company is ranking on page 5 or worse for the target keywords.

What you would do is:

1. Pitch a free video audit to help them identity what’s holding their SEO performance back
2. Then one they agree, you perform the audit.
3. Then after you deliver the audit , you just ask them if they would like you to handle the SEO campaign for them.

Now .. how you handle the pitch depends on your level of experience . so I you’re trying to build a portfolio  , then it would make sense for you to either work for free , or for a low amount as I described before .

You can also pich a micro service before trying to score the large full service seo contract .

This will turn your prospect into a paying customer but without them having to make a big commitment upfront.

This will make you different than 80% of all SEOs because you’re taking time to analyse these busninesses and develop an intelligent targeted pitch.

You can use that free download templates to help guide you through this process . fisrt you will find a google sheet template you can copy for prospecting and identifying leverage points and tracking your outreach. Alos you will find outreach templtes to support each point of leverage .

Now let’s talk about the second best way to land your clients and that’s partnering with digital marketing agencies

Second

Ensure you will do seo            for the agencies clients on a white lable bases.

That means you will do the work and get the results , but they’ll take credit for the results and communicate directly with the clients.

You’re simply working on the backend.

Now this is a great arrangement in the beginning because

1. You don’t have to foucs on sales other than the initial sale with the agency.
2. You don’t have to deal with customer service . because you will be only communicating with the agency

Now the downsides are that the monthly will be smaller per client because agency has to make the profit.

Now the good news is this is usually offset by the quantity of clients that an gency will send you. And in fact . I use this exact method my first got started.

I had white lable agreement with several agencies at the begging . that was a great source of income. Which lead all kinds of opportunites down the road .

I recommend combining both  white label and direct-to-client to maximize your income growth.

So with that said. How you actually land white label agreements?

First you have to know what types of companies to target.

I recommend making a list of all digital marketing, internet marketing, SEO, PPC, graphic design, and web design companies. Or basically any type of business that may provide SEO services.

Second you have to understand why an agency would outsource their SEO to you , the main reason why they’re outsourcing because it saves them time them to hire and train employees and if an agency get more time , they can focus on bringing in new clients .

Now the most important part for them though. Is to work with a competent SEO who can actually get their clients results.

But occurs it won’t be a problem as long as you follow and execute the framework in the seo portion of SEO guide here in my blog

Now the last piece of the puzzle would depend on your level of experience

So..

If you’re new. I recommend pitching the agency that you will work for free on 1 of their client campaign just to prove yourself.

You need to emphasize that you have nothing to lose by hiring you . and trust mr on this that the long term value this approach is worth working for free for a little bit of time because if you do a solo job. A single agency could send you enough clients to replace your dialy job’s income. At least that’s what happened for me.

I had some whilte label seo outreach templates here . you can download them from here:

I also recommend stating a portfolio on WE growth, up work, freelancer and even guru

Contanly find their websites for new opportunities and apply to as many as you can , you have nothing to lose by applying and learning what works during this application process.

 I will tell you this :

I have hired many freelancers on upwork and almost always hired the person that has the best attention to the details.

For example . in my job posting , I will inject something like “ write the word “ RED” in your proposal . They people that don’t do it are automatically disqualify because it shows that they:

1. Didn’t take the time to actually read the job posting. Which implies laziness or they don’t have enough time to serve my company the right way.
2. It implies   they can’t follow instructions or have low attention to details

And these are all bad qualities , that’s why I eliminate those possibilities at the onset .

The main takaway is that putting in a little more effort than the average freelancer will produce far better results .

Most people on thiese freelancing websites are focused on quantity. I recommend fociusing on quality             

Think about it this way:

If you submitted just 1 detailed and thoughtful SEO proposal perday for 3 months, You will have sent off 90 quality proposal.

If you just covert just 3% of these proposals and new clients , you would have three new clients , and this is being very consertitve fas as output and coversion rates.

And believe it or not . increasing your client base is sometimes nothing more than just  putting a consistent quality work over time and the best way to illustrate this is through a quick story

In 1993 , a 23 years old named trimen trismen was hired by a bank in apet for canadaa . and upon his hiring, people didn’t expect much of him . then they started to take notice how quickly he was progressing . drimen used a simple method each morning to excel at his new job .

He simply placed two jars on his desk and one was filled with 120 paper clips and the other was empty.

Then after every sales call . drismen would take one paper clip and move it to the empty jar and he didn’t stop until all the paper clips removed .

This signified that he made 120 sales calls for the day .

And by using this simple and consistent method, trismen was making $57K per year which is equivalent to a  $125K today within only 18 months and then he landed another big job shorthly after.

The main takawys here is that Consistency pays off

Most people aren’t consistent and won’t do this type of work and that’s your advantage .

Do the work and be consistent because those two qualities are the key to producing results using the outbound system for landing new SEO clients and the crazy part is that I’venot even showd you the inbound system that will be stackonmg with this one .

But that’s all for the outbound system

6.    Getting SEO clients: The Inbound system

Just to review the difference between the outbound and the inbound system is that you’re searching for and reaching out to potential clients when you’re doing outbound marketing . but potential clients are searching and reaching out to you when you’re doing inbound marketing

For Maximum results , you should be stacking both methods together

Tha’s because outbound is effective for getting clients quickly while inbound methods take a longer to see an impact and moving acquire considerably more work.

However in the long term , once your inbound marketing picks upstreams, you will get new leads and customer 24/7 , 365 on autopilot.

And eventually you can choose to stop use the outbound marketing all together if you’re driving enough leads for the inbound .

For example , I only used outbound method for the first three or four months of starting my agency . since then my company gets one bundered percent of its leads through inbound marketing .

And trust me . it’s a lot           easier to grow a company like this way .

But before Into the tactics I need you explain how the sales process for outbound vs. inbound is different.

 So the big difference between that two is that with inbound you will be responding to leads either through a contact form or through a direct phone call . I personaly recommend both of conversion options when you’re focusing on client SEO .

So there are three types of inbound methos I’m going to show you .

The fist is  referral generation

Content marketing

Paid advertising

The key to fully inderstanding inbound marketing is to understand how a content marketing funnel works and how a sales funnel work .

A contetnt funnel marketing is consisting of 3 sections :

Figure 1

1. Top of the funnel: TOFU : Create an indepth blog post targeting a relevant keyword
2. Mid of funnel: MOFU : Create a free lead magnet to convert traffic into-email
3. Bottom of the funnel : BOFU: use testominail , stories, rsults , etc to turn prospects into customers.

Insure you need to produce content at each stage of the funnel .

Her’s how my sales process at 360 degree of view .

1. At the top , there will be traffic . and this may come from organic search, paid advertising or other referral resources
2. ToFu > at the top of the funnel I have blog content , then
3. MoFu > Within the blog content I promote a free lead magent which is me Ebooks .
4. BoFu > Then after a subscriber go to the ebooks , I offer them unlimted time free trail to my all books . this free trail is my BoFu content. I stacked testominial , free to ask me questions. The goal in this stage is to turn leads into customers . so all your content dhould be structured to achieve that objective

Notice how the content changes as you go down the funnel . first do educate, second you add more value but you sk them to make a small commitment and lastly you sell .

Believe it or not , the traffic part of this equation is the least important , you can get enormous amount of traffic , but if your funnel is poorly structured , that traffic won’t convert into customers.

And and the end of the day , that’s all that matters . that’s why investing time in developing an effective content marketing funnel in sales process is well worth it .

So now let me show you how you can develop and execute an effective content marketing funnel and sales process so you can land more SEO clients .

The first method is :

Case Study method

1. You create an SEO case study about some results you’ve achieved. Preferably that;s relelevant to your target market.
2. Then you’re gonna add a call-to-action in this case study for the readers to apply for a free SEO audit.
3. Then all you need to do is drive traffic to your SEO case study.

In most cases, you will need to use paid traffic. I will help you with paid traffic but now I just want to show you the methods at 360 dgree view.

Method number two

is my personal favorite also the most challenging. It’s the process of choosing locations and then creating GEO targrting landing pages then you will rank on google .

Forexample .

If you search manhaten SEO , then you will find my website Absalslam . this single one page is one of the biggest sources of lead generation when I still taking on client s  .

If you are new . I recommend targeting smaller cities like I mention in the niching down part.

Select high-value cities and then work to rank those pages .

And trust me it worth the effort . I just takes time and patience  . then on these pages you can either have a traditional application form or you can pitch a free audit .

If you don’t have an existing client base or don’t have much authority in the SEO industry then I recommend using a free SEO audit to get your foot in the door.

These first SEO methods can work to gether as well.

For example , you can promote your case studies on your GEO targeted pages .

The third method

is to target informational keyowrds in the SEO industry.

Now I will be honest . this is a challenging one because of the competition but it’s completely valuable once you rank because ther’s no better form of skill demonstration.

You’re building social proof and trust upfront and subconsciously before you even talk a lead.

Think about it . if they are searching google , going to your page , and sumbiting a form  . then what just occurred? You just demonstrate it that SEO works without talking or having to persuade them at all .

That’s why I always laugh when some gurus who aren’t ranking for any keywords claim that ranking for SEO keywords is a waste of time .

99.9% percents of my leads are directly attributed to SEO keywords that Abdalslam.com ranks for . please don’t let them fool you.

If you take this approach , make sue you start out by targeting longer tail keywords .

Forexmple, trying to rank for “ backlinks” or some other tuff head or budy keywords which required lots of links , content and patience . I recommend waiting until your website is much more authoritative to target those types of keywords .

 in the mean time , go after long tail keywords and dominate those , you don’t need a ton traffic to get qualified leads . and the final inbound methods that’s incredibly effective is to perform publich seo audits and then post them on youtube.

I highly recommend looking a chase renders youtube channel because he does an excellent job in the strategy

Audits are a great way to demonstrate your expertise and they cost you nothing to produce nd publish . they only require your time.

Youtube in general as a chanell is in my opinion the most untapped stores for driving SEO leads .

There are only a few SEOs pushing are on youtube and ther’s a lot of opportunities there.

You can produce case studies or even general information video content .

The ultimate goal of your YouTube content should be to educate , inform, and establish you as an authority.

In fact , as you noticed , the ultimate goal  of inbound marketing is to educate and to build your trust before your brand . trust is the key to sales .

In the begging or at any time , you should be looking at every channels as an opportunity to add value and to build your brand authority in the industry .

In addition yo your website and youtube , you should  be also adding value forums, blog comment sections on the industry blogs and even in faceook groups .

People have built entire careers just by adding value in facebook groups or in forums .

 Now we will contribute in  the communites won’t always drive direct traffic to your website .

It’s a ways to build your brnad , and when people start to recognize the value that you bring . they will start to search for your name and brand on google .and this is beneficial from an SEO prospective but it’s alos huge from a business prospective .

It’s onlt possible by adding massive amount of value across multible channels . now keep in mind that you don’t have to do this forever but in the begging , you should be testing every channel and consistenly producing value on them .

So those are the best inbound marketing methods in my opion and I  have pesonall  used each one.

Ther are other tactics but I didn’t use so I will not covering that .

With that said , let’s review the inbound system

Inbound System Overview

1. Create Top of the funnel content. this may be informational content, case studies, Youtube videos, or even contributions to communicate
2. Create middle of the funnel content. thos may be a free SEO audit which requires a user to submit an application or it can b a free download which requires  a user to submit their email address.
3. Create Bottom of the funnel content that’s designed to persuade your leads to become SEO clients.

At the final stage which I haven’t coved yet is creating SEO Proposal and following up ina proposal . that’s what the next is all about

7. Turn your SEO Leads into paying clients: Sales 101

As you learn in the inbound marketing techniques above require you to capture leads even through emails or through application form .  I recoomend setting both.

Let’s start with the email .

There are three email providers that I personally  recommend .

Number one is : Mailchimp .

Mailchmp is perfect for smaller for a smaller budget because you can get a good number of subscribers for free .  I personally start out with mailchimp then I outgrow in something more advanced which leads me to number two which is Drip.

And Drip is more focused on email automation . and I don’t personally recommend jumping into  the email automation when you are new becuae it will likely be a distraction and ther’s a big learning curve.

But one you’ve mastered many of the other skillsets . it’s worth looking into .

One other respected email providers is A weber . it doesn’t have a bog learing vurve .  and it’s quite similar to mailchimp .

So after you’ve selected a way to capture email addresses . then you need a way for leads to apply or contact you  . you can use contact forms to imbed form directly on your website . BUT I ALSO LOVE USING tYPEFORM. It’s free and have some really amazing functionality .

You can also see Gravity forms which is more advanced   version of contact form but it’s paid.

So whay you do after you have collected leads ?

Well.. your initial outreach would depend on what they are requesting by filling out a form .

For example if they fill your seo     audit application . your outreach will be very compared to if they submitted your full services seo applicational.

Now this part comes in sense so I won’t bore you . if they aplly for an seo audit . then reach out and thank them for application . and let them know  when their free seo audit will be completed.

An d blielve or not I recommend the same same exact process even there are a full service

Seo lead . once again thank them for applying and then ask them if you can perform a free SEO audit .

I have exact template you can use .

Then what you do after you have completed the audit . this is the most stage of the process so read carefully :

You need to turn this lead into a paying customer. That means you will send them a simple email about the completed audit and you will sya something along lines of  :

“ Hey name, I ‘ve completed your SEO audit { it’s attached | here’s the link}. The biggest actions you need to improve your SEO performance are:

1. High impact action
2. High impact action
3. High impact action

These actions will have the biggest impact on performance , but there are many other actions/ issues you will tackle ( as you will discover in the audit)

Do you have a few minutes to discuss the audit this week?”

Or you can say”

Hey, name. I have completed your SEO audit. Do you have afew minutes today or tomorrow to go over our findings?”

Now this method is a snakier one because you will send the audit right before the meeting .

 SO IN THE WAY, YOU Force them to get in the phonewith you. 

In the previous templates, is a value first templet but it won’t drive as many as phone calls as the second one,

And ofcourse you can vary these templaes if you don’t want to take over the phone although I highly recoomend you get in the phone becaue your close rate will be substaintially higher.

Let’s assume you get in the phone to discuss SEO audits findings.

You don’t want anything complicated here. Just talkr about what you found and what they would need to do to meet the changes you’re suggesting  and the only method I recommend here is to discuss how much work goes into this actions.

Remember that companies hire SEO experts because :

1. It’s too technical for them to execute and
2. They don’t have enough time to execute.

These two factors should naturally be demonstated through your discussion . then towards the end, just ask the lead if they will be interested in letting your company do the seo for them so they don’t have to waste time or effort trying to figure it out themselves and if they say yes then tell them you’ll develop a proposal and get it over to them by the end of the week . and that’s it. If they say no then you should counter with down still and say:

Say” Ok, no worries. I know it’s a big commitment . Would you be nterested in us at least fixing your technical SEO? This won’t require a monthly commitment or any thing. It’ll just be a one-off project and we’ll make your website technically sound.”

If they say yes . then you will send them a miny proposal . remember that the goal is to get them to pay your company money.  That’s when the relationship changes  .

It may seem that will never become a full service client. But once , there’s exchange of values , everything changes .

SO now let’s talk about proposal, the first thing you need to do is talk about what tools and software you can use to deliver tour proposals.  There are a few different ways to create and send proposals .

4 ways to deliver proposal

1. Google Docs
2. PDFs
3. Pitch Decks using Google Slides or Powerpoints
4. Proposal Software such as proposify, PandaDoc, and Nusii.

I  recommend Testing each to see what works best for you and I will have some smaples of each here,

But listen , the vehichle for your proposal  is by far the least important of the process .

What matters most is the substance of the proposal . and that’s why I prepared 19 elements you need to produce successful seo prposaals

19 elements for successful SEO proposal

1. They’re personalized.

There is some pieces of your SEO proposal that you can use TEMPLATES , but the key to a truly successful proposal is to personalize for the prospect situation.

the best way to accomplish this goal is by performing an SEO audit upfront before you send your proposal .

that way you can add your findings form the SEO audit in the proposal and create a personalized roadmap based on their situation

8. Make Your SEO Clients Love You

In this part, I’m going to teach you how to make your SEO clients Happy by constantly driving results and by providing incredible service and experience.

No matter what anyone tells you, the key to making your clients happy is to get results.

There are some other factors that determine their happiness level but results are the dominant.

Get them results and most clients will love you forever.

Now keep in mind that there are some clients probably less than 1% who will never be satisfied.These clients are extremely rare. you will know it when you encounter them.

With that said… Here’s how my client’s SEO process looks

You can replicate, modify or add to this process.

I tried to make this process as lean as possible SO:

1. You can get your clients results super fast 
2. You can turn a profit

Client SEO Process

1. Perform an SEO audit :
   To get the existing issues and research to analyze your competitors and find keywords and link opportunities.
2. Prioritise actions based on your findings and what will have the highest impact on their performance
   For example: making a site mobile-friendly would be a level one action because it will greatly impact SEO performance.
   Compare this to the image alt tag description which would be a level 3 action because it will have a low impact on SEO performance.
3. Take action on your priority list.
4. Repeat critical actions such as: creating keyword-targeted content, optimizing pages, and acquiring backlinks every month.

And this is the 360-degree view of the SEO campaign but what you do month to month will vary.

So let me show you how I would structure a six-month campaign and keep in mind that some of these actions will vary based on the client’s budget. Also, I will have workflows for  3 – 6 – 12 months SEO campaigns here:

The six-month campaign structure

Let’s start with month one:

So in month one, you are going to do the following :

1. Perform an SEO audit 
2. Conduct keyword research
3. Analyze competitors 
4. Find link prospects 
5. Fix all technical / UX issues

In months #2-3:

1. Optimise existing keyword-targeted pages 
2. Create new keyword-targeted pages 
3. Create linkable assets

In months #4-6:

1. Acquire backlinks
2. Create new keyword-targeted pages if budget is available 

this is a high-level view of the process.

Outsourcing SEO tasks

Now I need to cover something that is very important 

Should you do all the work or should you get help?

Well.. when you’re starting out, You’re trying to do all the work yourself 

But the reality is :

“ You should begin the process of getting help and building a system as soon as possible because it’s the only way you can scale your service and take on more clients.”

Think about it this way :

You can either spend more time working and retain more profit on a low scale or you could have more time but have less profit on a high scale.

Here’s how it looks from a numbers perspective:

Let’s say you have ten SEO clients paying $500 per month and you are doing all the work = $5,000.

Technically you have a 100% profit margin in this scenario, however, it’s not that simple when you consider your time investment.

Let’s say your hourly rate is $50 dollars for an hour which means you will spend 10 hours a month per client . Which are a quiet 100 Hours of work per month.

That means you’re working 100 hours to make $5,000 per month.

This is a nice amount of money but there’s one problem. you could only go so far until your max is down.

Let’s say you take in 10 more clients and that put you at 200 hours per month or 50 hours a week.

It would be nearly impossible to bring in new projects at this stage.

Sure you’re making 10,000 dollars per month but at what cost?

This is all assuming you have incredible efficiency and you work like a robot which rarely happens.

In this scenario, you’re nothing more than a highly paid employee because you’re being paid based on the number of hours you’re working.

Now, this is okay in the short term. But in the long run, You want to flip this equation. you do not want to be paid based on the number of hours you’re working.

Think about that for a second:

would you rather make $10,000 per month in pure profit and work 200 hours? or Would you rather make $5,000 per month in profit and work 50 hours?

I would personally take the later any day of the week. And it’s possible.

Well, It’s possible to stop being paid by the hour when you either outsource or hire employees.

And I have done both and I prefer outsourcing. That is because pretty much every single SEO task can be outsourced.

That means instead of spending your time serving clients. you can spend your time selling new ones and keeping your existing client base happy.

How to Outsource SEO tasks

So how do you do it?

Well..it’s actually very simple 

Let’s say you have a $1,000 per month client: take 25-50% of revenue and invest it into a service or freelancer.

And every time you take on a new client. just repeat this process.

You’re still going to profit. But you’re going to be on a scale and have much more time. Then at a certain point, you have so many clients.

Then you will need to raise your prices.

But in the beginning, you just need a small amount of revenue and get help immediately. this is exactly how i was able to grow my monthly  income so quickly with client work.

It wasn’t because I was an SEO guru. But it was because i started looking for help right away.

Don’t try to do everything yourself. Take less profit and get help.

Doing so will actually produce more profit at scale

100% profit at 10,000/mo = $10,000 profit.  

But

50% profit at $50,000/mo = $25,000 profit

And you can see from the simple equation that less margin at scale destroys a high margin on a low scale. And you will be working less in the second scenario.

 Please keep everything I just outline in mind because it will literally change your life and business.

Reporting and Client Support

And the last big piece of client SEO work that I need to cover is reporting and client support.

My recommendation which I have personally done is to:

Send a monthly report outlining what deliverables were completed or worked on and the overall performance which may come in the form of individual keyword ranking performance, total keyword positions on ahrefs or semrush or google analytics organic search and traffic growth.

And aside from your monthly report: you should update your clients at least bi-weekly. Weekly is even better.

Just report positive changes and rankings and report big actions that were completed.

The truth is: Clients want to stay in the loop and if They believe you’re working hard on their campaign. they won’t be breathing down your neck.

Lastly. Don’t keep your client hanging. if they send you an email try to respond within 24 hours or less.

So those are the keys to successful Client SEO campaigns for both the clients and your business.

Starting an SEO business 2023 FAQs