Opening a SEO company...

Hi all...

Well, I am still thinking about it . Opening SEO company. I know there are alot, but I want to open a new one in my country, in my launguage. Here the SEO business start to work better than it was 3 years ago- but I feel there is enough space in the market - and this is the right time to jump inside.

My questions are :

1. is it better to develope a software or to give a service of SEO ?

2. There is a chance for a business that only works on SEO? I mean - no web designing/developing ? Can I focus on SEO only?

3. Any suggestions for begging ? Something to pay attention to or things I need to be careful...?

help/directions/comments ... Anything you have in mind... ;)

Best!

Guy.

The biggest problems are NOT going to be logistical. To sell SEO well you have be very good at selling, period.

The only thing that will hook a customer is making them believe that it is money well spent (i.e that the returns will be good). I work strictly locally. If someone gives me a call and then starts asking about money I always tell them that before we start talking money, I want to sit down with them and explain exactly what is wrong with their site and what needs to be improved.

Explaining to a potential customer the SEO flaws in an existing site is by far the best way to make yourself appear knowledgeable. You have to be able to do this with quite a bit of finesse though. Spouting jargon to a client will scare them off. You want to be able to simplify matters enough that they understand it. I do this for three reasons:
1) When you sound like you know what you are doing, then you sound like you are selling a quality product.
2) Getting the customer to understand how much sheer work can go into this helps rationalize whatever price tag you throw on your services.
3) LOCK CLIENTS INTO A CONTRACT, at least for the first few months. On this selling point I always stress that I'm not trying to lock them into a contract because I think that I can or because I want to make money, but because it reflects the nature of the work at hand. For the first few months, constant tweaking of the site, and monitoring it to follow changes is a necessity. Charging on an hourly basis to monitor and tweak a site is silly in my opinion. Get them to sign a contract for X dollars per month in exchange for following the site's SEO progress.

Finally, because SEO is so business oriented on the non-technical side, you have to talk about it on a business level. Clients only need to understand the bottom line. I often find myself saying something to the effect of "I've done some preliminary research on your site. As far as internet users are concerned, your site is INVISIBLE. It's missing things that are critical to making it rank well on the search engines. For example, your competitors have thousands of links to their site; you have five. The site needs to be optimized if you want it to be visible, because it's doing you little good if nobody can find it. You have two budget considerations to take into account: what you're paying me, and a budget for purchasing links. Here is what I charge, and here is what I think you will have to shell out to purchase links."

that it seems like it's more of an "art" than a science....and that the target of SERPs is always a moving one....

patience, perseverity, stick-tuit-ness are all important characteristics of the best seo companies out there....sure there's a ton of others too....

and then don't forget to communicate with your client via reports as to how that program is running....

:-)

Jim

One thing I am really don't know how I am going to do...

In order to rank sites in good places I need alot of spots over the net where I can put links and get PR going up.

How I am going to do that? Do I need that each wesite that I work with will put links in the future to other website that I will work on ? Do I need to purchase link spots as part of my expends?

I need ALOT of spots over the net and I am not sure what's the best way to do so...

Guy.

I always tell my clients to set aside a link budget for purchasing relevant links.

The difference between working as a SEO engineer / professional and having a SEO company is "having a company"... that means that first of everything you must be a good seller, a good marketer, a good business man... you'll have to attract your customers and convince them that they're money will be well invested. Only after that the practical SEO part will come.

So think if all these fits you... if the naswer is "Yes" you're on the right track...

IMO there are to good ways to attract clients. First, launch an ad campaign into an untapped nice market. The second is promotion. When I started my "business" just about a month ago, it turned out that my first client was actually a promoter. Now he's got a stack of about 250 of my business cards that he gives out, and I'm picking up new clients practically every day. With so many businesses everywhere that have websites, chances are if you meet someone with a business card and say "Oh I see you've got a website, I bet it's not optimized," you're probably right. I've found that to a lot of businesses, especially small to medium sized ones, the idea of optimization is relatively novel. They generally seemed intruiged by the concept.

Im managing a mid size seo company for last two years , its a difficult job because seo is just like playing a game where you dont know when the rules can be changed and you'll need to revise the whole project but yes keep on going is the only way

You need to be a good seller for seo becuase selling something like " top ranking on google" is not feasible with sandbox now

You'll need to be multi services provider , becuase if you have web design and seo and other services like logo and web hosting services then there will be less interfare of other party in your work