Page 2 - SEO Agents Needed

As I thought. $1000 for on page, lets hope your customers see a return. As your business grows you will see a shift in whats important in terms of proof of competence. You will no longer need a resume but will need a list of client references. If you have a bunch of clients that have spent $1000 with you but only seen a return of $200 then you won't get many I am afraid.

I admire your cheek and spirit but don't sacrifice your reputation for a quick buck

Ok, I take that rebuke, Lewis.


And to the disgruntled forum poster; I'm not sure what I said revealed I don't know what I'm talking about. You know 'SEO' that is catered towards a certain demographic, I'm talking about SEO that is catered toward another demographic, and yes because it the competition levels radically differ between these two demographics, what 'works' in one demographic cannot work in another. Type in Plumbing work, or plumbers or what not, and then a county, a city, a town, a zip code. Those are the websites we are dealing with.

But Larry, that's a good point. A business needs a reputation, and over-charging people isn't the way to get it. Now, I don't consider 1k overcharging, just because no one else is rushing to hit this demographic(small, local business). These guys have no clue what SEO even is! I look at it as if all sides win. They can stop being on page four for "Wayne County Bakeries" or "Plumbing Ann Arbor" and I get some money.

But if your clients don't see a return because there isn't one to be made then you are over charging and your taking advantage of the fact that your clients don't know SEO or what to expect from it.

I could charge you $100 to rank for a term and that could be a huge rip off if I knew that you would never see traffic for ranking for that term.

If you are talking about "pages" then I'm afraid you're not talking about local listings. If that is the case, then on-page optimization is likely not going to get you very far.

You may get them above page 4, but unlikely to reach the top of page 1.

Tweaking title tags, image alts, keyword density (always rubbish), these will not help you as much as a verified, local listing with a few details, citations, and reviews.

Jsteele, now that is a piece of advice I appreciate. Not to cover my tracks here, but I did mention that more content would be added. ;) But nah, you got me there. You are right, those will have a greater effect than the things I mentioned.

To Lewis, you remember Socrates hating on writing because he said it could never be specific enough and so it would always breed confusion? I'm basically gonna agree with him from now on. :p My post makes it look like I'm into exploiting the poor business owners who don't know a thing about SEO, but that's not my goal. I think that I can get their pages to rank higher on those local searches, which will increase their traffic. I can't control whether or not they get sales, but I can say that it at least increases their chances.

But as one poster mentioned, this is a great area for me to get experience. I'll probably come back here in a 5 months and say to you and Jsteele, "d*mn, you guys were right, I was a newb."

Anyways, I'm done posting for the day, thanks for smacking me around with the truth yall.


- Nobodyreal

As a caveat there could be some low competition keywords with higher search volumes which may be worth targeting through a local campaign. In those cases $1,000 investment could well produce a nice return.

I suggest you be completely honest with your potential clients, not saying you are not... We have all been in a position where we need experience and we need to tell our clients that. Your methods do not sound black hat and probably wont hurt the client site.

If you tell them, my aim is to get you on page one for "ann arbor bakery" but I am not guaranteeing the volume will realize you an ROI right away and they agree to it then you have done good business....

Do you see my point?

With onpage optimization alone getting them onto the first page is questionable.

nobodyreal is the sales person but who is the client going to call when the rankings don't materialize? If nobodyreal is overselling the results but then the subcontractor has to answer for shortfalls then that is not a good situation for anybodyreal.

If my prospective client was a business in a very small niche and with very low to zero competition, i would have asked him to list his business for free in Google local listing and spend his $1000 on website usability and user engagement. Google local listing would have brought his website in top 10 within 24 hrs and work on website usability and user engagement would have made sure that his traffic converts. Thats the genuine and ethical way of paying back to ur clients.

Personally I think the OP has a great idea. This model could be followed by many people seeking to start out in SEO. I think some of those that have been giving this guy a hard time are going over the top a bit.

When advertising space is sold anywhere there is no guarantee of increased visitors or increased sales. You are buying exposure not work. The guy is only charging a small amount of money to provide some basic services. If he finds some decent subcontractors those services could get a return for the client. ie threeway links with targetted anchor texts would be enough to beat competators that do not have them. Even adding a keyword to a title may get a decent increase in SERPs if your competators are not doing it.

The OP will also get better at how to get a return as he gets more work. If clients are satisfied he will get more work. This could snowball into a profitable business. The model could be franchised. A new .com billionare may be born.

So to the OP great idea. I admire your thinking out of the box. I would look for some offshore partners that can get you low quality links very cheaply to help in these very uncompetative markets.

Just do not oversell.

Good luck and hope you end up making a heap of money.

Yes, and I do agree with you. Like most things in life, being unethical only hurts you. I don't want to mislead my clients in anyway, and so I will make sure to tell them that I cannot guarantee search volume.

This is also true. Good point.

Thanks

Just to recap....

your thread last week gave every indication that by the research you conducted, employers wanted work experience, which you had none of.

While this is a clever idea for you to make money (and even better, have someone else do the work) I'm not sure this will help you in your path to be a successful SEO, if that is what you are seeking long term. Not saying this can't work in terms of business though. You would get paid better dividends (money, experience and knowledge) if you didn't have to outsource all of you work, which I'm sure you gathered by the previous posts.

Back to you, how is this plan going to help you learn more about SEO and build that experience everyone is looking for? Realistically, someone else is doing the optimization and all you are doing is pitching & selling the idea to businesses. Perhaps you could turn it into a mentor type thing which will give you the money (and the ability to eat a solid meal and maybe afford a 12-pack of Natty Ice) and the knowledge to build on. Just some food for thought.

Unless you are going to attempt to claim the work being done by an SEO other than yourself as your own, since you did the legwork to get the clients (not the best route which still doesn't help you)...... still, at the end of the day, you won't have the true experience or knowledge to provide what employers and webmasters are looking for, a track record.

One last note about cost. I've seen more and more cases of people charging more than they can return. This not a shot at you in any way or an indication that you are charging too much, but be mindful of this. A thousand bucks may be a drop in the bucket to some but a load of money to others. A company needs to pay for your services and make a profit in order for their money to be well spent. Otherwise, it's not worth it for them and you're less one client.

Pretty crafty idea but make sure you get the true experience you need. Good luck!

Lb, If this turns out to be a successful enterprise(giving SEO to a demographic that is not being given SEO), then I don't want to go work for a SEO firm. So I wouldn't need experience if this turns into a successful operation.

And it's not exploitative or crafty, as I've stated elsewhere in the thread, the goal is to make all sides win. SEO agents getting $500 for jobs that are low caliber and wouldn't take much time, probably turning out to be a $30-40 hourly rate for the SEO agent(a much better hourly rate than most SEO agents), with me making a similar hourly rate(possibly less, possibly more, it depends upon my skills as a marketer) and with the business getting increased web visibility in their uncompetitive market.

As I pointed out earlier, price ranges and ideas for 'good SEO' are not going to be the same since I'm talking about a radically different demographic. What will work for a website trying to compete for "Redford Township Bakery" is not going to work for a website trying to compete for "Libertarian Blog". So while there seems to be some skepticism about the effectiveness of on-page SEO, I want to just remind people that it's a 'whole nother ball game'.

And if it turns out that I'm not bringing the results with just on-page SEO, then of course I would change it up, since any successful enterprise is dependent on the happiness of the customer(as another poster mentioned, you need lists of clients to add credibility to your business and insure the prospect you are not a scam artist).

A good business is one in which everyone benefits. A business that makes a long term profit is one in which everyone benefits. If I have to reduce my prices, spend a long time to find proficient SEO agents or whatever, I'm willing to do that.


If all three parties involved win, then it will be a successful business. I appreciate the advice on helping the customer win.

- Nobodyreal

You may have taken my comments out of context. I wasn't speaking down to your idea, actually quite the opposite.

I'm glad, as I'm sure others viewing, that you are keeping the customers in mind. This is not the case for many companies, not just SEO. People want money and will do what they can to make it. Your idea seems to keep all parties interested.

My comments were based on this and the other thread you started about the importance of experience. While I see your point about this turning into a gem for you and not needing to work for anyone, how are YOU getting the experience to continue marketing this idea? You are not doing the work, someone else is so technically they are getting the experience. Although, based on your last reply, I guess we are striking you building experience from the equation. If that is the case, disregard my question about it.

Personally, I could care less what you charge or pay others to do your work. I was attempting to point out something that people tend to overlook, ROI. I remember an SEO company charging a site x amount of dollars for optimization and link building. Problem was, the site was barely capable of making the money back, even on a great month. I think you mentioned marketing for a church. I'm not the most religious person in the world but charging a high amount of money to a business that can't make that back may screw your pitch from jump street. Just trying to point something out in case you didn't think about it already b/c I've seen it happen.

You certainly seem to have a creative thought process. I hope it works out for you. I would definitely be interested in hearing how it works out in a few months.

My comments were not meant to be taken negatively for the record.