SEO USP's

hey guyz...

Coming on top of SEO , i find it tough to sell SEO to my clients....

As it is part of marketing , i must say it would be having some USP's (unique selling point)...

can you guyz suggest me some USP's so that i can sell my SEO or PPC services to my clients ( who already taken designing services from me)

what all things one should cover in USP's for SEO...

what comes to my mind is
a) Guaranteed ranking or Money back...
b) ....????


cheers

You should never guarantee rankings because you can't!

Having a USP is definately an advantage its just not very common in the SEO world. One thing I say to our clients is that (if we have) as we designed your site we used XHTML 1.0 code which is better for search engines and feeds nicely into further SEO.
We also created a search engine accessible site so we have already cut out some of the SEO work for you, saving you futher costs.

The biggest trouble I have is convincing customers they need to be found for their specific products and services and not their company name. Even after proving no one searches for the company name they still find it hard to understand the bennefits of keyword research!

You can guarantee rankings?
No way I would offer that service to anybody, too many possible variables for any guarantees.

My approach is that having a site built without seo services is like having a really expensive brochure designed & printed, and then them on your counter for people to pick up and never mailing any out... the only people who see them are existing customers and the occasional passer-by.

usp's - there are plenty of them, just look around a few seo sites for inspiration (I came up with 12 off the top of my head but then I thought "hey - I'm in the UK too" - lol).

I find seo services really easy to sell... I guess it's also down to how much you charge!

Yeah and of course which market you are in.

I was recently asked to quote for an intalian restaraunt. Upon investigation there were jsut not enough searches to make it viable. I could have sold the services still but the client would not have got any business out of it so I advised him against it.

Thats honesty for you! I still got some work on the site though so alls well that ends well!

I don't "guarantee ranks" - that's a mindset word play game that you want to avoid. While a SEO can indeed perform exceptionally well with their chosen services - ranks rarely remain as the status quo - and a "guarantee" implies consistency.

It is simply bad for business to imply consistency noting the environment you play in [competitors and phrases rarely stay the same, search engines never stay the same, and markets rarely either].

Even Google can't decide which is better - first they imply no one can guarantee anything - then they say DON'T work with a service provider that doesn't offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee... well which is it?

That said: a design company has a nature progression toward SEO - clearly if you "design" with SEO in mind the output is significantly more beneficial to the customer.

On that note: a natural USP would be to entice customers into Design/SEO rather than simply design work since it is easier to include SEO attributes in the original rather in supplement after-the-fact.

Course word-of-mouth is always better - others can say more about your abilities than you. Your most profitable SEO customers will always come from others [referrals] so if you truly want exceptional USPs that is the area to look at.

Actually "I lied"... and thought it worth mentioning.

The second to last contract I started [I wanted badly] and they would not venture forward without a service guarantee.

I'm damn good - but without having absolute control over the "search engines" it is simply bad planning to offer [Murphy's Law comes to mind].

However, after attempting to explain numerous times why a guarantee is useless - it occurred to me that "if" I risk paying back every dime for non-performance [which is what the guarantee implies] that is "security to the client"... and my security should be equal.

So the CAVEATs and limitations of the guarantee were written and I doubled the returned on the contract.

No matter what "it is risk management" and most corporations understand risk management.