Most businesses have adapted by putting at least a minimum time and effort into their search ranking strategy. Unfortunately, SEO is too time-consuming and technically complex for non-experts to pursue on their own time.

That’s where SEO agencies come in. SEO agencies provide critically in-demand SEO services to the millions of business owners who need them and profit from their efforts.

Whether you’re a newbie, SEO consultant, or a digital marketing professional who wants to run your own SEO agency, this guide will help you to start and to scale for the long term.

Work on your SEO techniques

While on-page optimization, link building, and content marketing are common strategies for ranking websites. 

Each SEO agency has a different approach for their clients. All these depend on their SEO techniques one that you need to define for your agency.

Let’s dive into how you can build the foundation for your SEO business strategy and establish your expertise.

1) Develop Your Main SEO Methodology

It’s not about doing what Google says; it’s doing as Google ranks. Your SEO methodology is a combination of expertise and strategies that ultimately provide value to businesses and their target customers.

If you are a beginner, SEO consultant, or want to quit your job and start your own SEO business, this doesn’t mean you have to master everything on your own.

You can make two types of approaches to establishing expertise: build your in-house team of experts or outsource the work to experts.

2) Learn About Project Management

SEO is a never-ending project. Unlike web design that’s often a one-off project, you need to be continuously optimizing a client’s website to make it rank. 

This signals you for learning project management so you can manage expectations, tasks, and when you become a larger SEO business then manage your team.

Planning involves research, evaluation, and strategy. This builds the framework of your SEO campaigns, so you have a clear direction of what and when to do things. 

Keyword research, competitive analysis, website audit, and content quality evaluation often falls under the planning phase. After planning comes execution.

As you learn about project management, it’s best to familiarize yourself with the following project management tools for SEO agencies:

• Zoho
• Asana
• Teamwork
• Plutio
• Basecamp

Avoid using multiple platforms. Choose one that fits into your current process and team setup. If you have a small team to manage for your SEO business, it’s best to try the free project management tools and see how it goes.

3) Use SEO Tools

Every SEO starts out with the basic knowledge of Google Search Console or Google Analytics. Both SEO tools can provide reliable reporting metrics that come from Google search results.

But, are these tools enough? Not at all. If you’re looking to establish a solid SEO methodology, you need a list of SEO tools.

Many SEO tools and marketing tools for small businesses are designed to accomplish other tasks, such as keyword research, link building prospecting, and competitor analysis. 

You’ll find a combination of free and paid tools online. We recommend starting with the free ones, so you can get to know how the tool works first.

Be sure to check out the following tools:

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Google Data Studio
• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• Moz
• ScreamingFrog

Pro-Tip: Create a manual for these SEO software and tools, then cascade to your team. This can become a part of your standard processes to eliminate dependency on individual talents.

Plan for Starting an SEO Agency

We’ll start by going over the steps you’ll need to take when building an SEO agency from start. This way, you’ll be able to explore each phase of the process in context.

• Choose a niche. Starting a generic “SEO agency” is a bad idea, in part because the competition is hard. You’ll be far more likely to attract clients and carve a space for yourself if you choose a specific niche.
• Develop your own online presence. If your website architecture looks bad or if you aren’t ranking for any keywords of your own, you’ll face difficulties in getting people to take you seriously. Before you find clients, you’ll need to flesh out your online presence.
• Perfect your offerings. How are you going to offer SEO services? Will you use employees and freelancers? Or will you build a relationship with an existing SEO agency so you can scale consistently and provide quality services to your clients?
• Start a portfolio. You’ll need some way to prove your skills to new clients, which often means gathering proof of past work, collecting testimonials, and building a portfolio. But landing those initial clients can be tricky.
• Attract prospects. With a combination of inbound and outbound marketing strategies, you’ll start attracting new prospects to your SEO agency.
• Close deals. You’ll need to prove your value to new prospects, getting them to sign a contract so you can onboard them as clients.
• Retain your clients. Client retention is even more important than acquisition for SEO agencies. It will help you improve your reputation and retention is cheaper than acquisition, so your profitability will increase.

Market your SEO Agency

Marketing SEO services and your agency is about positioning yourself as the provider of choice for businesses looking to increase their digital presence.

Think of it this way: will businesses trust your agency if they can’t even find you on Google? Probably not.

An established online presence tells a lot about how your agency does SEO. Your newly-built website may take a few months to rank, but this doesn’t mean you need to rely on SEO alone. 

You will learn best practices on marketing your SEO company and ramping up your online presence to ultimately get more leads. 

Inbound Practices

Inbound practices lay the foundation for your agency’s online presence. Think of it as passively getting eyes on your brand. 

This involves different strategies to attract leads to your agency i.e: SEO, social media, content marketing, and paid ads.

1) SEO

SEO is the most cost-effective way of building your online presence, but only if you do it right. The key is to optimize your website as you do with clients.

2) On-Page Improvements

Do a quick SEO audit of your website and see what you need to improve. 

Do the pages target the interests of your buyer personas at their stage of the buyer’s journey? 

Is the website loading at optimal speed? Does the site navigation support user experience? Think of your agency’s website as needing its own SEO hygiene to rank better in search results.

3) Off-page Initiatives

Link building strategies can go hand in hand with your on-page improvements. 

As your agency’s website is slowly getting organic traffic through on-page optimization, building links can provide you with referral traffic to boost authority to top pages.

4) Relevant Listings

Set up and claim your Google My Business listing to build your agency’s presence on local search results. 

You can also add your SEO business on Yelp and other relevant business listings to get more online real estate. 

However, make sure your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) are consistent and accurate across these listing sites.

5) Reviews

Another boost to your SEO performance is having reviews on top review sites and on your actual website. 

Be proactive in asking your clients to review your SEO company, but do this without being too forceful. 

Each review should come from people you have a professional relationship with to attest to your agency’s reliability, work ethic, and integrity.

6) Social Media

If you don’t have a social media page, it’s time to create one. 

Businesses spend six hours on social media per week, with Facebook being the most popular platform they use to stay active. 

Using social media for your inbound efforts requires more than publishing posts on Facebook, though. You need to:

Customize your message according to your audience and the platform.

Be a member of social media groups to get insights on what your audience is talking about. 

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit Groups are great places to learn about updates and topics that your audience is interested in.

Be human. Don’t be a robot and post just for the sake of engagement. Instagram and Twitter are great platforms to show the human side of your agency.

7) Content Marketing

Content is and will always be a king. But, it’s not simply about publishing a blog post and hoping prospects will stumble upon it. 

A solid content marketing strategy is all about presenting the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Optimize your website content around the intent of your buyer personas. Dive into Google Search Console and look at the queries your website is getting. 

Choose terms with high search volume and build topics for your content around these. Remember that your content should always be evolving. Update and optimize to align the content with the interests of your audience.

8) Paid Ads

Paid ads can supplement your SEO efforts, as this puts your agency in front of people who have the highest intent of working with an SEO company.

Outbound Practices

Outbound practices are strategies that you use to find prospects instead of them finding you. 

It’s your job to initiate contact with prospects and make your agency brand stick until they’re ready to get your complete SEO services. 

An effective outbound campaign involves a combination of strategies and also includes inbound practices.

1) Attend Trade Shows and Conferences

It may be the oldest rule in the book of marketing, but attending industry events can help your agency be more visible to businesses looking for SEO services.

Start with events that are happening within your area. If you know someone in the industry, ask them to introduce you to potential prospects. Leverage testimonials from a previous client. 

But, if you don’t have any testimonials to present, that’s fine, too. You can offer them something free and valuable (a lead magnet) in exchange for their contact details. A quick SEO audit is a good example.

2) Send Cold Emails

This ties with your inbound practices and trade show appearances. 

When a prospect provides their contact details whether, from the contact form on your site or a lead magnet you sent during your interaction at a trade show, you can pipe them into your email list. 

While there’s no definite formula to sending a cold email to a potential client, stick to the best practices to evoke the best response from prospects:

• Use a business domain on your email instead of a generic email address.
• Refine your email list. Segment your list according to the message of your email.
• Include a compelling subject line and personalize your email message.
• Schedule follow-up emails to get a response.

Both your inbound and outbound efforts should point to how your SEO agency can provide value to businesses. Use a lead generation tool to find prospects easier and faster for your audience.

Growing your SEO Company

By this point, your SEO agency should have a smattering of initial clients. You’ll have a portfolio of work to reference, and a solid process you can use to earn your clients better results.

From here, much of your effort will be spent growing the agency, expanding your service offerings, increasing your capacity, and of course, adding new clients to your portfolio. 

The straightforward approach here is to invest more heavily in your inbound, outbound, and referral marketing campaigns, increasing the number of prospects you generate.

If you’re targeting a specific niche, you can also add new niches to your repertoire, or become more general in your demographic targeting. These steps will increase your potential client pool, while also introducing you to some new competitors.

The biggest limiting factor in your development will be your capacity; you may be able to attract new clients, but can you serve them in equal measure? Hiring more employees may help you, but you may find it preferable to outsource your work to an SEO agency that can scale with you.

There’s no limit to how far you can grow, provided you have the right fundamentals and a good expansion strategy in place.

Conclusion

Starting an SEO business will test your capabilities and will.

Many would-be SEO company owners tend to give up halfway—don’t let that be you.

If you manage to do all the things which we discussed, that’s already a big win. But if you need another set of hands to establish your SEO agency, we’re here for you.

While the steps to starting your SEO business may feel like an uphill battle, the result of all the work can be worth the effort. All the learnings that come with the changing digital landscape, as well as the businesses you can help along the way, make your work as an SEO agency more than fulfilling.