Engaging Customers With Semalt SEO, SEO That Works!

For any business that works in the service sector, the constant attraction of new customers is a prerequisite for growth and successful development. Truly, most often it happens that this is at the same time the most difficult task.

You can perfectly understand all the intricacies of search engine optimization, assemble a team of talented and experienced specialists in their field. But, if there are no clients, as they say, put out the candles.

Someone might argue that a good specialist will always find a job. In real life, anything can happen.  Word of mouth works great in our area. But it may take a long time for customers to start finding you on recommendations.

And if we are talking about a company, all this time you need to live on something, pay salaries to people and maintain an office. For those who have just started working in the field of client-side SEO, this is a really sore subject.

We decided to collect various methods of finding clients for SEO in one article to help you in this difficult task. Most of them we tested in practice, and colleagues "in the shop" shared some methods, all these methods have something in common - they work.

You can start with one thing, or you can test everything at once, the choice is yours. Regardless of whether you have been in the market for a long time or just started, they should be useful to you. Measure the impact, and look for the way to attract customers that works best for you. 

This can be a company website, a personal blog, or all at the same time. Regular publication of high-quality articles on the topic, over time, will allow you to attract organic traffic, some of which will be converted into requests for services. Many specialists started by running a personal SEO blog, and over time, when the number of clients grew, they created an agency.

On the site, you can publish articles on "eternal" topics that will generate traffic for a long time, as well as reviews of trends, your opinion on controversial topics, project cases and much more. A promoted site at the top for conversion requests is capable of providing really good returns.

Not everyone can afford it, but if the budget allows, this channel is also worth using. The peculiarity of contextual advertising in the field of SEO services is that it gives applications of rather heterogeneous quality, and most of the leads, for one reason or another, will be eliminated.

You can launch advertising for each of the services separately - promotion, audit, content marketing - and compare the returns, which will allow you to draw appropriate conclusions. The effectiveness in each specific case is difficult to predict, therefore, you just need to try and experiment.

In SEO, recommendations are the main source of clients. A satisfied customer can recommend you to several business friends who need similar services. 

In Internet marketing, recommendations begin to work only after a certain time, but the process can be accelerated if you are not afraid to go out into the public space, raise relevant and modern topics, and demonstrate your expertise in a variety of ways. And most importantly, you just need to do your job well.

Cold calling is an ambiguous method, but if it does not work, it is unlikely to be used further. The bottom line is simple - the manager receives a client base for calls or sending commercial offers, and then his/her task becomes to prove to potential clients that SEO will be beneficial to them to attract them to further cooperation.

The qualification of the salesperson himself/herself plays an important role here, who must be able to cut off potentially problematic customers and those to whom the company simply cannot provide the desired effect. Otherwise, in the end, time will only be wasted on those who are not initially set up to work on promotion.

Alternatively, you can implement a scheme according to which the database is collected by a manager, then a filter is passed by a specialist, and only after that work with calls begins.

Explain the main points to the manager, if necessary, create a script for the conversation. Just a short outline, not a script by any means. SEO is a complex service, and one should strive to help the salesperson learn to adapt to the potential clients, their needs and opportunities, so that they do not get lost in live communication. In practice, both methods have been tested, and we can assure you that live communication sells better!

In addition, it is simply difficult for some clients to discuss the right services, especially if they have had negative experiences with contractors in the past. And if the manager does not get confused and offers him/her a transparent work scheme, this may well lead to a successful negotiation result. This way, you can avoid wasting time and losing leads.

Usually, this method of finding clients is not considered by an agency or experienced specialists, due to low budgets and not always conscientious customers. In the freelance environment, dumping rules the ball, and this frightens off many, which is quite justified.

Nevertheless, at the start-up stage, freelancing can still be considered as a source of receiving at least some orders. For example, you can interrupt small projects and one-time jobs, which is fine for a start.

Make a list of topics with which you would be interested to work, and then, with pens, drive the main queries relevant to this niche into the search bar. Collect sites from the third or fifth page of search results into a file, and then, after analyzing, leave those of them that are most likely not promoted, but have sufficient growth potential. 

When the preliminary "cleaning" is completed, we do a quick pre-sale express audit, see what main points can be improved, and send letters to the contact emails indicated on the sites. 

Only a good tool is suitable for this. Based on our experience, we recommend an all-in-one tool. Semalt's new technology gives you the perfect tool to do this job. It's the Dedicated SEO Dashboard.

Dedicated SEO Dashboard (DSD) is comprehensive web analytics and SEO audit platform that can be run on your domain at zero cost. It will enable you to provide your clients with advanced analytics services under your brand.

Don't hesitate to dip your toe into these data-driven tools functionality on demo.semalt.com

If you want to use our white-labeled Dedicated SEO Dashboard on your domain, we can make it happen. Just imagine that now you have Ubersuggest or Semrush at your disposal, but you do not have to pay for it.

If we want to make money, then we need to look for really paying clients who are ready to invest in Internet marketing. And where is the easiest place to find them? That's right - in contextual advertising.

Think about which commercial topic in your target region is competitive enough. Then, go to Google, type in the desired request, and look at the first three sites in the special placement. Go through several requests in this way, and analyze the resulting list of addresses.

It so happens that some of the sites that are advertised in this way are completely unoptimized, and they receive all orders exclusively through contextual advertising. At the same time, everything is OK with their budgets. Then, it's up to you - call, write and convince of the potential of search engine promotion, which this entrepreneur has not yet used.

In the regions, various catalogs of companies/directories of enterprises are popular, most often implemented within the framework of city portals. On the pages of many companies, the addresses of their sites are also indicated.

Many of them have never been promoted and are potential SEO clients. In fact, this is the same search that partially overlaps with the previous methods - after the address base is collected, a cold call or pre-sales audit follows.

To simplify your task, you can order the writing of a simple parser that will allow you to pull out all the addresses, or somehow track the appearance of pages of new organizations that have just opened.

A controversial, not entirely ethical way, but it has the right to life. Thus, it is unlikely that it will turn out to get projects on which other specialists are really working. But, we all know how many unscrupulous companies are on the market, and sometimes quite famous ones. It is at the expense of the client base of such agencies that you can replenish your portfolio.

Here it is important to skillfully balance when drawing up a proposal in order to avoid, on the one hand, dumping, and, on the other, overestimated expectations on the part of the client. Therefore, it is better not to promise mountains of gold with a minimum budget, but to focus on expertise and quality of services.

SEO and marketing forums and social media communities can be used as a source of orders, but often a hell of a mixture of competition and dumping reigns here.

It is better to look for clients on thematic forums dedicated to business and e-commerce, where entrepreneurs or those who are going to become so communicate. There you can help someone with advice, advice for free, and get a loyal client. And most importantly, competition in terms of supply will be an order of magnitude lower than in the habitats of colleagues.

Participation in profile events offline allows you not only to increase your own recognition as a specialist or a company representative but also to acquire many useful contacts. With a systematic approach, this also starts to work for generating leads, because being famous as a speaker in combination with interesting reports is an excellent proof of expertise for the client.

Moreover, we are talking not only about SEO conferences, but also various events where business representatives gather, because they are your potential clients.

In the regions, you can even think about organizing your own event to ensure the visibility of your company. An excellent example could be Digital Days, an annual conference on internet marketing and online earnings.

Online events in the form of streaming and webinars can be a good addition to the previous point. If you take care of information support and PR in advance on well-known thematic sites, you can gather a considerable number of participants. This also includes webinars on popular and in-demand topics.

In this article, we have listed many ways to attract clients to SEO, which provide different returns, but most importantly, they work. What to put into practice in the first place, and what to postpone for later, already depends on you. But, there is one more important point, which is definitely worth taking note of for each of our readers. This is the publicity factor.

You can be a great professional who is well versed in your business. But, if no one else knows this except you, alas, everything will not be as good with clients as we would like.

Get out of the "twilight", demonstrate your expertise, take a step towards your potential customers - and you will have more and more customers. Entering the public space generates leads perfectly, and work in this direction, albeit not immediately, but must necessarily provide a good return.

Interested in SEO? Check out our other articles on the Semalt blog.