I realize that I can just practice what I preach by blogging and building out my own online presence, but it's hard to rank in this particular industry and CPC is way too high for me to run any viable advertising. I find it hard to advertise SEO services, especially in an industry saturated in SEO "gurus" who spam every single contact form out there. Is there a better way to contact site owners who's sites could use some work. Is cold calling/emailing a viable option here? Should I perform searches and then contact those who are on page 3 and below? Any advice is welcome and appreciated.
Edit: I guess my ultimate goal is to provide comprehensive online strategy and implementation for a handful of clients. Ranking sites organically is just one part of the overall strategy, it just happens to be a large part and arguably the most important.
So I could rephrase the question. How do you get leads for marketing strategy/consulting jobs? I'm not trying to spam business owners at all. I'm talking about performing site audits before I even contact the company and providing useful insight. Show them a few areas that I could help them improve in, whether its traffic generation or the conversion side. There are a lot of business out there with piss-poor websites, businesses who spend $1000's every month in paid traffic that undoubtedly don't convert as something more modern and user friendly would.
[–]cornmacabre
What's preventing you from seeking a stable, paid position as a digital marketer with a background/focus in SEO? Agency or in-house - there is definitely demand out there.
Freelance SEO is a competitive, in-stable dying space... and the spammy freelance cold-call shit really reinforces the negative image of SEO as a bunch of snake-oil blog spammers. Don't do that. Use SEO as a tool and marketable skill-set, not a work-from-home job title.
edit: I see further down that you mentioned you are employed on the marketing side of things. I wouldn't pitch your services as SEO to any business from the start. If you're pitching to leads then you're a media strategist, not an SEO.
Cut to the core of how you can help your potential client generate more growth & money. You live and die by ROI, everything else is a circlejerk. SEO tactics mean nothing to a business owner if they don't understand or value it. Sell organic as a long term growth strategy, and offer the flavors of SEO as one of the main tactics.
Obviously this works best in-person, so you'll have to establish relationships & demonstrate credibility - which is the dark barrier to little guys not supported by a bigger business model.
[–]krazykoo
Personally, I'm in Marketing in general and have just done a lot of research around SEO. Most of you guys are probably a lot more qualified than me. With that said, most of my leads come through web-development or doing marketing consulting for small businesses.
My advice for getting leads is to start small and build your way up with credibility. Make yourself known to web development companies and have a proof-of-concept to your approach with realistic expectations and timelines. I know lots of individuals that get work through referrals or have SEO work out-sourced to them from web development companies that don't want someone in-house.
[–]failpsycle[S]
I do have some good success stories, should I create a presentation around those? I'm just looking for a place to get started. Craiglist is ok, but there's a lot of crap to wade through. I like the idea of being an outside resource for dev companies to use. Maybe i'll get in touch with some who are local. Thanks.
[–]rascalmonster
Use sites like elance. My old boss does seo through that, built up s great profile, and now is ranked number one for seo and marketing in the u.s on elance and gets a steady stream of clients inviting him to bid on their projects.
[–]failpsycle[S]
Looking into elance now. Looks like a good marketplace. I've actually hired people through odesk before so I'm familiar with this model, just never thought to do it myself because I usually use it to find work for... cheap
[–]rascalmonster
It's about providing value. My old boss would tell people "I'm not the cheapest vendor but I'll be one of the best and you'll get the results you want" people are willing to pay more to get it done right. Sell yourself to potential clients and they'll like you enough that they'll want to hire you.
[–]KeepingTrack
We upsell to clients we have already for other services, primarily. Why? Because if a business hasn't been around and established and able to pay in the first place we're not going to bet that they understand the services and can afford them. What's sad is that 70% of new businesses we've sold SEO services has done a chargebag shortly before closing their doors. Most new businesses fail for a lot of reasons. The sad thing is when we get them highly ranked for high-traffic keywords and get them other placements only to see that they get no conversions because they suck at business and no one knows who they are. Brand recognition and competence are underrated. =\
[–]carltondanks
I work in real estate investing and a lot of SEO companies cold call the shit out of me. It's annoying
[–]jeffdot
In the past I hired a sales room of 3 before and scraped thousands of phone numbers and websites from Google ads all over the USA for high CPC keywords like: plastic surgery, dentists, attorneys. Sounds like it would work right? We probably made thousands of calls. We closed about 3 deals. It didn't work for us.
What's worked for me is to apply for a job doing SEO for a small company...then truly learn the ropes on their dime. Have a real budget to work with and see what kind of results you can get. From there start networking with small business owners - build some credibility and ask around.
It's pretty old school. There's no quick fix - and nothing beats talking to someone in person (vs. the spammy cold calling/email spammers).
[–]JustinChaschowy
Lots of errors in your thinking here.
I'm not trying to spam business owners at all. I'm talking about performing site audits before I even contact the company and providing useful insight.
You are not spaming business owners by contacting them to arrange a discussion about how you can IMPROVE their business. If you are going to get into this industry you need to feel that what you're offering is incredibly valuable. And if it's incredibly valuable why would your offer be seen as spam?
Secondly you plan on doing essentially a lot of work for no pay off as demonstrated by your enthusiasm to do a bunch of time consuming website assessments. Which business owners won't even give a shit about. They don't care about <h1> tags or how badly optimized their site is. They just want more business. Even bringing up that you did a free assessment of their website won't even seem valuable to them. Try again.
[–]nojoy
Nearly all of my jobs have come from friends of friends. Before going freelance, I had an in-house SEO/SEM job and developed a lot of relationships with web designers and developers that worked there. They know from working with me that I am trustworthy and that is the biggest issue in our industry. So many snake oil salesmen in SEO. Now that we have all moved on, anytime they have a client that needs SEO/SEM, my name always comes up.
I also did the freelance sites for a while and developed a few regular clients there as well although you do have to do a lot of jobs on the cheap to build up a profile so pick one site and stick with it for awhile.
[–]eric22vhs [score hidden] 12 hours ago
Please don't spam small business owners....
[–]failpsycle[S]
This is something that I'm trying to avoid. But where is the line between spamming them and legitimately reaching out? Is junk mail not considered spam? Sometimes I email business owners who leave flyers on my door step or send mailings. Would you consider that spammy? I'm just trying to figure out a good workflow/strategy for lead generation.
[–]manfly
In my opinion eric is being a little too serious about the 'no spam,' thing and 'apply for jobs and go to marketing gigs' isn't an adequate answer and it's obviously easier said than done. I agree, spamming is tacky and annoying but there is a big line between spammy and reaching out. In my experience:
Spammy: generic emails or scripted cold call
Reaching out: doing some research on the company you want to reach out to as well as their industry. Find an area, be it big or small, that said company could really use a hand in and give that company a call or email. It helps if you have a contact name to ask for when calling / emailing. When you do contact them don't start off like a cold call with the whole "my name is blah blah i'm from blah blah." I always went into it with "hi, I was doing some research on X industry and noticed your company was [insert issue here - pay per clicks, bad rankings, etc] and I have a solution, if you're interested in hearing about it I'd love to talk to you further" or something along those lines and go from there. They'll give you a polite 'no' (in most cases) or set up a time to talk / email.
I find that this approach worked better because it came off as personal and that I actually know what I'm talking about rather than some $10/hr guy at a desk with a phone cold calling a list of leads purchased through SalesGenie or something. I had a lot of success that way with both small and medium size companies.
As far as finding leads, one of my favorite and most tried and true ways was by thinking of an industry, any industry, and Googling some keywords related to it and then going after the companies with the above approach who were doing PPC.
[–]KeepingTrackE-mailing business owners is a bad idea altogether. Even with an opt-out or once-off type of mail, unsolicited (physical) snail mail is not the same thing as unsolicited e-mail. Also, call someone (business or not) if you have no reason to than once and in many states that's harassment
[–]eric22vhs
But where is the line between spamming them and legitimately reaching out?
When it's not solicited in any way. Go to networking events, apply for jobs, look for marketing gigs. Don't google every web designer in your state and send them emails. It's annoying and we'll assume you're not great at what you do, else you'd just have a job in it.
[–]THEsolid85
It's annoying and we'll assume you're not great at what you do, else you'd just have a job in it.
Takeway for OP: some of the people you reach out to will be stupid assholes who make false assumptions.
Don't worry about it.
SEO is a two-way street. Yes, having clients is how independent SEOs earn a living. But SEO wouldn't exist if it wasn't beneficial for the business owner.
Cold calls have always been a part of sales. Your definition of spam is wrong by the way. Unsolicited is only the half of it. It's large-scale, irrelevant contact. Reaching out to a business owner offering to boost traffic, conversions and profits is about as far from irrelevant as possible.
[–]failpsycle
I do have a job in it, I'm just trying to generate leads for myself on the side, which is a lot more difficult when you don't have a large company to back you up. I'm definitely not contacting web designers, I was thinking more along the lines of home improvement companies. Perhaps the in-person networking is the way to go.
[–]eric22vhs
Maybe that's my issue. That I have some knowledge, surely not to the depths you guys do tactic wise, of SEO; formal college courses, etc...
But people spam me a lot, offering SEO services. I'm a web designer. Sure, there's benefit in paying someone to do what you don't have time to, but whichever site you found to spam me for, it probably says on it that we can offer SEO services.
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