How to Get SEO Clients in 25 Steps: Agency Client Prospects

Whether you want to scale up your SEO business or you are starting a new SEO agency, you always need to grow.

How do you grow your SEO business?

By getting new clients for your SEO or digital marketing agency.

Follow the 25 steps to get SEO client prospects to help grow your digital marketing agency or SEO consultancy.

Client SEO

What is Client SEO?

Client SEO is doing professional search engine optimization for other people and their businesses.

This means you build your own business of optimizing websites of others for a fee you charge for your services.

You are offering your optimization and ranking skills as a paid service to businesses and their websites.

Every consultant and agency is doing client SEO.

How do you set up & run your client SEO business properly?

Whether you are starting or already doing optimization for others, first you need to set up a system to source client prospects and acquire clients for your business.

Prospecting SEO Clients

You build a system of SEO client prospecting. This system builds your client SEO business.

It is the process of prospecting clients for your business.

Customers run your business.

Client SEO actually means and covers prospecting, acquiring and then doing SEO for new clients.

This builds your SEO business and helps it grow.

How do you set up client SEO prospecting system to run and grow your business?

You start with knowing how to get clients for SEO and building it up as a system.

This is the first part of client prospecting and acquisition.

You build a network or sources to serve as ways to find client prospects.

The first part of this guide explains to you the 12 steps to prospect and find SEO clients.

These are 12 ways how you can get new clients for your business or agency.

Prospecting covers sourcing people who can be clients.

With these 12 steps of prospecting your SEO client you can source clients.

What you need to do next is know how to acquire clients from these prospects?

There are also 3 steps you should do to help you in finding SEO client prospects.

Now we move on to the second part.

Acquire New SEO Customer

Now you need to do SEO client acquisition. This is a part of client business and completes the prospecting process.

The first part was to find prospects and help those client prospects contact you easily for services.

Now you need to pitch your services and skills to them.

Pitching leads to acquisition which also means converting prospects into clients. This is called conversion.

How do you pitch your services and acquire your clients?

You can pitch your services as a proposal emailed to your prospects as they contact you.

However, this does not help that much in conversion.

The best way and time to pitch to your prospects to convert these into clients is when you communicate with them over a phone or video call.

This is when you explain SEO to your client prospects.

You need a framework or roadmap of how to explain SEO to new clients and what all to share.

Here you do not just explain what SEO is and what it covers.

You explain your services. You pitch your skills and how those skills can help their business with SEO.

This is how you win new clients for your search engine optimization business.

Here you also know their needs and evaluate how willing they are for SEO and your services.

So, this is also the second and more important part of SEO prospecting.

This second part of this guide lists the 10 tips to properly explain SEO to new clients and pitch the right way.

This is how to pitch your services, skills and knowledge of SEO to help their business.

This is one good way of SEO client acquisition which completes your prospecting.

This is the outline of our Client SEO guide to help you learn and improve.

How to Get SEO Clients

How Do You Prospect SEO Clients

Finding new clients is how you grow your SEO business.

How do start finding new SEO clients?

In essence you want to find people who need SEO as a service.

These are the people who run a business or provide any type of service or products.

You need to do few things before you start prospecting and communicating with such people.

3 Steps to Help You Prospect SEO Clients

Define your SEO Services Niche

Search engine optimization is a vast area of professional expertise. From keyword research to link building.

There are many who provide only one or few specialities like link building or content writing.

Decide what you are good at and what you want to offer as a service.

Secondly, there are many type of websites for which we can optimize for ranking.

You then need to decide whether you want to offer services for all type of business websites like local, e-commerce, small business.

Have Your Packages Ready

Essentially what we mean is decide your prices.

Agencies charge monthly fees. Many experts charge a monthly retainer fee.

Prepare Your Pitch and Proposal

As your prospects start contacting, you would need to share with them some introductory information about your services.

Often prospects would ask for a proposal.

You need to design your SEO services pitch.

12 Steps How to Find Potential SEO Clients

Here are 12 steps to find new SEO clients for your business.

These 12 steps of prospecting would help you build a more complete the digital marketing presence for your business.

This is Also How to Get SEO Clients For Your Digital Marketing Agency

Step number is compulsory and after that you can even select a few of the steps.

However, if you follow all the steps then it would be your digital marketing roadmaps to building your client SEO business.

Have A Website, If You Still Don’t Have One

You know you are going the exact way which you would suggest your clients in future.

The first to have is your own website.

It makes many of your tasks so much easier and faster.

You can explain many basic things on your website for your new clients to read.

And then you only have to explain SEO to your new clients.

You will realise how important is your website for your business.

Do Your Own SEO

The best thing to find new clients and also win more clients (improve conversion) is to rank your SEO consultancy services on Google.

Do your own SEO.

This is also a wonderful way to prove your SEO expertise when you do not have any new client.

If you are ranking on Google, then your new clients will start talking to you with some level of trust and confidence.

Explore Social Media Marketing

It is very important to have a good social media presence these days.

Even if you doing your own SEO, you need to have and maintain social media presence.

Many new clients who visit your website from search would like to see if you have social media pages which are regularly maintained.

Try PPC To Get New Clients Faster

PPC (pay-per-click) is a good way to get more new clients much faster.

Advertise on Google and Bing.

Run your paid campaign for couple of weeks or a month.

And you will add few more clients for your agency.

New agencies often start with PPC to get new clients.

And you also get a good idea about what are the best keywords for your agency.

These you can optimize for organic rankings later to get regular free traffic.

Advertise on Social Media

Similarly, you can advertise on social media.

Here you need to target a much larger audience.

You can target people in a city or across the country.

Target the best possible demographic.

What you would be looking at people who are in business.

Find a way to target more of such people.

And think of a catchy line or a smart theme for to build a new campaign.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is still a very effective way to reach new clients.

All you need is a list of businesses or companies.

Find their email addresses.

And mail your proposal.

Case Studies

Case studies are a good way to get new clients.

You can publish these case studies on your website.

You can use social media to make your case studies reach a much wider audience.

You can also email these case studies to a list of people.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is talking about your business or expertise in a friendly way.

It is also about sharing valuable information or insights on other websites through guest posts.

This can bring a good referral traffic to your website.

Video Marketing

Create good short videos for marketing.

Use youtube for that.

Search for popular keywords on youtube for your SEO business.

Best is to find questions which people ask there.

Create videos that provide some valuable information and also give a brief introduction to your services or expertise.

Have a Blog

One unique way for you to get new clients without directly pitching them is to have a blog on SEO and grow the organic traffic to it.

People are going to read your blogs on SEO and find these useful and helpful.

Many of these people will be people with websites or ones who got some questions about SEO.

And from these and other set of visitors, few will ask you about services.

All you need to do is provide a contact page and that you can help with SEO.

Partner with Website Designing Agencies

You can partner with website designing agencies or freelancers.

And you can ask them to forward queries for SEO which their website clients might be asking about.

Attend Business Events

Attend business events or trade events.

Meet as many people there as you can.

And make sure to share with them your expertise and how you can help.

Business Card

Always carry your business care with you.

Make sure you share it with people you meet.

How to Explain SEO to The New Clients You Win

If you follow the above steps or even few of these then you start getting clients.

Now the question is how to win your new clients.

Knowing how to explain SEO to new clients is one way to knowing how to win more clients.

If you follow the following 12 tips then you can get better at how you can explain SEO to a client.

How to Explain SEO To A Client

Explaining SEO To Your New Client

You are going to explain SEO to your new client.

This is your pitch to your new client and it needs to be informative, in detail and impressive.

This is how you are going to win this client.

This is how you get clients.

This as an opportunity to combine your SEO expertise and your marketing skills in one short but detailed pitch or discussion.

It would be advisable to keep it as a two way communication.

However, do not let it drift too much away from your expertise and how you do client SEO.

Best Way to Explain SEO To A New Client

You need to build an easy pathway to explain things, build your new client’s interest and also help your new clients to understand it.

So, the best way to start explaining SEO to a new client is always to get an idea about their SEO knowledge.

You need to understand their perspective of SEO and what they want from it.

And you should also ask about their business, what it does. This will show them your interest and also put the discussion on an easy path.

Now, how to drive forward that discussion?

The best way to move ahead from here is to explain what is SEO and how does it work.

To best explain this is to cover the details in a way that they understand best.

And that way is to explain how SEO works for business and helps it.

This would make them interested to listen more from you. As this is now about their business and how SEO will benefit them.

Here you can briefly emphasize on why SEO is important for their business.

The aim should be to help them understand the worth of SEO for their business.

Now briefly you can explain your expertise and how you can help them best.

Since they are going to hire an agency, it is also advisable at this stage to describe to them what SEO consultants do.

This is explaining to them how you as a consultant would use your expertise to help their business grow.

Lastly, explain what SEO consulting services are and how they help.

Consider this discussion as a SEO beginners roadmap for your client.

Explain SEO In Detail

Yes. You need to explain SEO in some details.

And you need to also explain SEO in simple terms.

It is always advisable to use simple words and explain in easy to understand language.

You need to cover some important details about SEO.

In all probability, your client has heard about ranking on Google.

And they would be having their own ideas and versions of ranking and Google.

So, you need to explain in detail what all this is and what it brings for their business.

Just like ranking, explain in detail the other terms like links, etc.

You should particularly explain in detail what they should be expecting from SEO.

I remember a client coming to me and saying that he needs ranking in 2 to 3 months. And that I can do whatever I want but rank his website in that period.

Always explain what you as a service provider, an agency and an expert can do and what you or no other expert should do.

This you need to explain in as much detail as possible.

This will only save you from any future troubles and from wrong expectations which you can never fulfil.

How To Do SEO For Clients

How you do SEO for your clients. This is one important part which you need to explain.

In fact, this is what your clients need to know and understand from you.

Your clients can be totally new to SEO.

So, this will make them comfortable and help you build trust.

It is also possible that they had a not so good experience before and now they are searching for an expert who can deliver.

So, when you explain how you do client SEO they get an idea of your expertise too.

This way they can also put some trust in you and in your process.

Now that you understood how you should go about explain SEO to new clients.

Here are some tips that we believe can help you streamline and structure how you describe SEO to your clients.

10 Tips On How To Explain SEO to Clients

Here are some important points which can be part of your explaining and discussion about SEO.

How Search Engines Work

SEO is based on how search engines work. This you need to explain to your client at the beginning.

Your client should understand a few basic things about search engines are how they work.

Explain them that how SEO is about organic results.

And it is not PPC, the search ads we see on the top and bottom of the search engine result pages (SERP).

And that these results are websites that have better SEO and have invested both quality work and time in it.

It is always about improving your optimization and also about staying within the guidelines.

Here you may find it very useful to explain about white hat and black hat SEO.

This will save you a lot of unnecessary discussions later.

And will save you from wrong expectations.

SEO is a Process

The first thing you need to explain to your client is that SEO is a step by step process.

Clients may not have an idea about this.

They might think it is a short term or fast step.

Explain to them that SEO is a step-by-step process for a new website.

When you explain search engine optimization as a process then start with explaining what is SEO and how it works.

Believe me you may just clear many doubts or answer many questions of your client prospect which they have not even asked you yet.

And then when you are explaining the process focus on optimization, how it works and what all professionals need to do in that.

And as you go on explaining optimization you can touch upon the steps of SEO like on-page optimization techniques and link building techniques and how these help.

The most important thing to tell them is about SEO keywords and why are they so important.

SEO Takes Time for a New Website

This is the most important thing to explain to a client about SEO.

How much time SEO takes to give results.

Clients want to optimize their websites for search engines to see results.

What they are most interested in is to rank their websites.

And often they would ask you to rank keywords fast for their website.

And yes, as you optimize you will improve their keyword rankings.

However all this takes time.

SEO never gives immediate results.

New websites take time to build search impressions.

And one factor that plays here again is the process a new websites requires to build search impressions and then build rankings.

Google is the Headmaster

When you are explaining to them the time SEO takes here is one very important thing which you should never miss explaining to every new client or client prospect.

SEO is like following certain guidelines created by Google.

Google is the largest search engine.

And when we do SEO we mostly do it for Google. That is where your client will get traffic from.

Google has its own process. And this the second and more important factor why SEO takes time.

You need to earn trust of Google. And for that it has some requirements.

As we keep fulfilling those requirements, we keep improving our search engine visibility and positions.

What is Ranking

Ranking on Google is what most of the clients are looking for.

However they do not understand rankings fully.

What rankings means. How we improve rankings. And how we make keywords rank.

Rankings can also sometime go down for so many reasons.

Search engine rankings need to be build and then needs to be maintained.

And that ranking is always relative.

For example any competitor of theirs can always create even better content or build more links.

How We Measure Results

This is one very important point to explain. How we measure results.

Explain them that we do SEO to build and improve rankings of your website on search engines.

And so rankings are one of the indicators of your SEO progress.

Second thing is to explain about traffic.

Traffic is what the ultimate goal of doing SEO.

Explain how improvements in rankings brings traffic.

Also explain more about getting clicks from search engines.

We are in 2023. So you need to explain that ranking on the first page does not always guarantee that you will get traffic regularly.

Few More Tips to Take Care of While Explaining SEO

Here are few things you need to take care of when you start to explain SEO as a service, as a practice and as your expertise.

Important to Make Things Clear

The most important part of explaining should be to clear out few or many things.

A client may not know at all about SEO.

And certainly they do not know about you, what you do, your expertise and more such aspects.

And take it from my experience, clients or companies have many fancy ideas about SEO and what they expect from it.

They do not know the facts of SEO. They come to you with their own expectations or needs.

You know you might find during or at the end of the discussion is that they do not want or need SEO at this time.

For example, if they are looking for leads and that too in short time or more immediately then what they actually need is PPC and not SEO.

So, making things clear at the start is very important.

You should not also make unrealistic promises.

And if your client has any such unrealistic expectations then you need to explain SEO properly to them and make things clear.

This can happen as they do not know about SEO and what they can expect from it.

Set the Path You Want to Walk

This is the stage where you can set the path you want to walk and also guide your client prospect to the path you want them to take or walk.

You can very well set the tone for further or future conversations.

This is also the stage where things can go sideways or in any way.

You can guide clients towards some goals.

At this stage everything is open.

There are no set guidelines.

Also nothing is clear.

One smart advice I would like to give here is to ask questions to know your client, listen more and talk less.

Help Your Client Understand Value of Their Website

The way I learned SEO also helped me learn and understand what is the real value of a website and how SEO helps enrich it.

What I came to know is SEO as one of the organic digital marketing techniques actually helps understand the real value of a website. And how content helps in all this.

You need to explain to your client how important website is for their business.

The importance of content in website is also something which needs explaining and due attention. How content helps to target search audience and build & improve search engine presence and rankings.

The targeted search audience comes to websites to read the content that experts write or optimize for them.

It is their website which then becomes their best marketing platform to bring leads for their business.

Do Not Over Explain

As I said in the previous section, you should listen more and better and talk little less.

What that also means is you do not need to over explain anything here.

This includes and covers over explaining yourself, what you do, how you do.

Here you need to keep in mind this too.

We said earlier to explain or touch upon the techniques.

However, there is no need to explain those techniques in too much details.

Like you may be tempted to discuss the 3 important on-page techniques.

Or may think you need to explain how to do keyword research in steps or the steps how do you find keywords with the help of research process.

And certainly your client prospect did not call you to know the SEO evolution and history.

You may just confuse your client prospect.

Do not give them information overload which they cannot handle right now.

What they want to know is how you can help. That is all.

Explain that to them. Or else.

They are more likely to go to an agency or consultant who keeps it simple for them.

Final Advice

Just Explain SEO simply to your client.