Starting an SEO business is not a walk in the park. It takes commitment and hard work. However, if you are sick and tired of a nine to five job and you want to try your hand at being your own boss, doing something you actually like without paid holidays (or holidays for that matter), and reaping all the rewards in the end, then an SEO marketing business could be the thing for you.
If you are new to SEO marketing, there are courses you may want to take, such as the WebMarketing123-courses before you start your own business. If not, then here are some tips on how you can get started with your own SEO marketing business.
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Decide on a name brand.
Branding is crucial to your business. Your name will stick with you for a long time, so choose the one that you would not want to change. If you are unsure, give yourself some more time to think it over.
Here are some things that you need to consider when deciding on a brand name:
- Should not be easily misspelled
- Easy to remember even if people only heard it one time
- Domain name should be available
- Should not sound like a “marketing phrase”
Niche down.
This is especially important for beginners. Nitchdown is choosing clients based on the industry they’re in. When you are starting an SEO marketing business, you need to know which industry you can start with first and become an expert on it.
The reason behind it is that when you submit a proposal to a potential client, you can be sure that you are not the only one who did it. If there are two more SEO consultants that sent their proposal and one of them focuses on the potential client’s niche, you can take a guess which one of you is going to be hired.
Choose two or three niches that you are truly interested, and has a potential to make you some money and then study the marketing trends in those niches.
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Build Proposals.
Your proposal is the very first material that a potential client is going to receive from you, so this is your chance to impress them. Great proposals could make or break a deal. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to create a proposal from scratch.
There are several apps out there that you can use to make a template. You can use Betterproposals, Canva, Pandadoc, Proposable, Goprospero, and Proposify to name a few.
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Decide on a project management tool.
If you are going to put a team together, you will need a project management tool to manage both your clients’ and your team’s tasks. You can have an IT guy to build a tool for you or you can use the paid ones like Asana. Being organized from the very beginning is more efficient. More importantly, your clients are kept up-to-date on the status of their project.
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Practice what you advertise.
An SEO marketing company that does not make an effort to optimize its own website on search engines may dissuade its potential clients. However, the opposite will definitely attract clients because you are showing your competency through your website. You cannot be an expert in SEO if you have not ranked your own website with even a single keyword.
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Set a budget for each project and stick with it.
It is easy to go overboard on the first few projects that you land. Don’t spend an insane amount of money on link placement, for example, just to satisfy your client. You have to set a budget and you need to stick to it if you want your business to keep on operating for a long time.
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Do not be complacent.
You need to focus on making your business grow every day. Keep learning. There are so many ways on how you can grow your business, especially because it is new. Listen to podcasts by those who have already “made it” in this industry. Learn what made them successful and what their mistakes were so you could avoid them. Take digital marketing courses to hone your marketing skills. Never stop learning.
Conclusion:
Building your own SEO marketing business will take up a lot of your time and energy. From the start, you need to come to terms with the fact that you are going to make sacrifices in order to make your business grow and become successful. When you are not chasing leads, you have to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest digital marketing strategies. But, it is all going to be worth it in the end.