How To Get SEO Clients: Best Strategies & Tips

Are you ready to sell your SEO services to the world?

With market demand for SEOs projected to grow by 22% until 2030, this is an excellent moment to expand your customer base as an SEO agency or freelancer.

To help you through it, in this article, we reveal some of the key strategies we use to sell SEO to clients who can benefit from higher visibility to target prospects.

So, let’s get started.

How To Find SEO Clients

Our best tip to get SEO clients is to be the person you’d actually want to do business with yourself.

The Ideal SEO Profile

Professional SEOs are open, honest, and helpful. That’s a winning combination to attract prospects and turn them into paying customers.

When you talk with your future clients, you must be bold, confident, and direct, yet friendly and discreet. Give them options and data, present them with opportunities, and also, offer some free stuff. But we’ll get to that a bit later.

Your Ideal SEO Client

Ask yourself: Do you want to get involved with small businesses or established companies?

The first option might get you some easy, low-paying sales, while the second would require hours of preparation and negotiations.

However, keep in mind that SEO takes time. So, you’d need to offer your services to those who understand the process and long-term benefits.

Your Target Regions & Audiences

As an SEO professional, you can sell your services locally and globally.

Don’t shy out on this one!

Here are some things you can do:

• Take advantage of your online and real-life connections and contact them in person.
• Check out what languages you or your staff speak fluently and target international SEO clients.
• Depending on your base country, check out which countries could benefit from your expertise and rates.
• Narrow your client-hunting to niches you are familiar with.
• Identify market trends and contact businesses who show up on page 2 for rising search terms.

With your prospect list ready, it’s now time to prepare your SEO pitch.

How To Pitch SEO Services

Want to know our most cherished rule of thumb in SEO pitches?

It boils down to 2 words: Be You.

Your future clients need to see that you are an everyday person with expertise. A friendly guy (or girl) who wants to do their job well and who actually delivers on their promises.

So, you must also showcase a solid and knowledgeable presence via your website and social accounts, especially LinkedIn.

Once you grab their attention, demonstrate how SEO can help their business grow.

Back Your SEO Pitch With Data

Use current statistics to demonstrate the effectiveness of search engine optimization.

Did you actually know that businesses with a focused SEO strategy have a 275% ROI (average)? That’s quite impressive for us, SEOs, and for any business owner.

Use Case Studies To Illustrate SEO Results

Your existing SEO clients are your best advocates.

Case studies with tangible results are among the most powerful tools you have, especially if they come from the same niche.

Demonstrate examples of your most successful projects, briefly explaining client challenges, your SEO strategies, and results over a certain period.

Even better, post such case studies on your website and let the whole world see your work.

Indicate Overlooked Opportunities

Do your leads know they are missing high-value keywords? Probably not.

Impress them with (short) keyword lists that would enhance their visibility to a wider, targeted audience. Then, show them how you can help them rank for them -eventually- on top.

At the end of the day, more than 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine!

As your captivated leads move down your sales funnel, you can now start selling your SEO services with a more personalized approach.

For us, this is the most interesting (and time-consuming!) pre-sales stage, where we really put ourselves in our (future) customers' shoes.

But that’s what SEOs do, after all!

How To Sell SEO

When you have your first grand-scale meeting to sell your SEO services, be prepared.

Make A Thorough Research

Use your SEO apps to research their current SERP status, their overall digital marketing campaigns, a few important keywords they should target and what their competition is doing.

Plus, get to know as much as you can about their company and niche.

Offer Free SEO Advice

Sharing is caring, and your potential clients will appreciate any piece of free advice you give them.

During our sales calls, we always pinpoint a couple of basic SEO improvements our leads could do, with or without us. In fact, as SEO devotees, we cannot hold ourselves from not telling!

When we feel excited about a lead, we even offer a small SEO audit for free and briefly go over some key improvements with them.

Present Choices

Offer your clients various SEO plans. Search engine optimization is not cheap, we all know that. But you can tailor prices to your clients’ country rates and let them choose among Basic, Advanced, and Premium monthly plans - or similar.

However, you must ensure that everyone is clear on what’s included and what results to expect from each option.

From our experience, small or local businesses typically choose the smallest plan until they see some income coming, while larger organizations take the middle way.

To speed up results, you can couple SEO with CRO and help your clients see some optimization income faster.

Ready To Get Your First SEO Client?

SEO is growing. And we grow with it.

Today, we work with quality over quantity. And so do internet users.

In fact approx. 98% of searchers choose a business that’s listed on page 1 of the SERPs. That’s a top SEO sales pitch for you.

If you are just starting as an SEO pro, getting your first client won’t be that hard. The most challenging work is retaining your SEO clients and giving them consistent value for money.

That’s what we do at Atropos Digital. Working side by side with our customers, we help them pave the way to organic growth online.

Questions? Comments? Let’s connect on LinkedIn!