How I plan to go about getting business - what do you think?

[tyleryellow]

I love the idea of a packet. My experience with SEOs (especially locally) has been so-so, so knowing that you know what you are talking about is a big plus. These days, it seems to damn easy to call yourself an SEO just because you know how to edit title tags. I don't think sending "free" info is a big deal, because most clients will be unable or unwilling to implement your changes.

Good luck!

[duablellc]

Matt,

Sounds like a great plan from my end.  We've pushed in the same sort of direction since most of our cold-calls lead to dead ends.  Our company targets the legal market, and those guys and gals receive a TON of spam for SEO and the like from what I would call 'terrible' SEO companies.

We've found much more success after providing something along the lines of what you mentioned.  Our focus is brand trust, so we derived a brand authority blueprint that goes over their current brand reach, and we rate their competitors in terms of their logo, website, rank factors, content and social reach.  By our experience, when people can see in plain English and easy-to-digest numbers exactly what is going on in the tech portion of their marketing budget, they become immediately interested.

I would just say to make sure that what you provide doesn't resemble what other SEO's are sending out.  There's soooooo much crap collateral being thrown around that what you provide is typically going to look like something they've tossed out before.  Being creative with the delivery is what its all about.

Good luck!

[danatanseo]

I admire your pro-active ideas and ambition greatly. As someone who fields SEO sales calls every day, I'd just toss out a word of caution.

Most businesses have spent a lot of time getting very good at what they do. They understand their vendors, their products, their customers, their bottom line. There's no way a gung-ho SEO can look at a site for 30 minutes and pretend to waltz in as if they know the first thing about the business, its goals or its customers. I've had SEO's pitch me keyword lists that were completely wrong for the business because they had no idea who the customers really were (and most likely they didn't care).

I get so tired of people calling me and saying "Hey I took a look at your Web site and did you know you don't have any [insert select SEO term here] ?" The last one, just two weeks ago said "Hey, did you know you are missing all of your meta keywords tags on your Web page?." I should have hung up, but I played stupid and strung him along just to see how green he really was, poor chap! lol

I don't like it when people call me and say they've been looking at my Web site source code. It's almost like they've been lifting up my skirt to see what color my underwear is!

IMHO it's bad manners to offer an opinion unless asked for it. To me, the best approach is to give them a compelling reason to ask you for help. That way, they've invited you into their "space." Show some genuine interest in their business. 30 minutes of prep time just isn't going to do it, and they can see right through that.

The only SEOs who've ever gotten my attention were the ones who offered to fix something small for free just to show me that they were competent and could produce results. To me, that's the best hook in the world.

[Mrupp44]

Dana,

That's a GREAT idea! I never thought about fixing or offering to do something small for free. I might head in that direction all together. I have spent to much time on my pretty packet to toss it now and my new bride will kill me if I don't at least try this approach but if it doesn't work like I hope I will try that one!

Thanks for the great response.

Matthew

[danatanseo]

Matthew, you are very welcome. I think putting those two ideas together would come across nicely. Best of luck to you!

[EGOL]

It will take me about 8 minutes to look at their site and run it through a couple tools and and have a quick list of things that are missing.

Eight minute SEO?

You are going to tell me what is missing on my site in 8 minutes?

This hits really high on my BS meter.

I can spend more than eight minutes writing a title tag.

Just sayin'.

[Mrupp44]

So can I and I have.

I'm not 'doing' Seo or fixing anything in 8 minutes but it doesn't take long to see that the different pages don't have different titles, the content isn't optimized very well for any particular kw, they have no social links or video on their site, number of backlinks pointing at their site, number of pages google has indexed, if the images have alt tags or not. (I include a very brief, simple explanation of each and why it matters).

Im not pushing thats all seo is or all it takes but if those are missing its a great place to start.

Matthew

[EGOL]

If you are targeting sites that have minimal SEO work in place then this is a good screen.

For sites above "minimal" you might consider the idea that for many sites 90% of the revenue comes in through 10% of the pages... and if you can increase the rankings of those pages by just a few positions you might be able to double their income.

If you can identify those pages and move them up then the website owner would be maximal return on the SEO instead of getting the cookie cutter plan that is commonly offered.

Great return is also available for a narrowly targeted business such as "auto glass in Scranton PA".  There, getting the biz visible in local search can bring a huge payoff.

[Mrupp44]

Thank you for your responses but a 'screen', really?

I'm not offering cookie cutter seo plans and I understand what quality seo work is. I realize what you are saying and agree totally but when I look at an incredibly high % of the sites in my city of 500k people its incredible to me how many of them are missing the most basic items.

I'm just trying to give them enough value to get in the door IN A WAY THATS EASY TO UNDERSTAND. I spoke to a chiropractor last week who truly believes seo is just pulling up your domain and clicking on it over and over, one guy was insistent that coming up in the search engines was dependant on how much you paid them.

Matthew

[KyleChamp]

I think you misunderstood that way EGOL is using the word screen. He is using it like:

Screen: The evaluation or investigation of something as part of a methodical survey, to assess suitability for a particular role or purpose.

That's what you're doing, your screening websites to find mistakes / errors.  Just thought I would clear that up

[Mrupp44]

Thanks Kyle, I may have gotten a little defensive last night, it was late and the last thing i want to do is anything that lumps me in with the idiots selling seo that dont know the first thing about it.

when I ask for help I should listen to whoever is willing to give it!

Matthew