7 Lessons Learned Running an SEO Agency

[stevetoth]

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/7-lessons-le ... ency-14225

Excerpt:

"When I first started out I would pitch companies on SEO by telling them how much more traffic I could get them and how high I could get them to rank on Google. I would also end the pitch with how much it would cost. Although that approach works, it’s not as easy as you may think. Can you guess why? Well the person who signs off on a six- or seven-figure contract doesn’t care about rankings, they care about revenue AND profit instead.

It took me a few years to learn this, but once I did my minimum SEO engagement started at $240,000 a year and it went up to $1,200,000 a year. I was able to get large contracts because I changed the message of my pitch. Instead of pitching rankings, I would first figure out how much traffic a company was currently getting from search engines and their conversion rate. I would then take that data and multiply it with their average order size to get an understanding of how much revenue the company was making from organic search.

From there I would break down how much more traffic I could get the company from: conservative, normal and aggressive estimates. I would break down the methods I would use, and give them a time range in which they could see these results. I would also share how much more revenue they would see on a quarterly basis from my efforts. Using their average revenue per customer number and their conversion rate percentage I was able to provide estimates on how much additional income I can bring to their business."