Is your startup SEO agency struggling to acquire new clients? Given the ever-increasing competition in the industry, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that landing your first couple of clients is immensely difficult. Prospective clients can turn to other more established companies, so you need to give them a reason to pick your agency. Believe me, we have been there!

I Hope you enjoy this article 🙂  I have put a few case studies in of examples that should give you a better understanding of what i am actually talking about. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot us an email.

With virtually no credibility to back up your name, how can you position your SEO agency as one of the best in the game? Keep reading for some tips on how to fuel the growth of your company.

1) Practice what you preach.

It’s easy to create blogs that talk about the best practices in SEO from content marketing and conversion optimisation to advanced analytics and link building techniques. However, it’s a different story when it comes to showing potential clients that you really know your stuff.

As soon as they land your website, it should be evident that you can be trusted with everything you say. There’s no use to producing one high quality blog post after another if your website has terrible page load speed, isn’t optimized for mobile devices and fails to provide the best user experience.

Business owners are becoming tech savvy, so don’t assume that they’ll fall for high quality content alone.

2) Back up your blogs with hard facts.

One of the best ways to showcase your knowledge, experience and expertise in SEO is to create blogs that do not only contain regurgitated information. There’s no use to producing an SEO-optimised article in an attempt to drive targeted traffic. What’s more important is to convert even just a handful of visitors by doing something other agencies do not.

For example, you can come up with your own case study about a particular aspect of SEO. An SEO Agency which show a great example of this is Darren Boyle’s London Based Agency. As you can see above, he actually posts live rankings of his clients on every page of his website. Although his digital agency ranks on the first page of Google and Bing for lots of different keywords like SEO Surrey, showing case studies of client results, shows that he understands how to rank someone else’s business,  not just his own Search Marketing company.

You may also want to show them whether a certain ranking factor is as powerful as many claim it to be. Debunking myths can surely grab the attention of would-be clients. It also shows that you’re doing your research, which is necessary to keep up with the constant changes in the SEO environment.

3) Speak at non-industry events.

You can expand your network by speaking at SEO and marketing conferences. If you manage to land a position in a prestigious event, then you might be able to bank big time. The problem, however, is that you have a very small chance of doing so as a small startup. As an alternative, you might want to look into opportunities at non-industry events.

SEO is relevant in all industries. It’s a matter of tailoring your speech to the specific needs of your audience. Even if non-industry events may not have as many attendees, there’s still a good chance of expanding your network by simply getting your name out there.

4) Offer help for free.

At first, this advice may not make sense. But when done consistently, this proves to be a very powerful marketing method. Everybody loves getting free SEO services. This is a great opportunity to show how good you are to prospective clients. Of course, nobody will accept your offer even if it’s completely free. But you might just land your first client using this technique.

If you’re lucky, the business you help might decide to create a post that talks about the positive results they got from your free service. This will probably land you a high quality, relevant and authoritative link. Not to mention, your name will be seen by the targeted followers of that particular business, which may trigger word-of-mouth marketing.

5) Focus on results.

In the world of SEO, everything you do must be results driven. You can’t say to a client that you “did your best.” Back it up with real results. That’s the key to staying in the industry for the long term. Failing to provide the results to clients will inevitably spell doom for your startup SEO agency.

6) Provide more than just rankings!

Ranking your client on the first page of Google is great but, SEO companies who go that extra mile will always grow faster by providing a service your client will want to tell everyone about. So what can you you do to add extra value? A good idea would be to help the client actually convert the visitors that are now getting to their website into paying customers.

A website to checkout in regard to this is Brand That Name, an SEO Agency in Leeds. A big part of their success has come from creating unique ways of helping their clients convert search engine traffic. One of the ways that they do this is by offering their clients free animated/virtual website spokespersons  when they buy an SEO package from Brand That Name. The animated spokesperson is added to the clients website, so that when a potential customer opens the website, it pops up as soon as the page loads. The spokesperson then talks to the visitor from what is clearly a carefully planned CTA script to encourage the visitor to take an action, such as emailing them straight away. You can see the one they have on their own website below.

It takes a whole lot of time, effort and resources to grow your SEO agency from nothing. You’re at a huge disadvantage at the start, as you need to battle it out against businesses with experience and track record to back them up. But with enough patience, dedication and hard work, you should be able to land one client after another and take your business to new heights.