How I Started My SEO Agency

just three years ago i was a grossly underpaid web designer fresh out of college and i quickly realized that web design alone was not going to pay my bills and it certainly wasn't going to help me get wealthy and so what i did is i built my own seo agency which is now making multiple six figures i've got an seo team i still get to enjoy the benefits and the fun of designing websites and so in today's video i'm gonna break down every single step of that process we're going to talk about everything from learning seo and how to do it everything that you need to know to set up and establish a real seo agency we're going to talk about finding clients how much to charge we're going to cover all of it in today's video so let's jump into it so like i said not too long ago i was a college student studying web design and development and i was incredibly frustrated with my college experience i didn't feel like i was learning the things that i wanted to learn and i certainly wasn't looking forward to writing out a resume and starting to apply for jobs after graduation they were only going to pay me maybe 40 or 50 000 a year that just wasn't something that i wanted to do and so with just a few semesters left i started building my own web design agency and i started finding clients mostly through word of mouth and i did start to make a little bit of money but i was working website to website some months i would make a lot of money some months i would make nothing and meet no new clients and so i quickly realized that while this freelance lifestyle was something that could make me good money it wasn't consistent it wasn't predictable and so what i did is i determined that i needed to bring in an additional service or expertise into my freelance agency in order to provide value to my clients but also convince them that they should stick with me for the long term and pay me every month for these services i looked into a lot of different residual services that i could offer as a freelancer and first i looked into running ads on google and social media and while that is a great way to make money and a great way to provide value for your clients at first that was intimidating to me because i was not ready to convince a business to spend five or ten thousand dollars per month on ads just so i could pocket a small percentage of that it was really kind of nerve-wracking because i was dealing with huge amounts of money or i would be dealing with huge amounts of money and only making a little bit and i just felt like that was overwhelming to me and it was at this point that i came across seo and the thing that i loved about seo is it people were paying me for my time and for my expertise but i wasn't having to roll over and spend all of that money on ads right so with an seo campaign people were paying me to optimize their website and do outreach and create content and all these things that were a lot easier for me to do under less stress and also my margins were a lot better and certainly over time my margins have gone significantly better and also the results that i've gotten for clients have gotten a lot better but i found seo to be the perfect service to add in addition to my web design services so if you don't know what seo is seo stands for search engine optimization and is basically a series of tasks that we can do to a business's website to get them to show up organically on google search now there are a lot of different things that go into an seo campaign that we're going to touch on during this video but again the nicest part about seo is it is a long term service and if you set expectations correctly it typically takes between six to nine months to get any sort of noticeable results for your clients and so they're willing to give you a chance of course if you sell it properly they're willing to give you a chance to spend that six to nine to 12 months to do everything that you need to to start getting them to pull up on google search and start getting those organic website visitors to the website now to a lot of people seo seems like this kind of dark magic service that is nothing but hacks and tricks to appeal to google search and in fact that's not the case at all traditionally seo was a very technical service that was only offered or or done by these really like technical coders or it was like its own specialty and a lot of people particularly web designers have this mentality that it's something outside of their realm because it's too technical or you have to have just this crazy knowledge of algorithms or all these different things and and frankly that's not the case and that was something that nearly scared me off when i first started looking into it but i quickly realized that seo is literally the perfect service to learn and offer as a web designer and the biggest reason for that is you just built their website you know their website better than anybody else and so for you to then take that website and start optimizing it for google search you're able to provide a ton more value to these clients and so now rather than just paying you a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars for a website they're going to pay you that big chunk for the website and then those payments are going to continue month after month after month and only are you going to make way more money but every month that you run that seo campaign on the website that you built it's adding more value to that website so your clients love you even more because they're saying wow like i love the way the website looks but now i'm loving even more the way that it's performing and it's making us money and that is why i love seo and that's why i determined that that was going to be the best service for me to offer as a web designer [Music] so if you're sitting there right now wondering is seo something that i can really learn or i can master and actually get paid for and the answer is absolutely in my case it only took a couple months to learn the basics of seo and really the thing that was the most time consuming is i didn't know where to look i didn't know who to turn to to teach me seo but once you get those basics down really the best way for you to actually implement the things you're learning and see what works and what doesn't is to actually execute an seo campaign on a website and in our case as web designers if we already have these web design clients or websites that we've built it is incredibly easy to talk those clients into letting you try out your seo skills for free or for a discounted price and so that is one of the biggest reasons that i think that us as web designers have kind of a hand up on anybody else that wants to learn seo because we have this perfect kind of proving ground to test what we're learning and figure out what works and what doesn't and very very quickly you can become an seo expert and offer way more value than anybody else is in the seo space so in my case like i said it took me just a couple months of looking through youtube videos and i bought a couple courses which was while it was really useful i also ran into a lot of courses that were just full of fluff and crap and things that just didn't help me understand seo to its most like basic and simplified form and so that was really the biggest time consumer and so what i want to do for you guys is give you some of my favorite resources that not only will save you a lot of time in the learning process of becoming an seo expert but also are going to be enjoyable and quick and efficient ways to learn seo knowing that you're not wasting your time or your money so with that being said here's a list of some of my favorite seo resources the first one is a guy by the name of ryan stork he has a youtube channel and he also has a fairly expensive paid seo course i would say he is probably one of the biggest names in the seo space and while his course which is called the blueprint.training while it is very expensive it certainly has everything that you could possibly need to not only learn seo but build a full-scale seo agency he shares his spreadsheets his templates literally everything that you could need to not only learn it yourself but then teach a team and build your own seo team which is what i eventually did is build out a team to kind of execute the more technical parts of an seo campaign but ryan store has an awesome youtube channel as well he shares a lot of really useful tips and tricks about seo and so i'm going to link his youtube channel and website down below i highly recommend you check him out first if you're looking for some great free content the next place that i would turn to look for free content about learning seo is fat joe moz and backlinko these are all seo companies that either actually offer seo services or they offer white label seo services or are in just that space of teaching agencies how to build their seo agency and so they are certainly authorities in the seo world but they do a ton of great stuff whether that's on their website in blog articles or their youtube channels or their free tools i highly recommend that you visit all of their websites and just read through all the content and take it all in because they are a great great resource for me even now as someone who has nearly 30 monthly seo clients i still am learning new things from these people and from these experts and so i highly recommend checking those out the last one that i would mention is actually the tool that i use and i swear by when it comes to seo which is called semrush now semrush is pretty much your all-in-one seo tool where you can run website audits and competitor research and keyword research and all of these different things but besides those tools that they offer semrush has an awesome training program where you can actually go through their courses and learn every aspect of seo and there's actually even a certification that you can get once you go through all of this and take a test and i found this to be one of the most useful and kind of clear-cut courses for free that is offered online that you can quickly pick up and go through and in no time you're going to have a really really good idea of not only what seo is but how you can actually execute seo on a website and so again i'm going to link that down below with all of those other resources but those are going to be great places for you to start to get the ball rolling on your seo agency the last thing that i'll quickly mention is i just recently released my own seo course it is called seo and web flow now while this course is directed primarily towards those that use the website builder webflow it is very relevant to really any website builder whether that's wix or squarespace or wordpress but this course breaks down all of the basics and it basically shares all of my resources that i use in my agency from my pricing sheets to my agreement templates to my week by week seo checklist that you can go through on every single client and know exactly the tasks and the steps that you need to accomplish to run a successful seo campaign and so i'll also link that down below as far as these other courses go mine is certainly cheaper i wouldn't necessarily say that it's a super deep dive into seo but it is a fantastic place to start and it's certainly something that i wish i had when i started out as an seo [Music] so the next question that you guys probably have is how long is it actually going to take me to learn seo to where i can get to the point where i'm actually charging people for it and i would say that it is a pretty safe bet to give yourself about two to three months to learn seo enough that you can take on a very small-scale client and start practicing what you've learned now with that being said you're not going to be able to go into a new client and say hey it's going to be 2 000 bucks a month for a full-scale seo campaign because you're not going to know enough to charge that much or to truly execute like this super elaborate seo campaign but with that being said kind of like i mentioned at the beginning of the video you can take a previous website client that you've got or maybe a family friend or a family member that has a website and charge them a couple hundred bucks a month and just practice what what you've been learning implement new content or keywords or run a site audit and improve some of the on-page things these are all things that you can kind of start to get the ball rolling and again the best way to learn seo is going to be to run these campaigns on actual websites and then see what happens the next question that i want to answer is what do you need to know to not only understand seo but offer it as a service and i've got a list here that i want to share obviously the first thing that you need to know is what is seo if you don't know what seo is first off you're not going to be able to sell it and second off you're certainly not going to be able to execute it and so again i would invite you to to really research seo and not only what is included in that but what's expected of an seo or seo agency and by doing that you're going to get a good feel for not only what you can charge which we're going to talk about here in a minute but you're also going to know the expectations that those clients are going to have for you as an seo expert the next thing that you're going to need to understand is the main ranking factors now while there are literally hundreds of ranking factors out there there are some core pillars to every seo campaign that you need to understand and i'm going to list those now and some of these might not make any sense to you right now but you can reference this video while you're doing your research to make sure that you're not missing out on any of these really pivotal parts of an seo campaign so those things are website quality on page optimizations local citations backlinks content google my business and of course there's a lot more but by understanding these pillars of a successful seo campaign you're going to position yourself to be able to have success and make your clients happy and that truly is the only way to build a successful agency is if you're actually delivering results and you're always under promising and over delivering so people are thrilled that they hired you the next thing that you need to know is what tools you'll use in order to execute an seo campaign one of which i already mentioned which is semrush which is your all-in-one seo tool there are also a lot of other free tools that you can use like google analytics google search console moz local and again there's a ton more that i'll link down below as i want to add more of those to this video but just be aware that without the proper tools you're really not going to be able to run a successful campaign and actually with that being said another tool that i just thought of is called keywords everywhere which is a great keyword research tool but again i'll link all those down below so you can look into those start using them to become more successful at your seo campaigns [Music] so now that we've covered that the next thing that i want to talk about is how much you can charge and how much you can make as an seo now in my case early on i was under charging and it cost me a lot and in fact i still am working with some of those first clients at that really low rate and it's killing me now because at this point now that i've hired on an seo team a lot of those clients are i'm basically just breaking even on them and i want to take care of them because i appreciate their business but i quickly learned that you have to charge a much higher amount not only because people will perceive the value of your service as much much higher but also you're going to leave yourself room to have good margins and be able to take home a good portion of that while still getting results but also you can afford to outsource or build a team and pay them accordingly as well so that everybody wins in that scenario and so with that being said when i started my seo company i was charging right around 200 to 400 per month per client and this was simply not enough and the amount of time and effort that i was putting in i'm pretty sure i was probably only making like 10 bucks an hour and so you can see how that didn't make sense especially now that i'm paying a team to manage most of these seo campaigns it just didn't make sense to price my services that low now if you want to charge that low of an amount of money you can certainly do less in a campaign if you've got a client that says i only have a budget of 250 bucks you can certainly offer them kind of a slowed down or a smaller seo campaign plan but i would not recommend running and promising an aggressive campaign plan if people aren't paying at least 500 per month i found that this is kind of my baseline price where i can still keep a little bit of a margin but i can also deliver great results even if i'm outsourcing that work but with that being said i've also got clients that are paying several thousand dollars per month based on how aggressive we need to get with new content on their website or backlink outreach or whatever it might be you're certainly going to want to keep that range wide and then price that according to the client and their needs and their size and how aggressive you want to get with that and so with that being said um again there are some clients that i'm charging just 500 bucks a month and there are some that i'm charging 5 000 bucks a month and so you need to know that that is a pretty standard range if you're working with smaller businesses i think it's probably going to be a little bit more difficult to get anywhere beyond 1 000 per month but you can certainly find those great clients that are going to be willing to pay you that much [Music] now that we've covered all that i want to address the question of how much you can make as an seo provider and so what i've done is i've broken down kind of my my average seo contract value which is right around 700 a month and if you times that by let's just say you have 15 monthly clients you'll see that that'll make you right around 10 500 dollars per month which then translates to 126 000 a year now keep in mind this has nothing to do with the other fees that you're charging for your web design services this is just your monthly seo campaign contracts and so with that being said this is certainly going to fluctuate and i found that typically and at this point in my agency i'm bringing on one to three new websites every month and typically one to two of those become new seo clients a month and so you can see how quickly you can grow this where by the end of a year you can have a six figure business by the end of two or three years you could potentially have a million dollar business and so there is a ton of potential in this and again the thing that i love so much about it is it's consistent it's residual it gives my family a very predictable monthly income and so my wife knows just how much to anticipate that we're going to make as a base salary and then you can certainly have bigger months where i land a ten thousand dollar website on top of all my seo contracts and those are really exciting months and it certainly makes me happy that i chose this route over just going and getting a typical um job that is going to pay me 40 50 60 000 a year you can really see how our ceiling is much much higher with this business model [Music] the next thing that you need to understand is how to do your monthly reporting now the most critical pillar i would say of a successful seo campaign is your client relationships and the way that you keep them up to speed with what's going on with their campaign if you run an seo campaign and your client doesn't hear from you for three months they're going to get really nervous really sketched out and they're going to fire you and so it's going to be really important for you to check in with them at least monthly and tell them this is what we've done this is what's going on this is where our rankings are this is where our traffic is and most importantly here's what we're going to be doing next month to make sure that you keep them on the line you can keep them engaged and excited and so they're not going anywhere they're going to stay with you for the long term if you can do that monthly reporting properly [Music] and the final thing that i would say you're going to want to have to run these seo campaigns is some sort of game plan or checklist now this is something that you can find out there online i know there are a lot of free seo checklists i actually offer the seo checklist that i follow for all of my campaigns um that is included in my course but you can certainly find free versions of that that are going to help walk you through the step-by-step of an seo campaign this is going to make it much easier it's going to keep you on track it's going to help you manage your time and make sure that you can anticipate what kind of results you're going to get for your clients at which parts of the campaign and so you can properly prepare them you can set good expectations and then you're going to know how much work you have to put in to achieve those results so an seo checklist or game plan are going to be absolutely critical to a successful campaign [Music] the next question that i get asked literally all the time is how do i find seo clients and the first thing that i would like to mention is this brings us back to my point where we are at a huge advantage as freelance web designers because most of us already have web design clients right we've got these people that we know want to invest in their online presence they've got a new website and they are prime for the picking to become monthly seo clients and so the first thing that i would say is go back to all of the websites that you've built for clients reach out to those people and say hey i am offering a new service of seo if you would like to be one of my first clients to do this i do it at a discounted service or if you're confident enough you can just go in and charge them a normal rate and say i offer seo now i'm an seo expert and i would love to execute a campaign for you on your new website this is going to be the best way for you to kind of kick-start your client base and start practicing your services more and getting more results so you can then in turn create case studies and have something to show your new potential clients that hey i've been there i've done that i've gotten results and we are somebody that you can trust i would also like to mention that i have gotten a lot of new clients from word of mouth and so again if you do a good job people are going to refer you and especially if you work on kind of a local level people talk people know each other they see each other's websites they see that they're ranking well on google or that they have a ton of reviews or whatever that is um that is kind of that ignition point where people are going to say hey who do you use for your website or how do you guys rank so well on google and inevitably people are going to get passed to you they're going to email you call you find your website and so word of mouth is a really really powerful way to grow a very loyal client base the next thing that i would mention is niching down is a super super great way to kind of accelerate that word of mouth but also just meet new people that are good potential clients and so what i mean by this is i'm not necessarily saying that you should niche down by industry and only work with lawn care companies but what i'm saying is you should niche down to an area and if you could become the seo expert of your small little town or of an outlying suburban of your city or whatever it is that is a great niche to find yourself in because there's not as much competition and again people talk they know each other and so it's going to be a great way to very quickly meet new people land new clients and really by just kind of targeting a single city in you know wherever it is in my case i'm here in idaho falls and just by targeting this city i've been able to grow a multiple six-figure agency just off of local businesses here and so you don't need to target detroit or new york or you know tampa or any of these big cities just target some small cities niche down become the seo and web design expert in that area and you're going to be able to find a lot of new clients the last thing that i would mention when it comes to finding new clients is just trusting the process and knowing that if you build your agency properly and you do a good job that things are going to grow exponentially and this is something that i have seen every single month of my business where even today i'm getting referrals that are friends of friends of friends of friends of the first client that i ever had and it's just like it grows so quickly and word spreads of the great job you do and the more websites you build the more people see your work and the more people you get ranking on google the more you're going to be able to to show that on your website and build case studies and everything grows exponentially and it gets easier and easier and easier to not only get in front of potential clients but then when you get on the phone with them you can be super confident because you can say yeah man i've worked with 50 different companies and we've ranked 49 of those on page one of google for tons of different keywords and we know what we're doing we've got a process down and so that will come with time it's not going to come in month one or even month 12 but if you can trust in the process and know that things will grow if you do a good job i promise you that you will get to the point where you look back and say oh my gosh i remember when it was so hard to get clients and now i'm literally turning people away because i just don't have the bandwidth to take them on and so this is a very great problem to have and it will come in time but make sure that you put in the footwork early on to learn seo and become an expert and practice these things and find lower kind of hanging fruit clients whether those are family friends or family members or discounted clients or whatever it is just get started get that ball rolling and i promise you a year or two down the road you're gonna say wow i can't believe that i'm making thirty thousand dollars every single month that's more than i made in the entire first year of my business and you can definitely get there and i promise you that because i've gone through that process and i have built something that i never thought was possible and it was only through trusting the process and giving it time to grow [Music] so you're probably sitting there saying well this sounds great peyton and i would love to do this and i would love to have two free years to build an agency but i've got a full-time job and i've got a family and i've got bills to pay and a mortgage and and that's okay like i totally understand that but also you need to ask yourself is this something that would be worth the risk and worth the hard work and i can tell you in my case that it certainly was but ask yourself if you are somebody that's hating your job or hating college and you just feel like you want more or maybe you feel like you have a talent for learning new things and you feel like you could provide more value than what you're currently getting paid for maybe you feel like you're just super ambitious or entrepreneurial or maybe you want your own business that you can be proud of and that you want to have kind of this endless potential or super high ceiling of what you can accomplish or what you can earn maybe you are a web designer just wanting to make more consistent money like you're a freelancer but you're you're working project to project and that's frustrating i know or ask yourself if maybe you're just somebody that would like to grow a business and you like the idea of residual income and working with clients and and all of these are really great reasons to take a look at this and say is this something that i could see myself doing and is it something that i want to start you don't have to completely scrap your full-time job or drop out of college to start this this is something that i started when i still had a couple semesters left in college and it's something that you can certainly build on the side and see if it works and see how you like it and maybe you start landing a lot of clients and you say oh my gosh i could go full time on this and instantly be making more than i am in my full-time job and if that's the case do it like it may seem risky but in my opinion the more risky thing is staying in a 50 000 a year job and not giving yourself the opportunity to grow and reach your potential and build something truly awesome so just to recap everything that we talked about in this video if you're wondering where you need to start first off watch some of my other videos on seo and web design and my agency and how i built it this is going to help you get a good feel for if this is something that you should do the next thing that you're going to want to do after that is go to the resources that i linked below and then i talked about earlier on in this video and go start checking out some of those youtube videos and reading some of those articles and taking some of those courses there is nothing stopping you from spending 30 minutes every night after your 9 to 5 job going through the semrush course and becoming a certified seo it's free yes it takes time but you can you can make a lot of money off of this if you're just willing to invest that time and that effort so once you've done that think about how much you want to charge people and start bringing on maybe some lower skill clients and then start increasing your prices and then start getting better at seo and then before you know it you're going to own a yacht and be in the bahamas and you're going to love your life and your wife or your husband is going to be very thrilled that you took this course of action and i promise you that that's possible i am at the point where i am i'm so grateful that i took that risk and now anything else or any other path in life seems like a total risk to me because this path that i've taken of growing a web design and seo agency has provided a life for my family that i never thought that we would be able to achieve certainly not after just two or three years and so i hope this video has been helpful for you guys i hope that you're feeling encouraged that this is something that you can learn you can start you can get paid for but i'm sure that you also have a lot of questions and so please drop down below what's your biggest hesitation in starting an seo agency or what is your biggest hesitation to just adding seo as a little side service to your freelance business or doing it on the side of your nine to five i really want to know what might be holding you back and this might help me make future videos to overcome those concerns and help you through this process to be able to build your own seo agency and make all the money that you want but even more importantly build something way bigger than yourself that you can truly be proud of so thanks so much for watching and i will catch y'all in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Payton Clark Smith

Views: 11,635

Keywords: How I Started My SEO Agency, seo agency, seo agency business plan, seo agency process, seo agency website, how to start an seo business, how to start an seo agency, how to start an seo company, how to start an seo consulting business, start an seo business, start an seo agency, learn seo for free, learn seo step by step free, become an seo expert, how to become an seo freelancer in 48 hours, how to become an seo freelancer, seo, seo for beginners, seo for beginners 2020

Id: LqeaZ0FmFRo

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020