SEO Consulting – In and Out in Less Than a Day

[saad_sinpk]

Were experiencing the first worldwide recession since the 1930s Great Depression. Businesses that were once the backbone of the economy are either closing dozens of stores or announcing massive layoffs. Even Google isnt immune to the grim economy – they have reportedly lain off thousands of employees.

Even if you personally choose not to participate in the recession, you may still get dragged back into it. If one of your vendors or suppliers is impacted, it will then affect you. Dont wait for that to happen. Take control of the situation. Even if you arent a professional SEO and you sell shoes online, you can take the knowledge you do have, coupled with the advice I provide you in the SEO Revolution and become a short term SEO consultant.

How? By performing jobs that will take you less than a day to complete. If youre the sole person at your company, this can add up to $5,000 or more per month to your revenue, while we wait out this recession.

How important is $5k? Well, 92% of all bankruptcies and foreclosures in 2008 would have been avoided with an extra $5,000 per month. Thats how important it is.

ASSESS YOUR CURRENT STATUS

If your revenues are down, you need to access your current status. There is no stress more damaging than financial stress. It negatively affects every part of your life. Therefore, you must attack it aggressively so your business does not spiral downward.

First, answer this question. What is your gross income? If your eyes are squinting and your vocal chords are stuck on a questioning, Ummmmm? I can tell you right now, thats the wrong answer. Wake someone up, or call your numbers person if you need to, but figure it out today. Youre running the showso dont be the reason the curtain goes down.

Once youve figured your gross income, determine what your net revenue is, basically your what your paycheck is. If your net revenue is less than $10,000 a month you are doing something horribly wrong. If youre making above $10,000 and still youre not happy with that, write down a realistic number based on your skill level.

The final piece of your assessment is the amount you need in order to bridge the gap the recession created. Based on the numbers you have gathered, write down how much extra you need per month. Now double that figure and that is what you will aim for. Sound crazy? It isnt. The best way to cure financial stress is to inject a lot of revenue into your business and Im going to show you how.

CREATE A SHORT LIST

Now that you know what youre up against, create a short list of companies who could use your services. These can be current or former vendors, suppliers, contacts, etc. Also go through all those business cards youve collected over the years. These are your prospects.

Now it is time to work the phone. I dont care if you are the president of a large company; no one is above making sales calls in crunch time. But if you have a sales person, have them do the calling. They are probably better at it than you are. But sit with them! Work as a team. Your presence will show the person youre calling that this is important to you and will also show great leadership.

Once you have your prospect on the phone, explain that you, or a member of your staff, has become very good at website assessment. Briefly explain that often there are a few small issues with a website which can cause big problems. Assure them that you are still in the same business, but due to the current downturn in the economy, you are reaching out to companies you knew could use your help. Also assure them that the price of the work will not only fall well within their budget, but will take less than a day to complete.

Then casually ask if they have six minutes to learn about the problem areas of their website. Why tell them this time frame? Simple. If they know how long it will take, they know they wont be stuck on an hour-long call. Almost everyone has six minutes. Once they give you the green lightthats when you strike.

CLOSING DEALS: THE SHOCK AND AWE CAMPAIGN

Whoever handles the sales calls also needs to be a great teacher. If you teach a prospect something of value, they often instantly connect with you. An instant connection leads to quick closes, which is exactly what you want as an in and out consultant.

If a prospect asks what you can do for them, always inquire about their business first. Ask probing questions which will lead to shared details about their business such as:

* What is your domain name? (Write this down)
* Do you have a current SEO strategy in place? (Yes or no only. Dont allow rambling!)
* What is your biggest stress with your website? (Definitely write this one down.)

As they share information, look up the domain on one window and enter it into DomainTools.com in another. Run YSlow on their site too. Continue to listen while you access other data and take notes, including their biggest stress. Then layout the six-minute Shock and Awe campaign.

For example:

The reason I asked you about your biggest stress is because that is what we want to help you tackle first. You see, an SEO cookie cutter approach is not the solution most companies want. They want a personalized plan.

Your site is about six years old which is a huge plus in how Google treats aged domains (from DomainTools.com), your total link count is about 3,500 which is pretty weak (info from Yahoo! Site Explorer). For a six-year-old domain, the link count should be at least 12,000 (average of six links a day). Your traffic is pretty weak too, around 12,000 per month (pulled from TrafficEstimate.com), is that about right?

I dont want to get too technical with you, but you are suffering from internal duplicate content which is hurting you in Google. Take out the www from your domain in the browser and press Enter, do you see how the address stays the same? Google is probably indexing both versions and giving you a penalty because of it. (If you wish, you can show your domain and how it performs correctly). Also, did you know that your site has an issue loading slowly in major browsers? It looks like you have five external JavaScripts and a lot of images loading, which is hurting your website performance. Its fixable, but this could be a cause of your stress (info pulled from YSlow). I also noticed youre on the latest version of Apache for your server. This is good as youre protected from a lot of security holes (pulled from the HTTP Headers Firefox extension). So whoever set up your server did a good job.

Note: always give at least one piece of good news with a prospect.

This is where you teach them the difference between getting top ranking and making money. Their eyes will be opened and they will freak out because NO ONE else has taught them this. You have told them more about their site than any other SEO professional has and you did it in six minutes, when the others have blabbed about how great they were for an hour. Their confidence in you is sky high. Close the deal.

Oh, and when they ask you how you know all of this stuff about their website, dont tell them, just say, Thats my job and Im damn good at it! Hey, who said a little attitude wasnt good in this business?!?!

CHAMBER OF ECOMMERCE
If you cannot meet your current needs using the above methods you must hustle your own work. One of the best lead generators when I was taking SEO clients was the local Chamber of Commerce. If you arent a member, join. Review the Chambers Web site, put together a complete analysis, and meet with one of the directors to discuss it. Highlight how implementing your suggestions will allow them to generate more business. Do not charge for your analysis.

Instead, ask them to promote your services. Essentially the director is sending out a testimonial of your impressive work. Trust me, your phone will ring. If certain targeted businesses dont call after receiving the message from the director, call on them and use the shock and awe technique youve learned. If you need money quick, ask to do a short 10-minute presentation at their next meeting. Most Chambers have weekly meetings. You should be able to close at least half of the people in the room.

PASS ON PROPOSALS
The whole point of quick SEO consulting is to maximize your time and the clients profits. You want to spend less effort on time wasters like proposals. Why? Eighty-two percent of them go unread. Proposals require too much time, and more importantly, take you away from actually working on your projects.

If your prospect demands a proposal, politely state you prefer a more personalized approach and then give them a written summary of what they need and price for each. Keep it brief and to the point. By targeting the problem areas within their website and creating a strategy, this gives them what they really want. Ask them, Would you like to give us a try? Their answer will often be sure.

SERVICES TO OFFER
What types of services can you do in one day? Plenty. Here are a few:

* Register them on the local search engines (i.e. Google Local)
* Site Review (Include the problem, why its a problem, how to fix it and the benefits they will receive)
* Keyword research
* List of websites to get good incoming links
* Submission to the top directories (Yahoo!, Best of the Web, DMOZ, etc.)

[saad_sinpk]

HOW SHOULD YOU CHARGE?
Never bill by the hour. No disrespect intended, but this is one of the reasons attorneys are so uptight. Bill by the project and the companys ability to pay, meaning charge the large company more than the mom-and-pop store.

For example, taking the non-www redirect as mentioned above, it would take you approximately three minutes to fix the problem. Should you charge them 1/20th of an hour? Of course not! Bill the large company $250.00 and the mom-and-pop $50.00.

In fact, just being armed with my mod_rewrite tutorial can probably take care of your financial needs.

GUARANTEES DO NOT ENSURE QUALITY
I suggest not offering a written guarantee. This is, after all, a short-term project. Does a lawyer offer a guarantee? Of course not! There are too many factors involved out of their control. Attorneys dont sell a product; they sell their time, as do you. There are many things outside of your control as well, such as the behavior of the search engines, or even their staff complying with your recommendations.

Also, just because a service is guaranteed, doesnt mean it is a quality service. Most guarantees in the SEO field state that if the client is unhappy, the firm will work for free until the goals are met. Nowhere does it state the fees will be refunded, and experience shows when an SEO firm fails to meet the mark the first time, they are unlikely to hit it the second, third or fourth times.

CONTRACTS ARE ESSENTIAL
Do you need a contract? Absolutely. There was a time when I thought contracts just screwed up the relationship between you and your client; however, I have learned the hard way that things can change. Often, these are things you dont have any control over and you need to be protected. My advice is to keep the contract simple. Outline what you will do, what is expected of them, and if it is clear and concise enough, your contract will be signed without legal review.

This is YOUR financial problem and only YOU can solve it. This is survival of the fittest. You can choose your outcome if youre willing to work for it. Dont be discouraged. Feeling depressed with no desire to work will only makes things worse. Get up and work, because there is plenty of money to be made. If the first few calls dont go well, chalk them up to experience and keep dialing. The very next call you make could be to the competitor of the person who just turned you down. After all, their market is not only fresh on your mind, you now have intel to share.

You will get through this – believe that today you will succeedintentionally.

[jbone]

This is pretty good info. I do a lot of offline marketing and SEO work for local businesses and if you can find a way to reoutsource you are golden and should make good money.

[velightful]

The offline thing is something I'd love to do. However, I've spent a lot of time and just can't see how to make it work. I live in a pretty good-sized area; about an hour out of a major metropolitan area.

I've done keyword research for all kinds of things (flipping through the phone book for ideas for my area). Sure, I can probably get people ranking well for the local SE world... but honestly, there aren't many searches at all.

When I contact them, I'd love to say "You're missing out on xxx or xxxx potential clients/customers" - but no... they are missing out on x or xx >> or "not enough info" so basically no one searching :(