+7 votes
by (250 points)
First post - be gentle! I joined a few days ago and I'm loving the conversations and insights. I've been dabbling in SEO for a couple years - I came from copywriting but while I'm half creative I've also got a strong inclination towards data - and so much of my work, particularly content writing for clients, felt like it was missing that part of the puzzle. So I started getting more involved in the strategy of the content and of course how it performs. I've had some really good success (albeit on a small scale) and hunger for more - all of which brings me to my question/situation. I work for a massive company (mainly content production and co-ordination) and they have a big SEO agency that they use. But within the company are smaller franchises/businesses and they don't really want to pony up for the ferrari SEO treatment. Since I talk about SEO a lot (I'm always running pages/ideas through ahrefs to see if our assumptions are rooted in data) it was suggested that I should pitch an SEO service. So a franchise can have the ferrari agency treatment or they can have a service that does maybe 70% of what the agency offers but for maybe a quarter of the price. 70% being (checks math) better than 0%. So I'm trying to build my offerings for the first time outside of content creation (as content is not simply created in this org, it can take many months to even add a few lines of text to a page) and wondering if there are any fundamental and easy things of value that I could add. I'm offering: - Site crawl and report of technical issues - Report on keywords ranked for already - Report on competitor's ranked keywords + content gap - Backlink report (+ competitors) - Monthly backlink and rank tracking - Page depth report - Internal linking report (is there a tool that can visualize this well? SEOtify seems to offer something. ) - And obviously recommendations to improve the above What am I missing?  
First post - be gentle!

5 Answers

+5 votes
by (4.2k points)
 
Best answer
Honestly, the companies really have no need for those reports - those are YOUR tools to analyze, form a plan and either execute it or give it to them for execution. None of our clients ever see those types of reports. We might create some snapshots and overviews to show why we're making a recommendation to do or fix something but they're hiring us to solve their issues, not to point them out. In your case it seems similar. If they're not hiring an SEO firm now, they have no need for those reports. If you give them to them then all you've done is make them aware of a problem but that problem has been there all along and there's no one there to fix it so. on the trash pile it goes. The recommendations are probably not enough either - again, they've got no one in house to follow up on them. Sure, they may offer you up a few people for a few hours a month to help go through relinking posts or doing some linking outreach. They may have some folks who can help with content preparation. But if they were geared up to handle a recommendation - they'd already be interested in SEO and doing something about it. Bear in mind that it's also very rare for one person to be highly skilled in all the facets of SEO. For example I'm a Tech SEO guy, so I can do internal link structure, structured data, semantic html markup, and all kinds of on page stuff. Sure, I can have a good understanding of the kinds of external links you want to try to get, but do I have the skill to know how to reach out get those links? No way. I can give technical advice on content format and presentation, but can I prepare good marketing content that will inform, titillate, and convert? Hell no - unless it's about something I'm an expert in, but Technical SEO blog posts for a restaurant web site are pretty worthless nowadays. So. you will probably need a few more people involved. You may be able to identify technical problems, but can you fix mismatched tags or content that renders too wide on mobile? Do you know enough about semantic html to make sure you're nav, breadcrumb, article, sidebar, header, footer content is labeled and marked appropriately? (Maybe you do know those things, but eventually I'd hit on something you would need help with - just as you creating a list of things you know would certainly hit on something that I need help with). One of the reasons the Ferrari SEO firms are Ferrari SEO firms is the diversity in expertise and experience that a team can bring together. Don't let this dissuade you, though. Since content (and therefore onpage SEO) seems to be your thing, maybe you start by just offering that (and whatever other specific things you feel proficient in). You won't get the full service results since 2/3 of the equation is missing, but you'll get results. If you can improve their conversion rates through more or better qualified traffic and they start to make more money, then they can start to look into hiring other people to fill in the gaps (or to pay you a bit more to go find those people and put them on your own team). Many Tech SEO recomendations are one-offs, too - fixing templates, adding itemprops and so on. Those are things you can build a recommendation and outsource it to someone who can help. "Here's $500, I've got about 5-7 hours of things I need you to fix on the site. " Something like that. HINT: I'd take 10 Qualified visitors over 100 random visitors any day. On page (and in targeted content strategies especially) is the quickest and easiest way to get that qualified traffic. Find the need and fill it - if there aren't a lot of other people filling that need, you don't need a zillion inbound links to compete. So, yeah. those reports are good list of things for YOU to make sure you're covering the bases, but all your client needs are the conclusions and recommendations you develop from analyzing them - and then they probably also need someone to implement those things for them - or at least many of them. You could try to present yourself as a Ferrari, but I think you'll end up with more success just presenting yourself as a good common sense work truck to build a solid foundation and increase revenue so that a Ferrari comes within reach. (And by then, you'll have been able to actually position yourself as that Ferrari).  
by (130 points)
@unpolite one of best replies to a post ive seen In a long time.  
by (4.2k points)
Thanks Mike. I see similar questions a lot and had a few minutes to address it. Figured taking the time might help a lot of people, so it's worth the time to do it right.  
by (250 points)
Awesome response and much appreciated. I didn't speak so much about the implementation because, with this org - it's complicated. From the different companies to the different regions to the dev team and the CMS team to the legal, medical and regulatory signoff that is required for any content changes. But, that's not to say that I wouldn't be executing on recommendations. But it would be something like: - Gathering the data - Making a recommendation to the business - Getting the business to sign off with executing these changes - Collaborating with them on said changes - Then working through all those bodies above to actually implement them - And then track the progress through analytics and other reports The technical stuff, I can offer ground level help and have already pointed out some really bad errors particularly with hreflang but the value at the moment is primarily being finding a problem and pointing it out to the team - who if they agreed that it's a problem, it gets run up the flag pole to the global devs to get some answers. But beyond technical, even though it's a complicated niche and org - there are still fundamentals. Are they ranking for the keywords they should be? Are they outperforming their competitors for visibility? Is the content providing a good UX for visitors? Etc. It's just that implementation is a complicated path (compared to any other client I've had). But even though this company is massive, SEO has been an afterthought it seems and there are some really bad gaps that need filling in. But thinking of monthly services for such a unique client - where it may not be possible to implement a certain action, or it may take a many months - not because of me but because of the org -- that is proving a bit tricky.  
by (4.2k points)
Highly regulated industries can be tricky. It's difficult to produce unique content that needs to go through strict approvals. (On financial investment web sites, for example, you can't have any arrows that point in any direction higher than horizontal since they subliminally suggest that you're promising a positive return. ) For networks of sites like this, an overall strategy needs to be worked out first. Thankspically things like content syndication are considered - maybe with that syndicated content automatically being optimized for the regional/location variants of the search terms. You canonicalize the parent site's work, but Google will usually choose to show the localized version of the content in localized searches. For this to work properly, though - in-house procedures and systems need to be in place to take situations where the parent site hits which don't get properly localized funnel the leads/sales back to the local outlets fairly and appropriately. Once that structure is figured out and set up, now SEO becomes a shared expense and resource - and thus a lot more effective and easy to manage. There's one set of content that needs to be approved that can benefit the entire network. From what you're describing here - I think that's the situation you're in. They aren't doing SEO because they aren't really set up to be able to properly handle any SEO (or digital marketing) efforts. So. yeah, you can help out with basic Tech SEO stuff. (And ADA compliance is a big thing now too - which is highly related to Technical SEO in that both are specifically trying to make it so that machines can understand what's on a web page). Beyond that, there probably isn't much even a Ferrari SEO company could do to help until the entire network structure is reworked to properly support the efforts (and results of said efforts). I might look into the ADA compliance stuff - there's a lot of overlap with Tech SEO, it's valuable to know, and if they aren't at least making a strong effort to be compliant (and they're highly regulated) they are definitely running a risk.  
+5 votes
by (270 points)
Focus on ROI not ranking or increase in traffic
by (250 points)
Traffic - absolutely, but analytics are already set up and franchises have access to Data Studio dashboards.  
+4 votes
by (3.8k points)
Don’t under charge, you will get trapped. Charge what it’s worth and so you can grow as a company.  
by (250 points)
Well, I'm paid hourly for any work I do for the business - separate to this SEO proposal. So this would effectively generate more hourly work for me, if some franchises wanted to proceed. And it only really works as a cost-effective model (compared to the agency).  
+4 votes
by (440 points)
Results > reports. I didnt see one actual service listed that would do anything for their performance. which is what people hire an seo firm for. yeah, what stockbridge said
0 votes
by (14.3k points)
This is pretty much what I give for free to any prospective customer who's asking me to make an offer
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