Following on from my post "What To Consider When Starting An SEO Agency", we had a few questions about how to approach the design agency model. This is a model whereby you partner with web design companies. I used to run this model, so here are my ideas on how you can approach it.

What Is The Design Agency Model?

This is when you partner with one or more design agencies who do not have a SEO skillset in-house. This can be for a variety of reasons. Perhaps SEO has never occurred to them, they might not have enough full-time SEO work for a new hire, or SEO just seems like too much hassle.

Forming design agency partnerships can be quite lucrative for the SEO. The design agency typically has a stable of existing clients, and if they're big enough, a salesforce who bring in new clients on a regular basis. The design agency bills hours. In essence, they are a consulting business. The more hours they bill, the more money they make. To scale a design agency, they simply add more bodies.

This is where the opportunity lies for a win-win

How To Approach It

When a design agency is pitching to a client, their incentive is to pile feature upon feature, which of course, takes time to build. The more time they can bill for a build, the more money they make.

SEO is an add-on feature.

Some agencies will be happy just to have an extra service option available to clients so the client doesn't go elsewhere, but most agencies will want a cut. I used to work on 10-15%. Because the clients tend to be corporates, you could charge quite high prices, and they wouldn't blink.

Chances are, the design agencies clients are already asking about SEO. Typically, this happens after the site is actually built, and the client can't find themselves on Google. When you find such an agency, it's not difficult to put a mutually beneficial deal together. The demand already exists, and they can't service it.

Identify agencies that are not so big as to have an SEO capability in house, but big enough to attract a steady flow of clients. It's good if they are in your town. Having the ability to go and see them, and work alongside their sales people and designers if need be, is a big plus.

Try to arrange a face-to-face meeting. SEO has a fly-by-night reputation, so it's much easier to establish credibility if you're sitting in front of the people making the decisions, rather than being a detached voice on the phone. They'll also want to see that you're presentable to their clients if you need to attend meetings.

The pitch is you offer white-label search marketing services. You can sweeten the deal by offering to do the first project at cost. The aim is to prove concept and prove that you can fit in with their way of working. It's no different than a job interview and trial period in this respect.

The seamless white label SEO service you provide has little or no overhead cost to the agency. They don't need to hire you and provide you with staff benefits. They'll want to know how and where you fit into the design process, so be prepared to answer such questions. The subtext of this question is they want to know if there are hidden costs i.e. is your work is going to slow the designers down, or make life difficult for them. You could approach this question by saying that if you're in the projects at an early stage, you can make painless recommendations in terms of site build. Emphasize how your work will fit in smoothly, yet provide their clients with added benefit.

Also provide them with marketing collateral. This is the text they include in sales proposals. State the benfits of search engine marketing from a business perspective. You'll get a feel for the type of infoirmation you need to include by looking at their existing proposals. Typically, sales proposals aren't technical in nature. Give an overview of what you do, the benefits you provide, and the cost.

I found that including a PPC option is a good way to go, especially for clients, or agencies, who don't have much awareness of SEO. Even if the designers ignore all your recommendations - believe me, this happens - you can rescue the situation by ensuring traffic still arrives via PPC. You can then demonstrate that traffic is arriving via the search engines, and if you have more input in future, those traffic levels will increase.

Once you've got the first job under your belt, you can negotiate long term arrangements with the agency. You can then go to other agencies - careful that the agencies don't compete directly - and offer the same service, using the first agency as a reference. Repeat until you have as many agencies as you can handle. 4-5 reasonably sized agencies can create a flood of work for an SEO, so much so you'll soon find yourself employing extra staff. That's a great return for 4-5 hour long meetings.

Billing can be by the hour or project based.Try to fit in with however the agency bills. I found most like a project based pricing scheme unless there is significant level of ongoing work.

Benefits

There are significant benefits to this model for the small SEO provider.

Firstly, you outsource the sales function. Sales can be very time consuming and expensive, and have long lead times. The agencies sales force has an incentive to work hard for you because they can sell higher billing projects, upon which their commissions are likely based. Get onside with the sales people as early as you can. Emphasize benefits such as how many people are looking for SEO services, how valuable an add on it is, and how much agency level SEO can charge. The sales people are your friends, as you earn them more money.

If you've selected your agencies carefully, you get to work with bigger clients than you might otherwise land yourself. Besides being more lucrative, you get to work up more and more contacts at high levels. These people often job hop from corporation to corporation, which opens further opportunities for you down the line.

You don't have to build up your own brand, which can take a lot of time and effort. You leverage off the pre-existing brand and reputation established by the agency.

Downsides

Loss of control. It can be harder to pick and choose clients if the sales person is keen to sell every client on SEO. This is why it is important to plan for contingencies i.e. if you get a client hell bent on an all flash, brand heavy site, then be prepared to become Mr PPC. You'll also have less control over projects, as projects are typically managed by dedicated project managers.

Hostility form designers. Designers typically don't like people dictating design standards to them, especially people from outside the agency.

Look for areas where there is cross-over and articulate SEO in their terms. For example, if an agency is focused on usability, then talk that aspect up - usability imperatives and SEO often go hand in hand. Have alternative, low impact SEO strategies ready if you can't get your first choice on strategy. For example, add a site map to facilitate crawling, focus on off-site strategies like link building, build a site-within-a-site consisting of pages that aren't part of the main design, and suggest alternative navigation for those with disabilities.

Some designers are fine, of course, but expect the most push-back in this area. If you get too much push-back because you are imposing what they perceive as draconian conditions, then they will likely complain about you to management. As the designers are the bread and butter of the agency, and you are merely providing an add on, you may soon find yourself out of a contract.

You don't own the clients. The clients belong to the design agency, and they might not want you to use the names of their clients in your promotional material. Also, if you ever want to sell you business, you don't have a client list to sell, which is typically the only thing of value. Essentially, you are not building a business you can likely sell, you're operating as an independent contractor.

When it comes to billing, make sure this is not dependent on the agency getting the money out of the client. Bill the agency directly and let them worry about credit risk. It can be difficult to chase their clients for money due to the indirect nature of the contract.

Any questions? Add 'em below. It would also be good to hear from SEOs who run this model.

Starting your own SEO business can be a challenge. In DMOZ, a directory often hostile to SEO listings, there are still over 1,018 SEO service companies listed. Do a Google search on SEO companies, are you'll see.....quite a few more!

Ok, it's a big planet, and there is room for many operators, but it's true to say that in the SEO game in 2009, no one is short of competition.

There is a lot of competion because there is a low barrier to entry. In order to enter the SEO market, someone only need put out an open for business sign, in the form of a website, and they are as much an SEO Agency as the next guy.

Maintaining a profitable business is another matter, of course.

If you're thinking of starting an SEO agency, here are some aspects you should consider, and some recommendations on how to position in today's marketplace. If you're an SEO who has started their own business, and made a success of it, it would be great if you could share your experiences in the comments below. What are the things you know now, that you wished people had told you when you started?

Essential Considerations

1. You

The first part of your plan should be all about you.

What are your strengths and weaknesses? Are you a self starter, or do you prefer being given work to do? Take a long look in the mirror and be honest with yourself: is running a business really something you want to do, or is this a means to avoid looking for employment? How suited are you to running a business?

No doubt you can see where I'm going with this. There are personality traits people have that make them suited to running a business, including a desire for independence, being a self-starter, and having the ability to take financial risk. One such risk is the lack of steady salary. Do you have a means of financial support? Savings? If you do, it will make life a lot easier. If you don't, consider building up that safety net before you start.

Once you've decided that this is definitely for you, great! Working for yourself can be an immensely rewarding thing to do.

2. Strategy

Where are you going and how will you get there?

Map out a business plan.It need not be complicated. In short, what can you offer that your competition can't? How much will you have to sell in order to cover your expenses and make a profit? How, exactly, are you going to sell your services and execute delivery?

Once you get a feel for the figures, it will make it easier to see if your ideas are achievable.

3. Finances

How much money will you need in order to get out and sell, and then to provide the services? How much money will you pay yourself? Do you need staff? Do you have an accountant? Do you know your break-even figure? How will you manage bad debts or late payments?

All business ultimately comes down to maths. You need to bring in more than you pay out. Failure to do that means the business fails.

Two important areas are cashflow and value of a good accountant.

Business lives or dies on cashflow. A business can be selling well, but if it doesn't have enough money in the bank to meet payroll or rent at the end of the month, it is finished. Try to arrange sufficient overdraft or investment to ensure you can survive between bill payments. Clients often pay later than you want them to.

Secondly, an accountant is worth their weight in gold. Not only do they take on tedious business of tax filing, they make sure you are claiming all the deductions you're entitled to. For example, your computer equipment, your use of home, your broadband, your electricity use can all be charged to your business. This reduces your costs and tax obligation.

4. Your Idea

Does your business serve a customer need or want? Can competitors easily copy what you do?

These are two critical areas. Many people go into business because they want to do something they like doing. That's ok, so long as there is enough consumer demand. However, think about the number of actors and musicians out there. Most aren't making much, if any money. This is because they are pusrsuing a job they enjoy, and largely ignoring supply and demand considerations. Ignoring supply and demand is ok for actors, but it's poor way to run a business. What can you supply that there is a ready demand for? Can you create new demand?

Secondly, the barrier to entry. Because it is so easy to start an SEO business, you'll need something else to differentiate yourself, other than just having a website. A website is the base level entry point. What have you got that others can't copy? Are you able to service a geographic locality better than other providers? Do you know a particular market vertical well i.e travel/fashion/finance/auto? Do you have a name/brand people know? Can you leverage reputation and contacts from your previous career?

5. Marketing and Sales Strategy

This is part of your business plan, but it is an area that requires special attention. Without a marketing strategy, how are people going to know who you are? How are you going to sell to them? If your answer is SEO or PPC, you'll be up against a lot of competition. Those channels are saturated, and in most cases, there is little to distinguish one service provider from the next.

How do you intend to implement your strategy? What channels will you use? Have you allocated time and money to that strategy? For example, if you intend to speak at conferences, you need to budget for the travel and attendance. You also need a plan for who is going to do the work while you're away marketing and selling.

The sales cycle can be long and tedious. The bigger the client, the longer sign-offs can take. Typically what happens is that many prosposects will all sign off at once, after months of indecision! Can you scale up quickly if a lot of work comes in? Will you turn down work?

The Challenge In 2009

The specific challenge to SEO services providers in 2009 is differntiation. There are many people offering services, so how do you stand out from the rest?

One way is to zig when other zag. Is everyone heading off to the same SEO conferences, saying much the same thing? Instead, how about going to the conferences no one else goes to? Travel industry conferences. Dental conferences. People in those industries need SEO, and you might be the first person who has ever talked to them about it! With careful selection and a little luck, you might corner a lucrative, untapped market.

Do companies really need SEO services? Perhaps they just need their own people trained. Can you offer in-house training courses? How about providing a number for them to call whenever they have an SEO question? Be the go-to guy for a number of small firms who may not be able to afford a full seo service, but might be able to afford an hour of advice or coaching each month.

Partner with design/devlopement companies. Perhaps they can't afford to hire a full time SEO on staff, but if you sign up 4-5 design companies, and offer your SEO service as an add on, you should enjoy a steady stream of work. They do all the sales work for you, you just do your part, and bill the agency. They take a cut.

Got any other ideas on differentiation, or war stories about running your own business? Please feel free to comment :)

IIf you could tell the web 2.0/read-write/blogging/crowd-sourcing crowd one thing about search marketing, what would it be?

In a recent talk, given to bloggers, by Google Engineer Matt Cutts, Matt posed the question:

"What Do SEOs know that bloggers might not know?"

Matt goes on to talk about the merits of keyword research in terms of topic selection, and how understanding this concept can bring you a great deal of traffic. In summary, if you find out what keywords people search on, then add these to your page, you stand a good change of having those searchers land on your page. As SEOs know, there's more to it than that, but that's the quick version :)

Let's look a bit deeper into keywords.

Search Is A Reverse Broadcast System

I think Danny Sullivan first described search as a "reverse broadcast system". It's a great way to describe the value of search, and how to approach search in terms of marketing.

I liken search engines to being a 'reverse broadcast network.' People pay tons to be on television because you can get your message out in front of millions of people: broadcasting. With search engines, millions of people are telling you *their* messages: what they want to buy, purchase or get information about. You don't broadcast to them; instead, it's the reverse, they broadcast to you. There's very little if anything as a marketing or information medium that I can think of that compares to this. It's golden and still today amazingly unrecognized

In search marketing, you prosper when you let your visitors determine your content. They broadcast their intent to you, by phrasing a search query, so you should listen to that intent, and respond by providing appropriate content. Google does the match-making.

For example, if you learn that 5,400 people a month search for "antivirus software comparison", you could research and create this information, thus matching that demand with your supply of information.

How do we determine visitor intent?

The Search Phrase As A Means To Measure User Intent

If you're not an SEO and encountering this blog for the first time, you now now the most important thing about search marketing, and that is you need to match the content of your site to the intent of the search visitor. In a blog post recently, Seth Godin talked about the problem with advertising:

"(The internet) has created a surplus of attention. Ads go unsold. People are spending hours on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or other sites and not spending their attention on ads, because the ads are either absent or not worth watching"

Seth was talking about the differences between old media advertising and new media advertising, but this is a problem related primarily to to a mismatch of user intent. The intent of users on Facebook is primarily social. Search, however, provides a more specific - and ultimately more lucrative - eco-system for the online marketer.

The intent of the visitor may be determined by analyzing the search phrase itself.

Three Types Of Search Queries

The study "Query Type Classifcation For Web Documents" (PDF) identifies three types of search query and how to quantify them:

• Informational
• Navigational
• Transactional

An informational search is when people want to find out about something. i.e. What is the capital of Finland?. A navigational query is when users want to find a certain site i.e. Dell Computers A transactional query is when users want to aquire, although not necessary buy, something. For example, "where can I get guitar schematics"

There is a fair degree of guesswork involved in determining user intent. The keyword itself may provide clues. For example, "buy LCD monitor overnight delivery" tells you a great deal about user intent. "LCD monitor", less so.

When evaluating keyword terms, and deciding what content to provide, it pays to examine the keyword query in terms of query type. For example, the query "Buy LCD monitor overnight delivery" is clearly transactional. A visitor would expect to see an e-commerce page that facilitates a purchase, as opposed to a Wikipedia entry explaining the history of LCD monitors.

Generally speaking, transactional queries are good to target if you monetraize by providing something, either a good or service based upon a transaction or call-to-action. Navigational queries are good to target if you provide "where to" information - like a directory or a list of links - or you provide information closely aligned to a web destination. Informational queries are self-explanatory.

Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and numerous points of cross-over i.e. a query might be informational, navigational and transactional.

The takeaway point is it is to seek to understand the main visitor intent. It will effect what information you present and how you present it. A page based around achieving a transaction will look very different to a page that provides information. If you're ranking well for a transactional query, but you only provide information, you'll lose an opportunity to engage visitors.

On-Page Keyword Integration

Once you've figured out user intent, and chosen your keyword phrases, you then need to integrate these terms into your content. A page should reflect and confirm the intent of the searcher. If the searcher is expecting to undertake a transaction, then the page should be organised in a way to facilitate the transaction.

Amazon provides a good example:

The "Buy Now" function is never far away from the users mouse click. The title is clear and prominent. Informational aspects are relegated to the bottom of the page.

You should provide confirmation the visitor has arrived in the right place. A good way to do this is to feature the search phrase high up on the page, preferably as a headline. This serves two purposes - it tells the search engine what the page is about, and confirms to your visitor that what they searched for and what they got are the same thing. If the visitor has to wade through too much information in order before getting a signal of confirmation, they're more likely to click back.

PPC marketing strategy also supports this theory. Common PPC practice is to include the keyword in the ad title, which can lead to higher click-thru rates than if you leave the keyword out. It stands to reason that a searcher expects to see the same keyword term they searched on echoed back at them.

The Long Tail

Did you know that 20-25% of search phases at Google are unique? 1/4 of all keyword searches have never been searched before! This is why it is important to include related phrases and synonyms on your page. The addition of related phrases and concepts allows you to pick up additional search visitor traffic from obscure combinations of keyword phrases.

The term "The Long Tail" was coined by Chris Andersen, and applied to online retailers, such as Amazon:

"A frequency distribution with a long tail has been studied by statisticians since at least 1946.[2] The distribution and inventory costs of these businesses allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group comprised of a large number of "non-hit" items is called the Long Tail."

The Long Tail also applies to search. Whilst millions of people search for "used cars", a few hundred search for "used cars east texas". If you sell used cars in east Texas, then it makes sense to target these specific, long tail terms. What these terms may lack in sheer traffic numbers, they make up for in broadcasting specific intent.

Match that intent with your service provision, and you're laughing.

How To Put It All Together

• Visitor search streams determine your content. Use the SEOBook Keyword Research Tool to find keyword terms relating to your business/topic. You can approximate the highest value terms using SEM Rush
• Having assembled a keyword list, find related keywords and synonyms of those terms. You can use the SEOBook Keyword Research Tool. Or Google's Keyword Tool
• Split the obvious terms into transactional, navigational, and informational. This will dictate how you prioritize the content on the page. i.e. a transactional query needs a clear call to action featured prominently
• Create pages. Place the keyword term in a proment place on the page, preferably in a heading. This will help confirm to the visitor they have arrived at the right palce
• Watch visitor traffic and interaction. If you're seeing high frequency - or strong conversions - for obscure terms, consider writing a page dedicated to this term.
• Rinse and repat

So long as your site is being crawled by Google, and you've got a few inbound links, traffic will soon flow to your door. What you do with all that new found traffic is up to you :)

For an indepth look at keyword strategies, check out Aaron's tutorial in the members area.

Recently a well known SEO blogger mentioned that they didn't understand why real professional SEOs advocate variation between page titles and on-page headings. This blog post is a free SEO consult for that person :)

Hopefully it clears the public SEO space of some misinformation.

Are You Missing Keywords?

People search for literally billions of unique search queries each month. You either target those searchers, or you miss them. Think about how many people query Google every day, and then look at this graphic:

Keyword tools are driven off of a sample of keyword data, and are thus top heavy. In some cases a keyword tool will only show you 5 or 10 related keywords for a core keyword that has driven traffic to a page via hundreds of unique search keywords.

What is Duplication?

Each piece of duplication in your on-page SEO strategy is ***at best*** wasted opportunity. Worse yet, if you are aggressive with aligning your on page heading, your page title, and your internal + external link anchor text the page becomes more likely to get filtered out of the search results (which is quite common in some aggressive spaces).

Even if you build a site (and a particular page) that are authoritative enough to capture a #1 keyword ranking, if your on-page SEO is strong you still get far more traffic from longtail keywords.

How to Include Variation in Your SEO Strategy

So how can you balance your on-page SEO strategy to capture more of the highly valuable search traffic? You can...

• use singular vs plural
• use synonyms
• use various keyword modifiers
• change word order

The bottom line is using more relevant keyword variations = more traffic.

Apples to Apples

Thinking about this site...we have competitors who have similar site age, way more inbound links, ~10x the number of employees, 5 times as many pages of content indexed by Google, more comments on each page, and yet we still get more search traffic.

Meanwhile I have made over 15,000 forum posts + build out a bunch of other websites (ie: doing a lot of work other than SEO for this site)...so our relative out-performance on much more limited resources comes from using a smarter and more comprehensive SEO strategy.

We don't get as much Twitter traffic, but then we don't target the hype and misinformation game as well as others do. ;) (Everyone has their own niche target market!)

Bonus Tip

Some people understand SEO on a mechanical level. Others understand it on a holistic level. This is one of those tips that separates the men from the boys. ;)

Some content management systems force the page title and the heading to be the same by default. But both Drupal (Page title) and Wordpress (SEO title tag) have plugins that allow you to make the on-page heading different from the page title. This allows you to optimize for different things. You can...

• create a headline for RSS readers that is designed around piquing curiosity and/or targeting emotional reactions to pull in clicks
• create a keyword laden page title that is designed to pull in latent search traffic

Not only does variation allow you to target those 2 different audiences (and pull in more search traffic), but readers often link to content using the official title in the anchor text. So if you make the page title and on-page heading different that can help you get more keyword variation in your inbound link anchor text as well.

Professional SEO Blogger

If a person is a public SEO and their only gig is writing a blog about SEO (and selling client services to newbies) then it can be quite easy to share and not care. If they destroy a technique or someone else's business to earn a bit of attention who cares? They got the attention, and that can be converted into currency as herds of newbies flock to where the crowd and controversy are.

Which is why some of the sleaziest SEOs publicly promote SEO outing.

They understand that justifying their own business actions helps to legitimize them, even if they are hypocritical scumbags who use their blog to threaten and bully around people with a smaller platform. If you are doing effective SEO but are not paying them on retainer look for them to go out of their way to try to out you and harm your business.

Real SEO Professionals

But if a significant portion of your revenues comes from affiliate and/or ad driven sites which just happen to be ran by SEOs (which Google generally hate, in spite of some claims to the contrary) the care with which you give out information increases. And competition is not always above board.

Business Can Be Dirty

About a month ago a person contacting me about how they were an honest Joe wanted more tips from me, and about a week earlier I noticed that the same person stole something from one of my sites and was trying to compete directly against me using my own content!!!

About a year ago a "friend" claimed he wanted to invest in some of our businesses. He came up with an offer, got most of our information about some of our business ideas, grabbed a hold of some of our business relationships, and is now creating a similar business model competing head on. He claims that his capital was illiquid as for why he did not complete the deal, but he does not realize I know how much he spent on some other assets at the time. And a case of inadequate resources is never an adequate excuse when the person who approaches you names their offer price. They burned 100% of the trust I had in them to the ground. How could I ever trust them again?

A couple years ago one of my sites got dinged with a penalty. While that penalty was in play, another "friend" working on building other businesses told a friend of mine "clone Aaron's site," not expecting that sleazy advice would come back to me.

I think about a week ago someone asked me a blog comment along the lines of "what affiliate offers should I promote right now."

At that level the person...

• is not a paying customer
• is valuing my time at nothing
• is trying to take away time I could spend servicing our paying customers (or attention I could spend promoting our other money making sites)
• AND they want me to give them advice which would increase the competition we faced in our other publishing projects, sacrificing our future revenues

When I wanted to be well known there was value to popularity, but the people who are paying you $0 for your time AND who are asking specific specialized questions about what you are doing are only going to harm your business interests. And so you must say no thanks to answering those types of questions.

Real SEOs Become Guarded - or go Bankrupt!

After a few years of being constantly screwed over by a bunch of snakes and liars you simply decide to share less. Either you do that, or you are simply commoditizing the value of your own time (past/present/future) with each advanced tip you share publicly. Who wants to work harder to lower their current (and future) wages?

The internet marketing field is branded in part as being sleazy largely because a huge segment of the marketplace is. Even if 90% of PPC affiliate marketers were honest, the sleaziest 10% of the market will get 90%+ of the ad impressions because they are willing to go the extra mile to promote scams, bundle reverse billing fraud, use fake celebrity endorsements, create fake brands, etc. Given that search engines are willing to compete against their top advertisers and ad networks are how many internet marketers make their money, it is quite hard to build a sustainable business model unless you create and sell your own products.

And in the SEO market, if you are open and honest you set yourself up for Google penalties, competitors outing you, getting hate from envious competitors, and former "friends" trying to marginalize your business. Let alone contemplating how other third parties might use your public information against you. Not only is Google going out of their way to promote brands, but many of the big brands are further compounding that effect by heavily investing into SEO...and Google typically won't penalize the brand for doing the same thing that a smaller publisher would get penalized for doing.

Free Specific SEO Advice Worth Thousands of Dollars

Here is a ranking chart...let me tell you how to boost rankings for a site from nowhere to in the game on a bunch of keywords for only a few hundred bucks.

Well if I actually did that, it would just get burned to the ground.

Real SEO Goes Underground

Lots of other smart people have came to the same conclusions, which is why SEO has gone back underground. Yes some of the public information is decent, but more and more misinformation and hype are polluting the industry.

It is just like people writing about social media, but giving you a half-truth about how it organically spreads rather than mentioning what they really do to seed it...and where one rats out the next while selling himself to the highest bidder. As the market matures and SEO returns go from x hundred/thousand percent to y percent you can only expect competitors to act sleazier to gain any competitive advantage they can. After all, who wants to go back to having a regular old job?