Search Engine Optimization Secrets: Do What You Never Thought Possible with SEO

Chapter 7. The SEO Consulting Process

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Selling the client your services

• Establishing price points

• Seeing different deliverables

As an SEO consultant, your actual person-to-person communication will take up only a small portion of your time but will be the factor that makes or breaks your business.

This chapter outlines the SEO consulting process, one that I have used at SEOmoz and in my private business. The chapter is formatted like a framework to enable you to customize it to your needs. This chapter will not answer all of your questions (not even close), but it can give you the tools you need to be a successful consultant.

ANSWERING HARD QUESTIONS FROM CLIENTS

Before you can start a campaign, you first need to win the business. This frequently means that you must make a strong case for yourself (or your organization), your industry, and your specific methodologies by addressing some tough questions. Before getting to the specifics, you need to understand how to answer the hard questions. Clients usually ask surprisingly similar questions. This section covers those questions and the answers that often work the best.

BRING IT BACK TO THE CLIENTS

The trick to answering any difficult consulting question is to bring it back to the clients. How can you use their experiences to answer their own questions? No answer is better than one that clients didn't realize they already knew.

You can usually accomplish this by answering in terms of their business goals. For example, if a potential ...