The Best Tips for Selling SEO

One morning, I awoke to see the news that Google had implemented a major update to their search algorithm. For the next few weeks, I monitored Twitter and realized that a specific industry was most impacted.

With a quick review of the biggest traffic losers online, I found my target client and sold the m a full technical and content audit.

After implementing some recommendations, the client began to not only rebound, but to increase their ranking and visibility. The results were fantastic and it was all achieved with access to publicly available data — and that is when I realized that SEO is unique because you can diagnose your prospective client’s problems before you even pick up the phone or jump on a Zoom.

• A typical salesperson has to be told what the problem is

It takes a certain personality type to want to be in sales. Being outgoing is a common trait in salespeople, and because of that, there can be an inherent need for validation which quickly becomes a slippery slope that can foster negative habits.

It’s common for salespeople to crave admiration for their knowledge of a product. You might be asking yourself, “Shouldn’t a salesperson know their product inside and out?” Yes! But not at the expense of doing your job (selling!)

A sales rule about product knowledge says:

• Don’t talk “at” your client about your product’s features; talk with them to see what their needs are.

You want to impress the people you are selling to by proving your intelligence and knowledge. However, when you fall into the trap of showing off how much you know, you are making it about you and not the person who you’re trying to help.

Usually, a salesperson who goes overboard on their product knowledge is going to end up talking, showing, and demoing instead of listening, learning, and asking questions. For anyone in a revenue-generating role like sales, your real job is as an investigator, an interviewer, or a diagnoser of problems. You can’t solve a problem if you aren’t listening to the prospect and asking questions.

However, if you’ve done your homework on the client’s SEO issues, chances are you already have a plan to address their situation. Without “talking at” them too much, lead your client to a better understanding of how your services can help them:

• Show how an SEO overhaul can address your client’s issue.

Clients respond well to a problem-solution approach. Using your knowledge coupled with solid strategic thinking will help convey SEO’s value to the client and can be a very compelling argument. Keep the client’s needs at the focal point of your pitch.

Understanding how a prospect’s website performs against a competitor and uncovering issues impacting organic search visibility can be a persuasive exercise. Since SEO isn’t a product that you can touch or try ahead of time, you need to be confident in your ability to help solve these challenges.

• The Mini SEO Audit

When I approach a potential client to discuss SEO, I first do all of the typical sales research, including finding out who I am talking to, what they do, and whether I believe they are a good fit as a client. But as an SEO seller, I have a secret weapon that relies on organic search knowledge: the mini SEO audit. All you need is access to a few tools, such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Semrush.

As an outsider, it’s not usually possible to learn anything meaningful about a business without access to its financials, reporting, or CRM data. You can rarely share an insight into someone’s business that they didn’t have any prior knowledge about. And yet, I have had so many instances where a marketer or business owner was completely shocked at the results of my SEO mini-audit.

There are typically two buckets for SEO – the technical bucket and the content bucket. My initial audit takes about 45 minutes and looks to understand what the prospect does well, where they need improvement, and how to approach a potential strategy for fixing some or all of these problems. A good SEO audit can do the following:

• Uncover how many broken links a website has
• Find if there are missing rel=canonical tags and duplicate content
• Show their rank on Google for their brand terms
• Display keyword research and opportunities
• Show missing meta titles and meta descriptions
• Unveil their real competitor online, as well as their competitor’s keywords
• Show how quickly their site loads or renders
• Present the domain authority of the website
• Reveal if structured data is present
• Show missing top of funnel, middle of funnel, or bottom of funnel content

…and much more! For example:

• Is there thin or duplicate content?

• How many and of what quality are the Referring Domains?

• Is the site mobile-friendly?

• Offer solutions to the issues you have uncovered

Of course, you shouldn’t present issues without offering solutions; it is important to break up issues or performance gaps into discrete categories and then offer potential fixes for each. Presenting a well-crafted, high-level analysis along with proposed solutions makes a significant impact in telling the value story of SEO.

• You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink

The harsh reality is that SEO gains are a slow-turning ship. It takes time to implement technical fixes. It takes time for the search engines to recrawl and index your site, and it takes time to create new content, earn links, and build your online reputation. You’ll also need buy-in from the different stakeholders within an organization to get many of these fixes pushed into production.

If you haven’t set the proper expectations for the client, you may sign an initial contract, but you’re less likely to keep them for the long term. If they weren’t bought in throughout the entire sales process, you are in trouble. If your client isn’t a believer in SEO, you have a lot of convincing to do.

You should figure out how much of a tolerance they have for change management as an organization. Lots of clients have been burnt by bad salespeople selling ineffective solutions. They need to know that while some changes will have a more immediate impact on their ranking, others will take three, six, or nine months — and in some cases, even longer.

Search Engine Optimization is not a “set it and forget it” type of thing. Even if a client does all the right things, Google can push out a Core update and undo some of the gains your client has achieved.

So what now? You should learn to effectively identify clients who will be willing to work with you. SEO isn’t about quick fixes, and successful clients will not only need to spend money on SEO in the short term, but they should also know to make SEO a key part of their overall marketing budget.

Progressive brands understand that there are multiple search channels, especially paid and social. Having an integrated search strategy across teams is ideal, but if SEO isn’t already an existing line item for a client, you’ll struggle with getting them to justify it in their budget.

• Find clients who are enthusiastic about your services.

I know this all seems a bit negative, and that isn’t my intention. But the reality is, SEO is an easy sell for those who believe in it and a hard sell for those who don’t.

You can help build a case with real data compiled into an audit and present it on a silver platter, but there will be times when even that simply isn’t enough. My final tip is this — use your current clients to provide testimonials, references, as well as successful case studies.

Knowing you have a client willing to vouch for your work is worth its weight in gold.

Good luck!