How to Start a Successful SEO Agency: Ultimate Guide

What Does An SEO Agency Do?

An SEO agency specializes in helping other businesses rank better in organic search engine results.

The primary goal of an SEO agency is to increasingly drive organic traffic to its clients' websites by implementing effective search engine optimization strategies such as on-page optimization, content marketing, and link building.

A single freelancer who offers consultations or executes SEO projects for different clients is not an agency. A formal SEO agency is structured for scalability and must include an in-house team of experts specializing in different areas of SEO. An agency is also structured to include various departments that handle sales, finance, and client success.

Unlike typical digital marketing agencies that offer full-service packages, including web design, web development, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and email marketing services, an SEO agency is niche-focused on providing organic search marketing services.

What Do Businesses Expect When Engaging The Services Of An SEO Agency?

5-star reviews of fifteen top SEO companies on Clutch revealed that businesses looking to engage the services of an SEO agency have varying goals. These include improving organic search presence, improving keyword rankings, significantly increasing site domain rating, and generating inbound customers.

As a result, they look to hire an SEO agency that can help them achieve these goals.

To start an SEO agency, you must have the capacity and expertise to meet these deliverables:

• Conduct SEO audits; 
  
• Conduct relevant and competitive keyword research;
  
• Perform keyword gap analysis;
  
• Implement technical site optimizations;
  
• Implement on-site and off-site SEO;
  
• Execute local and international SEO;
  
• Optimize and publish high-quality content;
  
• Build high-quality backlinks for the client's website;
  
• Analyze any penalties affecting the client’s site;
  
• Monitor return on investment (ROI) on SEO strategy and report results to clients. 
  

Every client expects results, and ensuring your team can deliver on every key area listed above is a great way to build a successful agency.

4 Basics You Must Know Before You Start 

When researching how to start an SEO agency, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the ton of information you have to consume.

Yes, you want to know everything about picking your niche, pricing your services, creating winning proposals, and landing clients. However, before getting into all that, there are four basic things you need to have a firm grasp on if you want to make it big in this $80 billion dollar industry.

SEO is a long-term commitment that requires effective planning, a documented strategy, and efficient execution, as well as a solid understanding of key strategies.

Mastering these four pillars will help you better manage projects and people while delivering results that delight clients and keep them coming back.

1. Content Operations

Content is an essential part of SEO. To ensure that your agency can produce effective content at scale, you need to set up a system that defines how you implement strategy and manage all the people involved in the content lifecycle.

This system will guide your team and drive execution. It is the combination of the people, processes, and technology required to plan, publish, distribute, monitor, measure, and report on content performance.

With this, you can create a clear roadmap for execution, including all the people working with you, what tasks they’re in charge of, the workflow for each project, and the tech tools required to build the system for your operations and run projects efficiently.

Let’s break down the core elements.

People:

People are the fuel for your engine. Without them, you can’t go far. This means that for your system to run smoothly, you need to hire the right people and manage them effectively.

As you build your team and a reliable network of specialists to whom you can outsource, make sure their roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. Also, avoid overlaps, as one person doing too many things will only lead to burnout and eventually weaken your system.

Processes:

With team roles outlined and assigned, it’s time to create workflows for fundamental tasks to ensure that everything is repeatable.

Imagine you want to launch a link-building campaign. What does the process look like listed out step-by-step? Who are the people responsible for each task in the workflow? Document these processes using templates, guides and checklists.

Also, ensure that the documentation of each process is easily accessible to the people who work with you. This will help them complete tasks without friction, collaborate seamlessly as a unit and produce better content faster.

Technology:

These are the tools used to run your operations, manage team members and complete project tasks.

You can choose a central operations hub like Google Workspace, Asana, or Notion for your overall project management system. Then add on other tools like Google Docs for collaborative writing, Clearscope for optimizing articles, Google Drive for content asset management and Zapier for automation.

For executing essential SEO tasks like keyword research, domain and link analysis, rank tracking, technical site audits and reporting, we highly recommend Serpstat.

Content teams need technology to function and get work done, so ensure you choose the right tools that can serve you long-term. 

2.On-page SEO

You can’t tap into the full potential of SEO without having strong on-page optimization.

Websites that appear in the top five organic results get up to 67.60% of all clicks, but with Google constantly changing its ranking algorithms, it will be tough to snag those top coveted spots if you don’t know how to implement on-page optimization effectively.

On-page SEO helps search engines understand the content of a webpage and determine if it's relevant to a user’s search query. It also helps people find your content and determine if it is worth clicking on.

To improve organic ranking, there are three main on-page factors you can optimize: content, website architecture, and HTML.

Content:

One of the simplest ways to boost website traffic is by publishing high-quality content. But it’s not enough to just publish content. You must also ensure that the content matches the search queries of its target audience.

Optimizing content for search involves selecting keywords that align with the search intent of your client’s audience, linking to relevant internal and external content, and incorporating SEO best practices without falling into traps—like keyword stuffing—that are sure to get your client’s website demoted.

Website architecture:

When visitors leave a website after only a few seconds, that typically tells search engines that the website is lacking. Good website architecture prevents this.

By structuring pages hierarchically, creating an XML sitemap, using simple URLs, and maintaining an easy-to-understand internal linking model, you can reduce bounce rates, improve user experience, and ensure search engines can effectively crawl the site.

• Information architecture: How to build up silos using Serpstat and WordPress
  

HTML:

This is the code that provides search engines with the information to display in search results and provides context on the relevancy of a website.

With HTML, you can optimize title tags, heading tags, and meta descriptions which positively impact click-through rates. Adding alt tags to images and geotagging for local SEO can also help the site appear in more relevant results.

Challenges Of Building An SEO Agency

The SEO industry is extremely lucrative, but also highly competitive and relatively unpredictable—no thanks to ever-changing algorithms that cause tactics that work one day to become obsolete the next.

Making a name for your agency and meeting your revenue goals will depend on your ability to understand these challenges and tackle them like a pro.

1. Service Differentiation

There are thousands of agencies out there that offer SEO services. Some have many years of experience and tons of high-profile clients under their belts.

If you want to attract and close clients, it’s not enough to just outline your packages and talk about the plethora of services you offer. You need to present proof and results to show that you can deliver on your promises while also maintaining an outstanding relationship with clients.

In his teaching about generic competitive strategies, Harvard professor Michael Porter points out that a firm that uniquely positions itself to meet the needs widely valued by buyers in an industry will be rewarded for its uniqueness with a premium price.

Essentially, the value your agency is uniquely positioned to provide will determine its profitability.

So, how do you demonstrate your unique value and separate yourself from the competition?

2. Branding Differentiation

What do you want your agency to be known for? This is a good question to start with if you want to build a strong brand in this saturated industry.

You don’t want to be just another agency that offers SEO services. Unfortunately, this is the trap that a lot of agencies fall into. They don’t work on developing the brand mission, voice, and values to establish an emotional connection with potential clients.

Brand strategists will tell you, “a brand is a promise.” It’s the expectation you’ve set for yourself in the eyes of clients.

If you want to build a sustainable brand and a strong community of recurring clients, take the following steps:

• Design your visual identity and define your brand voice.
  
• Write a mission statement that resonates with clients and that internal staff can rally around.
  
• Leverage client testimonials to showcase your results. This serves as proof of your promises.
  
• Promote your values in your work, online media, pitch decks, and every online material your agency publishes. 
  
• Lean into your purpose and ensure your team is in sync.
  
• Stick to your principles.
  

By defining your core vision, voice, values, and aligning your team to your purpose, you’ll be able to position your brand to attract attention and stand out.

3. Industry Changes

Many search marketers say they struggle to keep up with changes to Google’s algorithm. One inbound marketing specialist shared that she’s seen a 20% drop in organic traffic across all clients at her agency since March.

Over the years, new updates and ranking factors have been introduced that require a constant change in SEO strategy for agencies that want their clients to stay ahead of the competition.

The bar is consistently being raised, and the goal post shifts frequently. Every few months, your team will need to review the ranking factors that improve SEO performance metrics and upgrade services and tools accordingly.

4. Long Sales Cycle

Between sourcing leads and closing deals, there are several hurdles you’ll have to cross to get clients for your agency.

It can take weeks to months to close a single SEO client, particularly because prospects will always have objections. They might be skeptical about whether the financial investment will be worth it. They’ll want to know how long it will take to get them to rank in the top ten results or if SEO efforts will generate sales fast.

Understanding the entire sales process and doing what is required to make prospects feel like they are getting value instead of just being sold to can cut the cycle short for you and your team.

“Consultative selling is the way to go,” says Rob Andrews, VP of Operations at PosiRank. He recommends that at initial contact, you should aim to understand your prospect's intentions by seeking permission to do a quick analysis of their website from an SEO perspective.

Don’t offer something that will take too much effort on your part but aim to be helpful by sharing your findings and offering to give recommendations through a paid audit.

As you progress through stages after the initial contact, work on deeply understanding your prospects’ industry and their goals, then align your offer to their objectives.

Driving business to your agency can be a slow process initially and requires patience. It takes time to develop strong relationships and understand what appeals to decision-makers. Having a defined repeatable sales process and a motivated sales team, studying your prospect's industry, and learning their pain points will reduce the challenges you’ll face to close a sale. 

5. Talent Sourcing

There’s a shortage of ‘qualified’ SEO talent, and finding the right people to join the team full-time is a common challenge for agency founders. Anyone with significant SEO experience will cost a pretty penny which your lean budget may not be able to accommodate when you’re just getting off the ground.

With limited resources, one smart option is to outsource tasks like link building and content writing, while keeping other core functions like strategy, outreach, and reporting to internal teams.

There are many agencies with teams that hire freelancers on an ad hoc basis. This keeps them running till they can recruit and retain excellent talent in-house. However, managing a fleet of freelancers comes with its challenges and you may need to set up processes and relevant training to help them work better.

• 10 Tips to Train a New SEO Team
  
• How Does An SEO Department In A Digital Agency Work?
  

6. Customer Budget & Expectations

In SEO, it’s hard to predict the future. You can’t guarantee first-page ranking, how much time it will take to get specific results, or how much your clients will have to spend over a given period.

The ROI on SEO significantly depends on the client’s willingness to invest and your team’s ability to iterate and improve strategies implemented over time.

However, many prospects with low budgets and high expectations will come knocking on your door asking for guarantees which could lead you to overpromise and underdeliver.

If you can provide proof of the results you’ve delivered in the past, great. If not, you’ll need to educate your clients on the due process to get real SEO results. Manage their expectations by reminding them that it takes time and it will be impossible to jump to #1 without following due protocol and investing in experts.

When it comes to discussing budget or cost breakdown, walk them through your process and leave them to decide how much they are willing to invest depending on their type of business and the results they are expecting. However, you can make a recommendation based on the average you know a similar business to theirs would typically spend on SEO as well as your goals for revenue growth.

Have a minimum budget that you can’t go below. For a new agency, that could be somewhere between $500 to $1000 per month for each client. Your job at this stage is to convince prospects to invest and let them know if their budget isn’t realistic.

Lastly, make sure all teams are aligned on service offerings. Don’t let your sales team promise what your SEO team cannot deliver.

• What Promises CAN You Make As An SEO Agency?
  

How To Start An SEO Agency

Before starting an SEO agency, you must have significant experience or proof of the kind of results you can deliver. Having previous experience at an agency or as a consultant, and being able to rank your agency website for multiple keywords will be instrumental in your journey as an SEO agency founder.

In addition to having the knowledge and experience, you should be prepared to learn how to manage clients, communicate effectively and show up actively on social media sites.

Every SEO agency has its own strategy for getting clients, meeting deliverables, and building scalable processes. But rather than spending months trying to figure things out, we’ve broken down the key stages of starting your agency with input from different founders who have up to 10 years of experience in building and scaling their own agencies.