sam-i-am

For all of you guys out there running your own SEO businesses or even just contracting yourself out ... how do you go about finding new clients? What are some of the activities you do and what have you found to have the highest conversion.

It seems funny that an SEO firm has to resort to non-SEO tactics like putting signs up around town to get business.

Fewleftstanding

Craigslist.

barman

Networking

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DorianWar

Why would any "real" SEO need clients?

bubbles

A guy I know just goes through the yellow pages and asks small businesses how they like the ROI they are getting for their $1,200/month with the yellow pages. Then he tells them that for $500/month he can give them better results.

georgiecasey

quoted for truth

DaveEMG

Ya know, I'm starting to get sick and tired of these guys that always call those that have "clients" and work for others as retards.

There are thousands of people working in search optimization that make a killer living working for others. And not even the people writing eBooks! Look at nearly any website on the market and SEO consultants are eager to help those that don't know what they're doing figure out what they're doing (at $60/hr).

</rant>

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productionhead

imo its a good thing there are seo firms because it leaves a lot less noobs typing "how to make top 10 rank in googel?" in webmaster forums across the web

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sam-i-am

So what is more effective - finding people on cl who are looking for SEO services or just posting that services are available and wait for the clients to come rolling in?

DaveEMG

Honestly, you might as well kiss your SEO hopes goodbye if you can't prove results - and I mean hard-core results on high traffic / high competition keywords. Pick a few niches to really optimize on your own, and prove some results - and then go after the companies that you just surpassed.

If you go after "Los Angeles Dentist" and you get top 5 position - you can now go to all the dentists that you passed over for business and say "Look at what I did - wouldn't you like this kind of traffic?"

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"If you ain't first you're last..." ... "Oh hell, Son, I was high that day. That doesn't make any sense at all, you can be second, third, fourth... hell you can even be fifth."

pfgannon

Both?

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sam-i-am

That suggestion reminds me of a little bit grayhat tactic I just used to find a client. Check it out:

First I found a local company with a horrible - I mean horrible - website. It was basically one big image, and the only text on the page was an FDA warning about their product (so it shows up when you search for them).

I wrote an article on one of my websites about how crappy their website is and how they're amateurs they and need to pay me to fix their website and market it.

Then I followed the link from my blog to their website ... about a hundred times. Each time I used a different IP (TOR) so it appeared in their analytics as if I was driving a lot of traffic and I would show up as a top referrer for the day - thus putting myself on their map and making sure they see my post.

Well I didn't even have to do that, because in less than 24 hours I was ranking #5 on the name of their business. I received an email from their CIO the very next morning wanting help with his website.

It should be noted that I intended mostly to belittle them and only thought of getting them as a client as an afterthought.

plepco

So the CIO knew enough to check server logs but not enough to make a halfway decent site?

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sam-i-am

Well I was thinking he had some analytics installed. Turns out he found me because I was ranking on his business name.