I am curious how many of you do SEO work as your full time job. Do you work for a company that pays you to do work for the company and their clients? Do you have your own consulting firm? If so, how do you gain new clients and how do you determine pricing?
well i can do SEO but i dont do it as a job i do it for fun and i help my mates to detemine the pricing well you have to look at how many sites are index for the search term and what the SEO is like in the top ranked sites, then when you have done that you will know how hard it will be to get the site there so then you will know what you should charge
I work full time as an overall Marketing Manager. SEO is indeed part of my duties, but I had to learn a lot more than that to land my position. However, I make far less money as an in-house Internet Marketing person than I would as a successful consultant. Guys like SEOGuy are basically retired at a pretty young age by being great SEO's, and developing their own business surrounding it. So yes, it is possible to make a living through SEO, however the big money is in starting up your own company if you can get it off the ground.
I'm employed as a consultant full-time. It's not just SEO though, more of an all around marketing management position. I get the feeling that most SEO's are multitasking these days... SEO has really changed a lot over even just the last 12 months... These days it's just as much about getting people talking about your site as it is getting it to the number one spot in Google.
SEbasic, can you tell me a bit about how you built your consulting business and how you gain new clients, what services you provide and such. I am interested in beginning my own business and wanted some guidance/advice...thanks for your help.
I didn't start the company I work for, I'm employed there... My best advice for you if you want to start doing this full-time for clients, is choose your target audience, find out what they are looking for, then market yourself accordingly. It's no good you talking about multi-million $ contracts if you're trying to get clients who have $500 to spend... If you're looking for bigger contracts, you'll usually (Unless you know someone in the inside) need a good existing client base and portfolio of achievements. Basically you need to show that you know what you're doing. Be sure of what you can and can't do (to the best of your abilities) and make sure you convince of whoever you're selling to that you know what you're talking about.
thanks SEbasic, thats sound advice. Voasi, can you tell me a bit more about your business? Maybe answer some of the questions above...
It's good if you pick an area of SEO to specialize in. I specialize in a local type SEO. I'll go to trade shows and conventions, marketing my SEO talents. Also, online directories as well as outright email sites within SERPs is another good method. I remember reading a couple years ago how an SEO built his empire. He would type in a 2 word query into Google for a semi-competitive word. Then he'd go to page 4+ and email webmasters he thought he could help out. I think this method can work great on a personal level, no automation. Like SEBasic also said, you need to have some sites to showcase and a few competitive rankings to show-off. It's much easier to rake in clients that way.
According to my infant understanding SEO is 1) Good Title Name 2) Use of keywords in Big Font (H tags) 3) Use of Alt Tags 4) Mentioning keywords on page contents. 5) Keyword based Domain Name 6) Backlinks with your keyword as anchor What else ? Why full time SEO ? Hope to learn more from your comments.
It seems that most businesses lack the knowledge, interest, or money to do SEO work in-house. Many businesses are happy to pay a few hundred bucks a month to maintian/improve rankings for their site.
SEO has grown into much more than that. Those are just the basics, IMO. Most professional SEO's also work on site structure and analytics to track conversion rates, as well as PPC management. Finding new outlets to advertise/market is another "bullet" of the 'new' SEO's of today. IMO, you won't last too long if you just know the basics. They'll be SEO/M's that have more resources and tracking to better manage a marketing campaign. Not only search engine placement, but conversion, traffic numbers, impressions, click-throughs, low-performing pages, Ad placement, etc... Plus, outta your 6 things mentioned, how long would it take to fully optimize a 3,000 page site? Or maybe 1 million page site? And what about getting links...? Surely you don't think getting reciprocal links is the best way to gain rankings? Links to time and thought into attaining.
I was emplyed by a promotions company after i finished my MSc about 5 months ago, they also do design and all that jazz. There promotions side of things was not in the best of states and i didnt have that much knowledge but i currently have 10+ external clients that i do all the SEO and PPC campaigns for. I also promote arround 5 in house sites. The employee that did the SEO before me didnt do a great job so the past few months i have been focusing on trying to clean up the code on the websites, add decent keyword rich content and generally treat the site as if it were my own. Most clients pay for a days worth or work, but as i dont have 20 clients (a months worth) i can spend a little extra time on the sites to try and get some good results as soon as possible. As someone said before people emplyed to do SEO tend to have to multitask in their jobs, so i also help out with ASP.NET projects the design team get, I am in charge of writing applications to improve on the reporting of our promotions work and i am also in charge of the hosting of all our clients which is 200+ accounts.
I'm also full time. IMHO, with all of the changes that have occured over the last year or so, I think that most corporate SEO's are thinking more long term and about page/site histories than just onsite keywords and backlinks.