A recent thread entitled How much for a complete SEO service touched on what should be charged out for SEO services. This got me thinking. How should an SEO market themselves and go about getting new business? This also reminded me of a recent blog post on SEOmoz.

I would have thought, as the SEOmoz article suggested an SEO worth their weight in gold would be able to gain the majority of work from high search engine rankings or word of mouth referrals. But for those starting out and for those not in the coverted top 10 placements I was wondering what other methods of self promotion are there and which work best? Telesales, Email Marketing, Networking? What are other peoples experiences? Answers on a postcard please.

good thing about the guru's and those who were first in this business is that they already build their reputation. Which only means that everything they post or maybe most of it, many newcomers will buy it.

But for us newbies, we need to build our reputation and with all the thousands of people getting into this business, it is really hard to do it.The competition is very high. If you are into forums, you will get a lot of stuffs about seo, marketing  and how to get more traffic. but I guess the best thing to do is to absorb those you think is most widely used and the most successful ones. Try to use your knowledge about things and dont just rely on what you read. you need to understand and put some effort to it by mixing some of your ideas. SEO is not a standard thing. Nobody knows how exactly google or any search engine behaves. Many did succeed but do we know how they did it? I would bet they too made some trial and error thing...they too have read articles but definitely, they too have put some of their ideas into effect and some do get lucky.

 I not saying i'm good, all i'm saying is, read and learn, and don't forget to trust your instinct and try to experiment. Don't be afraid to fail..coz when you fail, you learn, and when you learn, you succeed.

Some good advice here, thanks.

I'm a webdesigner/developer by trade and have become increasingly more involved in the SEO side of things over the last few years which means I'm more technically minded than marketing minded. Whether this is a disadvantage in the arena of search engine optimisation/marketing I don't know. Search Engine optimisation/marketing covers such a wide area it requires a broad range of skills so I guess it's hard to be in a position to cover all bases. I'm also not a natural salesman either so the idea of attracting work through building a brand/reputation, word of mouth and local business networking sounds an ideal way to go about things.

The company I work for goes about tying existing internet clients into SEO by means of hard sell. The consequence is generally a lot of hassle as the client neither understands what SEO is or what they are paying for and is not very responsive when it comes to getting feedback or information of them. In my experience the best clients I have worked with fully embrace the whole idea of SEO, understand it and can see the long term benefits to their company. These clients are the ones that are looking for a long term relationship which ultimately benefits both the client and the SEO provider.

Hm... an interesting discussion, I am will gladly to join! 

From what I gathered so far, it's not so easy for a SEO man to find a client in this country, is that right?

If it is,that is a bit surprising to me, as I often visit russian seo forums (I speak russian) and I have an impression that on average not only russian seo folks  have no problems with finding customers but, above all, they are rather picky  Of course, I am not talking about complete novices, but most of the "average-level" seo chaps and, of course, more experienced ones are like that. It is client who's chasing a good seo-expert, not the other way round. 

With regard to the difference between SEO and SEM, according to Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin's book (who are sort one of top SEO experts in the US nowadays  ) SEM is just SEO+PPC.

I think it is a bit an oversimplification, as there are things like blogs, social bookmarks that should not be ignored,
but broadly speaking clever organic SEO + thoughtout PPC campaign in many cases is quite enough to promote most kind of businesses.

So, caravan, if you are good in SEO, mastering PPC management could be your path to ultimate success!   

Thank you, ctabuk 


You might be surprised, but just recently I talked to a middle-size business man (porch maker), who told me how dissappointed he was with online business. He said "I made a website, but it was  awaste of time! It brought me no clients whatsoever!"  Poor man
He didn't know that it takes a bit more than just making a site 

He then added that he only trusts the word om mouth, and he pays 100 quid per lead to his former customers who bring him new clients. That's the way to do business! Why do SEO???  (kidding  )

So I suppose there still left a lot do on educating biseness people in this country on how profitable organic SEO could be for their businesses and what unrivalled advanteges it could bring them.
Not an easy task, but definitely worth the effort!

I totally agree. These will be the clients I'll be aiming for and trying to build relationships with. Very difficult to work with very small clients who have no understanding of online marketing as I spend most of my time dealing with them (which I appreciate is a massive part of the job) but not getting on with what I'm being paid for. Will also be aiming to make money for myself to give me that financial freedom!

Indeed, very hard to deal with. My overall goal is to have sites which will make me money without me doing a huge amount. This is an on-going process and enjoy dealing with clients that appreciate the hard work and would continue to work with them even if I had an income generated from my own websites as it's fun to work with people who appreciate what I do.