How to Start an SEO Business & Make Money

Pritam Nagrale

Updated on:

seo business

An interesting piece of advice I was given yesterday told me that I could start my own SEO business and make money for under $1,000.

As long as I was spending my money correctly, I could be a consultant, outsource a lot of the work, and end up making money online.

If you are anything like me, then you are asking yourself: “Is this ethical?”

That really depends on the business. If you are charging people a lot of money and not bringing results then you will lose clients. So honestly, you must have a process that works at a competitive price if you really want to make money.

All in all, you need to first have a strong background in SEO. Luckily I have been blogging and doing SEO for the past 6 years, so I know most of the basic principles and even little tips that help a website rank.

Therefore, I would actually be able to start this business because of my experience.

But what if you don’t have Little or NO experience in SEO? Can you start this business?

seo business

I will recommend you to take some SEO training from a reputed institute, work for 6-12 months either in a company or for yourself to understand everything that help to rank any website in search engine.

Then you will be in a position to start a great SEO business that sells quality services.

Make Money with SEO Business – First Steps

These are the first steps I recommend taking if you want to seriously set-up your own SEO business. If you are missing any of these, then fix that before you get started.

1. Understand all on-page and off-page SEO optimization techniques. You must be on page & off page seo able to properly perform an SEO audit, keyword research, competitive analysis, and know how to get quality links quickly.

If you don’t feel like you are proficient in these areas, then do some research. There are great sources of information so you can easily learn whatever it is you desire about SEO.

2. Understand how to develop targeted traffic to a website. If you have clients paying you money for your services, then you need to be able to increase their traffic. Not only traffic, you must be able to grow their business because that is their ultimate aim.

find your customers 3. Know where to find your customers. Some SEO businesses are able to rank high in  Google for search queries, others pay for advertising, and some others use outlets like the Warrior Forum to find their target customers.

Either way, you need to identify channels where you can find customers and convince them to go with you. Freelance sites are also a great platform to find clients for your SEO business.

4. Get some websites ranking for certain keywords. If you can show case studies where you got 5 different websites to rank for keywords then that would be perfect to show your customers.

You need some type of hook that will make a potential customer trust you. Plus, if you are able to get these keywords to rank then it shows that you are cut out for the business.

5. Understand social media marketing. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and social media marketing Google+ have become extremely popular for all web businesses. If you can incorporate social media marketing with your SEO, you can not only charge more but you can also deliver better results.

If you do not feel confident about some of the things I mentioned above, then go do some homework. You do not want your SEO business to fail right off the bat because you are not properly informed.

Next Steps – Getting SEO Software and Tracking Tools

Okay this is where your initial investment will probably come in. In order to properly own an SEO web business, you must be able to go through all the information in your clients websites.

Below I have listed some of the best SEO tools for 2016. You must have a software or program that can hold all the information you need in one place. SEO Tools

Top SEO Software and Tools (in no particular order)

  1. SEO Moz
  2. Raven Tools
  3. SEO Power Suite
  4. Hubspot
  5. Ahrefs OR Majestic SEO

Most of these cost from $99 – $399 per month. I know that seems steep but the services they offer can definitely help pay you back before you know it. I would hold off on purchasing these until you have a website and general business plan.

You will probably need a back link software as well. Most of these can actually have negative effects on your SEO efforts, but you just need to know how to use them correctly.

One website that offers tools for backlinking is Tynt. Many large companies use their services and you can definitely use them too.

Top Link Building Softwares, Services link building

  1. GSA Ranker
  2. BuzzStream
  3. ScrapeBox
  4. Link Research Tools
  5. SocialMonkee

These all vary greatly. You will need to spend some time and efforts into researching them and figuring out which one is right for you.

I have heard different things about automated software, but one thing remains the same: NEVER USE AN AUTOMATED SOFTWARE FOR FIRST-TIER LINKS.

You should only use things like SENuke XCr and Magic Submitter to submit second tier links.

I personally set-up about 20 second-tier links that I continuously ping and pass on link juice to my own blogs. That way, I do not have to worry about negative rankings from low quality first tier links.

Bad Link Finder: Use Link Detox to find all the bad links that are negatively affecting your clients website and remove them. Low quality links can seriously harm your Google rankings.

Best Fiverr Gigs for Links: Before you get mad at me for considering Fiverr, realize that there are actually some high quality gigs that are worth the money. Fiverr Gigs

Some SEO businesses are able to use their own efforts and Fiverr to make $50,000 every year.

If you do some research, you can find so many website owners ready to provide a guest post link on their blog in just $5. There are many others who can provide manual social bookmark links or other quality links for $5.

You can also buy hundreds of other mass link building services for your 2nd & 3rd tier link building requirement.

If you do not want to do the work yourself, then I am going to give you another option below, and that is to just outsource everything.

Outsource Everything – SEO Reseller Programs: There are several different options for Reseller Programs starting your own SEO business, and one is to just outsource everything.

You can send people to an SEO Reseller Program after they visit your website. Therefore, you would only really need to focus on increasing your traffic and conversion rate.

Programs like INeedHits, Hubshout, eBrandz are some of the great reseller programs where you can redirect all your SEO customers or manually outsource your SEO business.

Conclusion – Make Money SEO

In conclusion, there are different ways that you can make money with SEO. Starting an SEO business for companies online or offline can help you create a passive income.

Depending on how you go about the business, you might need to spend a lot of time to get started. I have listed below the 5 things you really need to focus on when starting and then continuing your SEO business that earns you profits.

1. First focus on a business plan. Decide how you will be doing your SEO and how you will get the work done.

2. Decide on prices and where your focus will be. You can try to find clients offline or find clients through people’s blogs.

3. Come up with a plan on how you will get more clients. Also, you should be able to get the most money out of your clients.

4. Find out ways to make money besides strictly SEO work. You might want to try to sell software or information products.

5. Set-up a monthly payment structure. If you can charge $300/month and offer high rankings then you will make tons of money as long as you fulfill the high rankings promise.

17 thoughts on “How to Start an SEO Business & Make Money”

  1. Your article writing format is excellent, everything is step by step and easy to understand thank you so much for such a great article, But how can I subscirbe you blog is there any subscirptino button in your blog ?

    Reply
  2. Before you run out and try to start a business doing “SEO” for other people’s sites, I’d recommend creating sites yourself and doing SEO for those first. If you can’t make money for yourself with SEO, you shouldn’t exactly be going around claiming you’ll make money for other people with it.

    Reply
  3. Hi
    Thanks for giving this valuable information. Really it is useful..
    But here I have a one doubt:
    How we will get project from client.

    Any wakenses in Bangalore. I have 3years of exp in SEO. I am searching for new job.please help me

    Reply

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