Businesses are seeing the value of SEO for their online success. This is a great opportunity to position your SEO agency to meet the growing demand for SEO. But how do you scale an SEO agency to take advantage of this demand?
Scaling an SEO agency requires a combination of strategies, including those that involve adaptability, efficiency, expertise, and innovation. Here are the most actionable tips to take your SEO agency to new heights.
Table of contents
- Niche down
- Invest in SEO tools
- Standardize workflows
- Create scalable pricing models
- Improve client relations
- Build a strong team
- Develop a marketing strategy
1. Niche down
If you want to scale your SEO agency, you may think that diversifying and increasing your number of SEO products and services is the way to go. Sure, this can work too because it can provide additional revenue streams and open you up to cross-selling SEO products and services. But many times, this approach is too much for new SEO agencies to handle. It may be a better idea to niche down. When you niche down, you specialize in a particular SEO area where you can focus your branding, expertise, and marketing efforts. This can make niching down a better approach in scaling an SEO agency.
- Evaluate your strengths. Assess your SEO team’s skills and interests. Chances are, they are biased towards a particular aspect of SEO. Look at Marketer’s Center, for instance. The white label SEO agency specializes in local SEO, developing many local SEO offerings like citation cleanup services and Google Business Profile optimization. Identify the aspects of SEO that your team is already excelling in, and then align these aspects with potential niches.
- Test the waters before fully committing. Before completely committing to the potential niches you have identified, conduct market research first. Look at the competition and the demand. There should be a balance between your agency’s strengths and your potential niche’s demand. Take on a few projects and clients within your chosen niche and then see if you can deliver great results and sustainable returns. Use your insights to further refine your niche strategy.
- Develop specialized offerings. When you are doing market research, you can also find the challenges and pain points of the potential clients in your niche. Customize your SEO products and services to solve these problems and meet client demands and expectations. This may mean you need to use specific SEO strategies, invest in particular SEO tools, and more.
2. Invest in SEO tools
SEO tools can help you scale your SEO agency because they offer automation, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making. Automation can help handle repetitive tasks, saving your SEO team valuable time and effort. This can boost efficiency and allow your SEO agency to take on more clients and projects. The SEO tools also offer in-depth analytics and insights. These offerings can increase the effectiveness of your SEO strategies and executions. They can also help streamline your processes for even better efficiency.
- Assess your SEO agency’s needs. Analyze your team’s current and future needs. Consider your chosen niche and identify the processes where you can need some help to be competitive in this niche. For example, you may discover that you need more help in keyword research and rank tracking, so look for SEO tools that can help with these processes in particular. When you are looking for SEO tools to invest in, consider those that seamlessly integrate with your existing systems. This way, adding them to your SEO arsenal won’t result in workflow disruptions.
- Invest time in training your SEO team. You need to train your SEO agency’s members to completely understand and navigate these tools. You want them to be familiar and competent with these tools to leverage their full potential. After all, you are going to pay for these tools, so you might as well get the most benefits you can.
- Consider your budget. Yes, you should invest in SEO tools if you are serious about scaling your SEO agency. But this doesn’t mean you should splurge. Establish a budget for your investments, so you don’t cause significant strain on your SEO agency’s finances. SEO tools can be very expensive, and if you have multiple of them, they can easily derail your scaling efforts. But generally speaking, their benefits outweigh their costs.
3. Standardize workflows
Standardizing workflows has many advantages. It streamlines your processes and ensures there is a consistent approach to your SEO projects. It can also improve the collaboration between your SEO team members, reduce decision-making time, and even increase client satisfaction. All these advantages lead to better scalability for your SEO agency.
- Assess your existing processes. Audit your processes and identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and other areas where standardization can bring improvements. Don’t just look at SEO processes like auditing clients, formulating and executing SEO strategies, and reporting results. Also look at commonly overlooked processes like client onboarding and internal processes like budget allocating.
- Develop standard operating procedures. For each step of the process, develop standard operating procedures. Include step-by-step instructions, best practices, key objectives, and even the people responsible for the steps. Your standard operating procedure documents should also be accessible to all team members to ensure that they are being followed and executed.
- Use project management tools and establish communication channels. Project management tools can help manage tasks, track progress, and ensure that everyone involved is on the same page. Some of the most popular project management tools are Asana, Basecamp, and Trello. For better collaboration and project management, define communication channels. Do you invest in communication tools like Slack and Zoom or do you prefer more conventional tools like email and phone calls?
4. Create scalable pricing models
Scalable pricing models can significantly contribute to the growth and sustainability of your SEO agency. They are beneficial to your clients because they provide flexibility to fit their budgets and scalability to allow the transition to higher-tier packages when their requirements expand. They are beneficial to your SEO agency too because having different package tiers can make it easier to forecast income and position your agency as a solution provider for various businesses.
- Identify client personas to help develop tiered packages. Again, this highlights the importance of doing market research. Identify your client personas and then segment them according to budget constraints, business needs and wants, and pain points. This segmentation can help you strategize and develop tiered packages. Look at the tiered packages of other SEO agencies, for instance. Some of them have packages for small businesses, medium-sized companies, and enterprises.
- Ensure transparency in your pricing structure. Break down your SEO products and services into core components. This way, you can ensure you are providing sufficient value for each tier of your packages. When creating the packages, also include the core components involved and their associated costs. This transparency helps potential clients make more informed decisions. This can also help build trust for a better collaborative experience.
- Regularly review and adjust. Your pricing models don’t need to be static. They actually need to be updated regularly to remain competitive. Adjustments in industry standards, changes in competitor offerings, and evolutions of client business objectives are factors you should look into when reviewing and adjusting pricing models.
5. Improve client relations
Positive client relationships can help scale your SEO agency because they improve client retention and loyalty, open you up to more business opportunities through referrals, and give your SEO agency a favorable reputation. You can significantly improve client relations by being a proactive communicator and quick problem solver.
- Regularly update your SEO clients. Scaling an SEO agency is not just about getting more clients. It’s also about keeping your current clients and snowballing from there. Update your clients on project progress, including insights and asking for their input. Don’t wait for them to ask for updates. Be proactive and schedule the updates yourself. To effectively pull this off, it’s a good idea to use SEO tools for reporting automation and scheduling. Also consider designating account managers, so each client is catered to properly.
- Address issues promptly. Your clients may have concerns. You need to address these quickly, so they feel that you are committed to their success. Usually, these concerns are simple enough. They just happen to require some of your attention before they escalate into larger problems. For effective communication, establish a clear communication channel with your SEO clients.
- Educate clients about SEO. SEO is your job, so you do the heavy lifting here. But this doesn’t mean that your clients should be completely oblivious about SEO. It’s beneficial for you and for them to understand SEO strategies, best practices, trends, and the value of each SEO product or service. Educating them puts you in a position of authority in the SEO field. And it puts them in a better position where they can make more informed business decisions. When you and your clients both know SEO, you nurture a collaborative relationship, improving client relations.
6. Build a strong team
A cohesive and skilled SEO team is the bedrock of a successful SEO agency. With such a team, you can ensure you are delivering proper progress and results to your SEO clients. It can also help you build authority and a positive reputation in the digital marketing industry. A solid team is also good for your SEO agency internally. It can boost efficiency and productivity and open you up to creativity and innovation.
- Identify the core competencies you need. Analyze your SEO agency’s offerings, so you can understand the core competencies and roles you need to fulfill these offerings to your clients successfully. This can help you in recruiting individuals who seriously contribute to your SEO team’s performance. For example, if you are into local SEO, citations are something you want to offer to your clients. You may want to look for SEO professionals who can build, clean up, and manage citations well.
- Invest in training and development. Keep your team updated on SEO strategies, executions, tools, and trends. This means going into training sessions and development programs. Sure, there are paid programs out there. But learning doesn’t always have to be expensive. You can actually keep your team updated by having regular sessions where team members share what they know. Team members can really learn from each other – and for free.
- Foster a collaborative culture. Cultivate an SEO agency culture where team members are comfortable collaborating on projects and sharing ideas. This opens you up to creativity, innovation, and a positive work environment. Acknowledge and reward exceptional performance, give incentives, and provide opportunities for professional growth through skill development and mentorship.
7. Develop a marketing strategy
Branding and marketing play a pivotal role in scaling your SEO agency. With proper branding, your SEO agency becomes more recognizable, fostering credibility and trust. And with proper marketing, your SEO agency becomes a lead generation and conversion machine, maximizing your audience reach.
- Define your unique selling proposition. Branding is not just about logos, taglines, and color schemes. Sure, these branding elements can make your SEO agency more recognizable. But the one element that separates you from other SEO agencies is your unique selling proposition. Identify your strengths, specializations, unique approaches, and values. Once you do, you can integrate them into your branding and marketing plan.
- Do SEO for your own agency. You are already doing SEO for your clients. You should do it for your SEO agency as well. Optimize your own website, build backlinks and citations, and boost your online presence with a content marketing plan, email campaign, social media strategy, and other digital marketing executions. Make sure to measure and analyze results too. Establish key performance indicators to have a data-driven approach to refining your strategies.
- Allocate a budget for your marketing efforts. Have a separate budget for your marketing activities to better handle your SEO agency finances. Whether you are doing content creation, paid advertising, or events, a dedicated budget ensures you have consistency and impact. This also helps train you in financial management, which is also a common challenge in scaling an SEO agency.
Scale your SEO agency with these actionable tips
Scaling an SEO agency can be difficult. But with the right actionable tips, it can become easier. With proper adapting, investing, positioning, and empowering your team and clients, you can become a powerhouse in the SEO landscape.
Remember that scaling is not just about getting bigger. It’s also about getting better at what you do and providing more value for your SEO agency and clients.
