This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter seven of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

Firstly, congratulations on a successful pitch! 

It’s super exciting and rewarding to have won a new client, especially after a potentially long, competitive pitch process. But after the celebrations comes one of the final hurdles. Before getting down to the real business of starting to deliver on all the proposed implementations and optimizations that won you the pitch in the first place, the client needs to be officially onboarded.

While other teams will likely handle the contracts and compliance side of things, the individual, team, or project manager must set to work on the account. Having a robust, structured onboarding process to turn to at this stage can be crucial. Not only can it help ensure everyone is on the same page from the get-go, but it can also help deliver better results and build stronger relationships. 

This is when a ready-to-go onboarding checklist can be your best friend, helping your team avoid common early missteps and hit the ground running. 

Preparation and Creating Your Client Onboarding Checklist

A checklist certainly doesn’t need to be anything too technical or fancy; a simple Excel or Google sheet can work well, which is usually my preference! But what should it include?

In a nutshell, the checklist should help identify all the initial conversations and information gathering that’s needed, all the tools and platforms you will need access to, plus the typical kick-start tasks that help you identify key opportunities and the general lay of the local digital landscape for your new client. 

In simpler terms, a typical local SEO onboarding checklist can be divided into three main sections:

1. Things we need to know
2. Things we need to access
3. Things we need to do

Individual tasks or actions generally fall under these three buckets and can be added as separate checklist lines. A suitable status indicator should also be included. This could be a formatted drop-down menu offering a choice of progress statuses or as simple as a checkbox. Who doesn’t love the satisfaction gained from a successful tick?

1. Things We Need to Know

To kick off, a checklist should cover essential information gathering that’s needed to provide helpful new account context so that we can:

• Tailor our strategy accordingly
• Set realistic goals and expectations
• Identify any challenges and opportunities
• Set the bar for collaboration and communication
• Start strong

Every client will be different, with their own needs and nuances, so while the following checklist recommendations are by no means exhaustive, they should cover the most common bases:

Perform a Basic Local Maturity Check-In

A key first step is to arrange an initial meeting with the client to discuss their current local SEO setup and what will be needed to create and deliver the best strategy moving forward. Having a basic set of questions ready to ask and collating detailed answers will help inform those first important strategy steps. This is often called the discovery phase.

Some of this information may already be known from the pitch process, as covered in RFPs or brief details. If not already shared with you, asking for details on past or current local search strategies, including any metrics and local business goals, is a great starting point. Knowing that driving physical footfall into stores is the priority over increasing website clicks or that key stakeholders are very focused on the brand’s reputation across certain locations, for example, will help frame your initial roadmap.

It will also be key to confirm if you will be starting from scratch with a clean slate or taking over from an existing strategy or agency where there is still work to complete. The client may already have a well-established brand with a local SEO foundation in place, but they need fresh eyes and ideas to turn declining performance around.

Alternatively, if the client is a relatively new business that has initially focused on launching its website, it may still need the basics set up for local SEO, such as creating Google Business Profiles or providing recommendations for potential location pages .

Whatever has come before, it’s important to understand how the client views their current local maturity and success. The checklist can note this context, which will help prioritize the initial focus areas and set realistic goals for the short, medium, and long term.

Create a Centralized Data Source 

Any local SEO strategy will undoubtedly require access to and understanding of a brand’s key local business information, whether for brick-and-mortar locations such as stores or offices or the geographical areas the business serves.

For example, it will be difficult to audit Google Business Profiles without knowing accurate location names, addresses, and phone numbers to validate accuracy. 

Therefore, it’s important early on to determine where the core information about each physical location or targeted service area is stored and what they consider their source of truth. This could be an internal database or digital repository, an Excel file, or a tool like BrightLocal!

Try a Free Local SEO Client Information Template

Claire Carlile has developed a local SEO client information template as part of her course, “Essential Google Business Profile Tasks for Agencies,” available through BrightLocal Academy. Her course includes three more useful templates. To use the template, follow the link below, click the ‘Make a copy’ button, and rename it accordingly.

Find the Template

Local Market Analysis & Research

You’ll likely have conducted local market research and analysis in preparation for the pitch process. However, this may have been a diluted or narrow view, such as looking at a single market. As part of onboarding, building this out for a more complete picture early on is important. This will likely include the following info-gathering tasks to add to your checklist:

• Competitor analysis: Identify local competitors through helpful tools or review search results for relevant keywords. Then, review their local SEO set-up to benchmark maturity and inform the direction of the strategy.
• Target audience: Use a combination of analytics tools and client feedback to understand the current customer demographic and any opportunities to appeal to a wider or different audience. 
• Targeted local keywords: Identify relevant local keywords that existing and potential customers may use to find your new client’s products or services. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs can be helpful here.

Client Contacts

It likely goes without saying, but it’s essential to determine who the main day-to-day client contacts will be and any other key stakeholders you may meet or report to. It’s important to note that with local SEO, you may need to collaborate with individuals from across a range of brand teams, including website, marketing, sales, stores/retail, or social media. We’ve seen much collaborative success at Croud from identifying and connecting with these additional teams early on in the local onboarding process. 

For a multi-location business or a franchise, you may also be working with specific regions or branches. So, it’s worth clarifying early on who your key contacts are.

Define Ways of Working

You can be brimming with local SEO knowledge and skills and raring to implement an exciting strategy for your new client, but it’s crucial to take the time to understand how they prefer to work, communicate, and collaborate. 

Be sure to ask about the project management tools and communication channels they may already use and feel comfortable with and be willing to adopt these methods. This can instantly help build rapport, show you value their comfort and existing ways of working, and allow you to onboard more cohesively.

Sure, your agency may exclusively use Hangouts and the Google ecosystem, but if your client is deeply embedded in Microsoft, you may need to consider how that affects you. Suggesting a collaborative Slack channel may sound like a great idea, but it could add more hurdles if your client doesn’t have Slack.

2. Things We Need to Access

To efficiently run audits, implement optimizations, troubleshoot issues, plan local content creation, set up benchmarking, and conduct robust reporting, you will need access to various tools and platforms and visibility of key brand assets. Additionally, being well set up to quickly gain insights and demonstrate optimization or algorithm impact in a timely manner is also something to get ticked off early in the onboarding process. 

• Google Business Profiles (GBP) : Key for all local activity, access to the client’s GBP locations will enable you to review their status, audit and update key business information, manage reviews and pull insights.
• Local listings : These may vary depending on the industry, but key platform listings and directories include Apple Business Connect, Bing Places for Business, Yelp, TrustPilot, and TripAdvisor.
• Social accounts: If supporting with social is in scope, e.g., Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.
• SEO tools & platforms : It’s likely your agency has access to various SEO tools and platforms designed to track keyword rankings & performance, such as STAT, so it’s important to set up new client data ASAP. Additionally, if the client uses a listings management tool to maintain their online profiles and listings, having visibility is key e.g. BrightLocal, Uberall, Moz, Yext SOCi, etc.
• Analytics : This will help inform various performance reporting and analysis, such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster, etc.
• Project management and communication tools: Depending on the client’s preferred ways of working, these could be task management and workflow tracking tools such as Asana and JIRA or communication and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams or Slack.
• Brand assets and guidance: These may be provided to you by the client or may be accessed via online repositories such as asset libraries containing photos, logos, brand and tone of voice guidelines, etc. Having access to these will help create consistent and appealing content.

3. Things We Need to Do

While a comprehensive local strategy and roadmap will include many tasks, and the immediate ‘things to do’ will vary from client to client, there are a few key common activities to prioritize from the start:

Conduct Local Keyword Research

You may have identified targeted keywords as part of your initial research and analysis, but expanding this to a full local keyword research project or refreshing a current KWR will help reveal untapped keyword opportunities that could inform local content plans.

Citation/Backlink Audit

Analyzing the client’s current backlink profile will highlight current strengths and weaknesses while reviewing the backlinks earned by competitors to help identify new opportunities for your client.

Key Listings & Local On-Page Audit

How effectively your client’s business locations and service areas are surfaced and perceived online underpins any successful local SEO strategy, not only to rank well for relevant keywords but also to serve correct, consistent, and helpful information to potential local customers, that ultimately converts.

Early on, a key action with a new client will be to audit and review existing online business profiles and listings for accuracy and completeness. Conduct an audit of key listings, starting with Google Business Profiles, to ensure they are eligible to surface (are verified and live) and are fully optimized.

When reviewing Google Business Profiles, it’s important to note the page each profile is pointing to, and what that page is telling Google about the business, its location, and its offering. Conducting an audit of these pages (often location service or store pages) can be just as key as auditing Google Profiles themselves, and may highlight some great on-page opportunities that can be built into the local strategy.

Reputation Review

I like to include an initial overview of a brand’s online reputation to determine whether there are any red flags to be aware of or quick wins to be had. Though this may not be an initial focus for all new clients, it’s crucial for local visibility and customer conversion.

You could add a checklist action to assess existing reviews across publishers such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, Trustpilot, and any other relevant reputation platforms to understand how the brand and its locations are currently perceived vs their competition.

Initial Local SEO Strategy Roadmap

Lastly, make sure to include an initial strategy plan creation in your checklist so you can conclude your onboarding plan by sharing a first draft plan of action with your new client for their review, feedback, and approval. This could be approached in several ways but could cover the first 3, 6, and 12 months or be segmented into proposed quick wins, incremental gains, and big bet projects.

Presenting a ready-to-move strategy early on sets a strong tone. This should certainly seek to align with expectations set during the pitch process but should be open to evolving based on onboarding conversations, client feedback, and emerging trends.

Final Thoughts

A methodical and organized onboarding process is essential for success in a local search strategy. When aided by a clear and efficient onboarding checklist, delays and potential blockers are reduced, leaving you fully prepped and energized to sail smoothly into your first tasks!

Key Takeaways:

• A structured onboarding process helps avoid common challenges and blockers.
• Organize your checklist into things to know, things to access, and things to do for better clarity.
• Understanding the client’s local maturity, key contacts, and data sources is crucial.
• Gaining early access to SEO tools, platforms, and listings and conducting initial audits sets you on the right path. 

Onboarding a local SEO client doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and by following a checklist can ensure a smooth process that sets you and your client up for success.

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter six of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

It’s exciting when a new lead comes into a marketing agency! The excitement makes it tempting to dive in right away and brainstorm the many ways you can help. However, without understanding a lead’s specific goals, any solutions you come up with are based on assumptions. Even after your initial sales call with an exciting new prospect, most of what you’ve written down will still be assumptions—yours and theirs. 

A prospect will answer your questions to the best of their ability, but they may be clouded by their own emotional investment in the project or by misleading data and reporting from a current marketing vendor. Until you get a good look behind the scenes, you have no business making recommendations or assigning budgets to projects. 

This guide teaches you how to scope and execute a paid (yes, you should be paid for this work) discovery period for new clients. You’ll learn how to get buy-in, structure discovery projects, frame further phases, and build ongoing partnerships. You’ll walk away ready to communicate project needs and constraints more clearly, and you will be more confident in the plans and budgets you present to prospects and clients.

What is discovery work, and why is it key for marketing agencies?

Discovery work started in agile software development and UX so teams could understand and define a project before jumping head-first into development. The purpose of this work was to: 

• Address uncertainty
• Support cross-functional collaboration
• Explore iteratively
• Validate or disprove assumptions
• Define a clear roadmap

Five years ago at Kick Point, we had an inkling that we were not approaching digital marketing and website design proposals in a sustainable way. We either put together proposals based totally on best guesses of what a client would need (and then had to make big pivots down the road), or we would do unpaid exploratory work before putting the proposal together. That free exploratory work took valuable time and energy.

We first started experimenting with a paid discovery phase after one of our team members enrolled in digital project management training through the project management consultancy Louder Than Ten. 

Louder Than Ten championed the idea that discovery should not be a phase within an already fully budgeted and scoped project. It should be a completely separate project with its own budget, accounting for the expertise and effort that goes into uncovering complex problems and determining the right path forward.

For us, discovery for marketing and website projects came from a desire to dedicate time to exploring and understanding before committing to executing certain tactics or agreeing to rigid budget constraints. Of course, we’ve always had time to figure out what our prospects need; we just hadn’t historically been compensated for that time. 

Without discovery work, agencies jump right into prescribing and executing before researching and planning. This leads to unclear expectations and misunderstandings about the project scope, causing significant issues and ultimately compromising the potential of the relationship.

If you’ve been feeling some of this, your typical lead process might look like the following:

1. Take a call with a potential new lead.
2. Request access to all relevant accounts (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console (GSC), Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, their website backend, etc.).
3. Look through previous strategy documents and reports.
4. Make assumptions about what the client needs and put together a proposal based on that OR.
5. Recommend the client follow a set package based on work you’ve done for other clients.

Sound familiar?

Here are some of the problems we’ve come across with this approach:

• You might create a proposal that is too open and run into issues where the client expects more than you’ve budgeted for. In this case, you’ll either have to ask for more budget (hard) or undervalue your work (hard).
• You might create a proposal that is too strict, and the scope doesn’t allow you to change tactics as you get to know the client and their business better.
• You might find that those improperly scoped projects are taking more time than you’re being paid for, which means you’re losing money, potential new clients are suffering, and timelines for other existing clients are suffering.
• If you try to fit every potential new client into a set package, you might find that you’re not moving the needle because you’re focusing on the wrong things for their specific situation and losing their trust by the day.
• You’re in a situation where you’ve become an “order-taker,” where instead of building and executing a well-researched strategy, you’re just doing what clients have decided is right at any given moment.

What a mess!

Guesswork is not honest, fulfilling, or sustainable. The flip side is that doing research and developing plans for free is spec work and devalues our industry’s expertise. Paid discovery work leads to strong, lucrative marketing partnerships, happy teams, and, importantly, happy clients. It will improve the reputation of the marketing industry as a whole.

What happens during discovery?

That depends on your expertise and area of focus as a marketing agency.

At Kick Point, we specialize in PPC, SEO, Analytics, and Web Design and Development. Our Discoveries always include an expert from each area. If we know that we won’t be looking at a specific area (e.g. a client already has an agency handling PPC), we don’t include someone from that area. However, there is still a lot of value in our team having a holistic view of a client’s entire marketing ecosystem. So, we still request that they provide access to all accounts if they are comfortable.

We also ask questions. Lots of questions. Here are a few examples of questions that will help you get to the heart of what is important to your client and what makes their business unique:

• Which KPIs/metrics would you be evaluated against when it comes to a performance review? (What will demonstrate to your leadership that you’re doing a great job?)
• Imagine three ideal clients/customers. Write a 100-word bio for each.
• What are some things you’ve tried in the past in terms of marketing (or seen tried) that you felt failed or didn’t have the impact you expected?

Once we have access to their accounts, each team member on the project digs into their own specialized area:

Our SEO team members run website crawls to look for glaring technical or on-page SEO issues, review the site architecture, examine the client’s GSC to see how they are performing in search, review any existing keyword research, and spend time in a keyword research tool to get a sense of the keyword landscape.

Our Ads team members review the client’s existing PPC accounts, including Google Ads and any social ads accounts. They look at how the campaigns are structured, how they are performing, and whether there are any obvious issues like high click-through rates (CTR) but low conversions, etc. They review important landing pages to see if CRO best practices are being followed or if ad copy matches the messaging on the page.

Our Analytics team members dig into Google Analytics 4 accounts and Google Tag Manager accounts to see their existing setup, looking for any obvious issues and determining whether there are small tweaks that need to be made or if a major overhaul will be needed to make it possible to track the metrics that the client needs to make good business decisions.

Our design and development team members review the site from a UX perspective, determining if there are major issues around speed, usability, visual hierarchy, etc.

Our team notes what we’re seeing and then develops an initial plan of attack to make the biggest impact for the client. For example, instead of conducting a huge content audit that will take weeks, our SEO team may already see that service pages need serious help, and we should start there.

How long should discovery projects last?

The correct length will depend on the scope of the discovery and the areas of expertise your agency is focused on. At Kick Point, after a client has answered our discovery questions, our involved team members meet on Zoom or a Slack Huddle to do their deep dives and talk through any issues and ideas that come up. While this discussion is happening, a document is being prepared to summarize everyone’s recommendations, red flags, and time/budget needs. 

Sometimes, during this team meeting, a few more questions will pop up, and we send those to our client right away. Once those additional questions are answered, we finalize the Discovery Review Document and send that off to a client to digest before meeting with them to walk through our findings. After that, we send off a Phase 2 proposal. All up, this process can take as little time as 7-10 days. Website discoveries are often much more in-depth and typically take our team 3-4 weeks to complete.

How do you sell discovery projects?

The first step to selling discovery projects successfully is to truly believe that they are necessary. You must commit to insisting on them. As soon as you say, “We usually do discovery projects, but in this case, maybe…” you are unlikely to be able to sell a discovery project. Instead, try, “All of our projects begin with a discovery project.” There is no other option!

You wouldn’t expect a home builder to build a new house without blueprints. And you wouldn’t expect to get totally custom blueprints from an architect for free.

Remembering that discovery projects are not just good for you as the agency, but they are better for the client also helps. Clients will get better outcomes working with an agency that is committed to doing the right thing and not just what they’re assuming is the right thing—or, worse, that they have time for because they didn’t quote enough. Paying their agency fairly results in the right amount of time and effort being spent on problem-solving and well-thought-through implementations, which leads to more leads, sales, and engagement. It is a proactive, long-term approach.

Not every business or every marketing lead you pitch discovery to will get it. That’s okay. They don’t need to get it. Those that do will be the clients that you do great work with for years to come.

How much should a discovery project cost?

We’ve experimented a lot with this over the years! 

Our first discovery proposal was sent (and accepted!) in September 2019. It was beefy and not so much a discovery as a “let’s fix the blatant issues before getting into a monthly management situation.” We priced it at $7,000.

Our first 15 discovery projects were very in-depth and took up to a month to complete because we included some research and strategy work as part of discovery at the start. The average price was $6,700, and our close rate was about 44%.

At the end of 2020, we changed things up so that all of our marketing discovery projects were structured to be very efficient and economical. Up until 2023, our projects were priced at an average of $2,690 only, and our team could usually do one from start to finish in a single afternoon! Our close rate at that time was 60%. 50% of those projects turned into further long-term marketing work, and 11% into large custom website projects.

From 2023 until now, we have taken on fewer projects overall as we’ve invested time into our marketing training platform, KP Playbook, and we’ve focused on growing and strengthening our existing partnerships (many of which started with discovery!). We have been selective in taking on new marketing discoveries and are now at an average of $4,920 a project. Our custom website discoveries now average $19,000 a project.

We are continuing to experiment with the scope and scale of discovery projects, but one thing remains the same: the discovery project itself is not a set package. Have a massive site with user logins, hundreds of pages, a complex lead to CRM integration, and three subdomains you’d like us to look at? That’s going to be more work to dive into than a small business with a homepage, contact page and three service pages, and no Google Analytics or Ads accounts.

What happens after discovery projects?

Ideally, after completing a discovery, you have a Phase 2 proposal ready to share with the client, with recommendations clearly mapped to the goals they’ve shared with you.

What that looks like depends on what you’ve found during discovery. That’s the whole point!

For some clients, that might mean a research-based project to set a good foundation and then a couple of months of training so they can manage and grow their marketing efforts from there. For others, it might mean setting up a monthly ongoing relationship with a set number of tasks that you’ll complete each month from the roadmap you’ve created.

For us, not every discovery project turns into a long-term partnership, and that’s a good thing. We are not the right long-term fit for every client we do a discovery project with, but they will always walk away with a clear direction of where they should go next if it is not with us. In many cases, the answer from discovery was to provide training to a team so they could execute recommendations in-house. 

Regardless of what comes next, you can feel confident that you’ve done your due diligence before making those recommendations. You also have set up a relationship with a client where you are paid fairly for your efforts from day one, have set the expectation that good work doesn’t just happen without research, and that learning and changing course is a natural part of the process.

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter four of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

Picture this: you’re walking home from the store, grocery bags in hand, thinking about what you’re going to put on the TV when you arrive. Then, you notice it. Across the street, there’s a huge sign screaming, “Now open.”

Another gym in your neighborhood? The gears in your head start turning as you pick up your pace. You are now on a mission to help businesses in your community thrive online. As an expert, you know local SEO is the answer, and your agency is after more clients. Now, you only have to convince them.

How to Find Prospects

Finding opportunities while walking down the street is great, but you can’t always rely on accidents to find new prospects. What you can rely on are specialized tools that help you identify and pitch to potential clients. Tools like BrightLocal help you see which local businesses could benefit from better SEO and create a convincing pitch.

Local Search Grid

Once you’ve picked your target area, go to Local Search Grid to discover businesses that could use local SEO improvements. Since we’re looking at local gyms, put in a few common keywords a gym would use and generate a report. What you’ll see is a visual representation of rankings by keyword for the location you’ve chosen.

Besides giving you a quick overview of local business rankings, this visual can help you pitch your local SEO services. Your prospect might not understand the ins and outs of SEO like you do. But seeing what their local search rankings look like in a grid compared to similar local businesses is a great starting point for convincing them.

What to Do With Local Search Grid Data

Learn More

Local Rank Tracker

Once you’ve found a local business you want to pitch to, you’ll want to see how well their website is doing in the entire city. For this, run a report through Local Rank Tracker to take a look at your prospect’s average ranking position and keyword movement.

Additionally, you can add your potential client’s competitors to this report to get a comparison and identify gaps. This lets you tailor your approach when reaching out to prospects and helps them visualize the state of their online visibility.

How to Use Local Rank Tracker to Hone Your Strategy

Read more

Citation Tracker

Last but not least, BrightLocal’s Citation Tracker is a useful tool for citation building. You get an overview of inconsistent and missing online listings, and all you need to do is explain to your prospective client why this is a problem.

Besides seeing opportunities, BrightLocal also shows you the citation value and authority. That way, you can pinpoint high-potential listings and give your prospects a fully transparent game plan.

Citation Tracker: How to Use It to Find New Business Listings

Read more

What is a local SEO proposal?

A local SEO proposal is a document outlining your plan to improve a business’s online visibility within a specific geographic location. It serves as a roadmap for implementing tailored SEO strategies to boost a company’s presence in local search results.

When done right, a local SEO proposal tells the client exactly how and when they can expect better results. What’s more, it needs to show the client why better search results benefit their business.

That said, like any other proposal, your local SEO proposal should be clear, concise, and to the point. Here’s what to include and how to present your services in a manner your clients understand.

What to Include in Your Local SEO Proposal

Before you start crafting a local SEO proposal, there’s a lot of research you’ll need to do. You want to show the client that their online presence could use improvement and that you’re the right person for the job.

Naturally, you’ll include detailed keyword research and list all the technical SEO issues. You’ll talk about their domain authority, on-page optimization, and missing meta descriptions, right? Wrong.

While all the technical information is crucial for you to create a local SEO strategy, your clients only care about the benefits. They’ll either scroll past your detailed reports or ignore your proposal altogether.

An effective proposal is always short and simple. If a potential client needs a crash course in search engine optimization to understand it, they won’t sign.

1. Start With a Convincing Executive Summary

Research shows that the executive summary and pricing are two of the most read sections in all business proposals. Since it’s the first thing your potential client will read, you need to make it short and convincing.

A great executive summary shows the client two things: you understand their problem, and you know how to solve it. This part of your local SEO proposal should be all about the client and the solution. To get potential clients hooked right off the bat and write an effective SEO proposal, you need to include:

1. Your understanding of the client’s pain points (e.g., not enough leads and how it impacts their business)
2. Your solution and how it will help your client reach their business goals
3. Reassurance that you are the right choice for the job

What this looks like in practice depends on the type of business your potential client is running. For the sake of giving an example, let’s say you were pitching to the local gym mentioned earlier. In this case, your executive summary could look something like this:

2. Outline the Local SEO Strategy

Now that your potential client is interested in your SEO services, it’s time to bring on the details of your offer. You want your prospect to understand how your solutions work.

For example, if you’re offering to improve their Google Business Profile, include why it’s important. If you think they would benefit from keyword optimization across their website, let them know what end results to expect.

The basic idea is to be as detailed as possible. That way, both you and your client have this section to refer to in case you come to a disagreement in the future.

Note that the most important thing here is to keep things in plain English. Stay away from industry jargon because it will only confuse your client.

3. Set a Realistic Timeline

Besides knowing what you plan on doing and why, your clients are also interested in how long it will take. Keep in mind that this is your project timeline, not the time it will take for the SEO changes to kick in.

Let’s say that your project includes content creation. Your project timeline should then display how long it will take to create the content, not how long it will take the content to perform. Similarly, you can present Google Business Profile management as an ongoing service with a set amount of hours per month.

While this section of your local SEO proposal is all about being as specific as possible, you can also use it to your advantage. Giving yourself more time to deliver means you have more time to fix unexpected problems.

And, if none of those appear, then you’re finishing earlier than promised and impressing your client. It’s a win-win situation.

Presenting Your Strategy and Timescales

The SEO strategy you came up with and the timeframe in which you will execute it don’t need to be two separate sections in your proposal. Instead, you can outline the SEO strategy in a few separate steps that each have their own timeline.

Some agencies have strict onboarding processes in place, to help make it easier and more transparent, and sharing that alongside the projected roadmap is a good idea. It’s worth highlighting that all of the auditing hasn’t been done at this stage, and that the work done for your proposal is simply scratching the surface.

For example, laying out the first few weeks or months could look something like this:

4. Include Testimonials or a Case Study

Every time you send a business proposal, what you’re really doing is asking a potential client to spend money. Naturally, they’ll want proof you can deliver on your promises before they invest in your solution.

Your local SEO proposal should always have social proof because there’s no better way of getting a new client on board than other happy clients. This could be testimonials, a written case study, video case studies, or screenshots. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it does need to get the point across.

A strong local SEO case study can be a powerful tool to help you convert new clients, especially if you can show success doing the tasks you’re pitching or in the industry the client sits in.

5. Make Your Pricing Easy to Understand

Your pricing section is the worst place to confuse potential clients. Even if the rest of your local SEO proposal is perfect, getting the pricing wrong is a surefire way to lose the deal.

The first thing you have to do is make your pricing clear and transparent. Whether you’re charging a project fee, an ongoing rate, or by the hour, you need to make that clear to the client.

If you use a combination of different pricing strategies, make sure that it’s clear from your pricing table. Itemize your services and include descriptions in everyday language so your client knows what they’re paying for.

Another thing to look out for is how you try to upsell. While modern, like Better Proposals, comes with interactive pricing tables that let you add options, don’t go overboard. A business proposal is a matter of getting a yes or a no from a potential client. The more options you add, the harder it gets to say yes.

6. Tell Potential Clients What the Next Steps Are

Don’t forget to let potential clients know how to move forward with your local SEO proposal. What do they need to do to accept? Do they email you, call you, sign the proposal digitally?

Whatever it is, include a small section to let them know instead of having to figure it out. It makes you easier to buy from and creates a better customer experience.

This section doesn’t have to be complex or particularly well-worded. A numbered list with clear instructions will do. For example:

1. To proceed with our local SEO services, please sign by typing your name into the box below.
2. Upon signing, you’ll be taken to a payment screen for our 30% advance fee.
3. Once we’ve received your payment, we’ll get in touch to arrange an initial consultation call.
4. At this point, we will also share any onboarding documentation we need you to complete.

7. Don’t Forget the Terms and Conditions

If you’re using digital signature software, definitely include your terms and conditions. That way, once the client has signed your local SEO proposal, they’ve also signed a contract. Besides getting all your bases covered, this also eliminates the need for a separate contract signing.

Bonus tip: Give Them a Guarantee

A guarantee is a great way to get new clients on board fast. To make your local SEO proposal even more tempting, consider adding one to your pricing section.

While a money-back guarantee might be the first thing to come to mind, you can also guarantee additional services. For example, you could offer additional ads if the ones included in your initial proposal don’t result in an X number of new customers for your client.

Final Thoughts

Creating a successful local SEO proposal is not just about showcasing your skills. It’s about understanding the unique needs of each potential client.

Local SEO tools, like BrightLocal, can help you gather powerful data that helps you create proposals addressing specific pain points. Get clients hooked with a persuasive intro, present clear deliverables, and stay away from industry jargon.

And if you want to increase your chances of winning new business even more, include a guarantee. Showing that you put that level of trust in your services only makes clients want to sign on faster.

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter two of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

You can find chapter one on defining your services here.

Believe it or not, you’re not the sole agency providing local marketing, SEO, or digital marketing services. Surprising, right?

The reality is that you aren’t just competing against a couple of other agencies; you could be competing against hundreds. According to IBISWorld, in 2023, there were 187,705 SEO and Internet Marketing Consultants in the USA. That makes for a very busy space.

It also means that setting your agency apart is imperative. You can’t just set up shop, offer the exact same services as others around you, and hope that’s enough.

We touched on this briefly in the first part of the Agency Playbook, where we helped you define your positioning. In some cases, it could be as simple as being the only agency specializing in local SEO in your town. In others, it could be the niche you choose to target. Sometimes it isn’t that simple, though.

So today, we will hear from agency experts on how they help their agencies stand out from the crowd. We asked each of these experts the same three questions, and here’s what they had to say about getting noticed, creating a unique selling point (USP), and hindsight.

Amanda Jordan

Director of Digital Strategy at RicketyRoo

Amanda states that the key for RicketyRoo has been being a positive part of the local SEO community, offering true transparency to its clients, and looking ahead.

1. Getting Noticed

Honestly, what we do to get noticed is what we tell our clients to do to rank and grow their businesses. We just work on being a positive and impactful part of our community.

2. Developing a USP

Blake Denman is the man behind our USP. We are refreshingly transparent and upfront. This isn’t just with our clients but also applies to how we work within our team and present to the industry.

3. Hindsight

Focus on the horizon, not the rearview mirror; hindsight is not a guide. We’re focusing on seeing where this road takes us.

Joy Hawkins

Owner/President at Sterling Sky

For Joy, the key has been tapping into their in-house expertise and properly showcasing it to the world. It’s about being knowledgeable in a noisy way to help bring a strong inbound funnel for their sales.

1. Getting Noticed

I think the best sales approach is to have a strong inbound funnel so that you have people contacting you who have already researched you.

At Sterling Sky, we don’t do any outbound sales. When leads reach out to us, we usually don’t have to “brag” too much about our accomplishments because the businesses have already seen it on our website.

We have a very strong social media presence and newsletter and are well-represented at conferences, podcasts, and webinars.

2. Developing a USP

Our USP is that we are trend leaders in the local SEO space and understand the local algorithms very well. We are often the first to put out case studies about new concepts and ranking factors. We have also discovered and named almost every local algorithm update Google has done in the last decade. The most recent one was the Openness algorithm update, which we shared and got Google to confirm shortly afterward.

Our other advantage is that we have a team of well-known experts in the local SEO space. There are nine employees at Sterling Sky that contribute to the Local Search Ranking Factors Study every year.

Study: Business Opening Hours and Local Rankings

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3. Hindsight

I’d probably change nothing. We share a ton of information about SEO tactics we have succeeded with. Some people think this idea of “giving away your secrets” is nuts, but I would argue that it helps identify us as experts and is also the main reason why businesses want to work with us.

Emily Wassell

Head of SEO at tmwi

Emily says that tmwi focuses a lot on educating its clients. In addition to sharing their knowledge with the wider community, they double down on keeping their clients up-to-date and in the know. For tmwi, it’s all about using this education to help uncover things that many other agencies simply don’t look at and make new processes around it.

1. Getting Noticed

SEO still has a reputation as a ‘dark art,’ meaning many brands and marketers have limited trust in SEO services. We do everything agencies should be doing – smart work for clients, entering awards, SEO training and workshops, and creating insights and content to share with the industry.

But our most effective strategy is focusing on referrals from happy clients – SEO is a channel where having someone to vouch for your work can be a game-changer. Our team is focused on building really strong client relationships and quantifying the results of our work to make sure our clients always think of us with friends and colleagues and if they move to new roles.

2. Developing a USP

We didn’t want to get boxed in by having a USP for specific sectors, projects, websites, etc. But we do have a unique process for content–our audience-led content strategy offering, Audience and Search Intent Modelling.

It developed from frustration that so many SEO strategies just targeted the same high-volume keywords–it’s obvious and increasingly ineffective. The ASIM strategy takes a step back from the keywords to start with the audience interests and affinities, then overlay the keywords back over the top. In short, it helps brands dominate their category with content across multiple pillars. This means the content is built around the audience first and with SEO at the heart, so it works better across all channels.

3. Hindsight

We’re definitely more focused on connecting search optimizations to paid activity now–how can we improve the website and UX, using SEO insights, to get more conversions from the traffic we’re driving? It means we can demonstrate the value of SEO outside of just organic metrics and encourage clients to consider SEO alongside paid media rather than an either/or debate on budgets.

Greg Gifford

Chief Operating Officer at SearchLab

Greg wrote about people being more important than money in a BrightLocal Spotlight in 2023. A few of the tidbits from that piece on how SearchLab sets itself apart highlight how mindset is key:

“He [Mark Bealin] talked about true work-life balance.

About how money wasn’t as important as having happy employees who truly enjoyed their jobs.

About how he wanted to be the one to change people’s lives, help them get houses, and help send their kids to school.

Managers and team leads can talk about culture and inclusion all day long, but if it’s not part of the lifeblood of your agency, it doesn’t make much difference. Everyone from the top down has to be a part of making that change.

At SearchLab, we have several core values that we live by daily:

Continuous drive for learning and self-improvement

• Have integrity in all that we do
• Relentless pursuit of exceptional results
• Demonstrate accountability and responsibility
• Contribute to a positive, supportive, and collaborative environment.”

For more on this, you can read Greg’s Spotlight: ‘People are More Important Than Money’

Be Loud and Plan for the Future

It may not feel like rocket science, but a common theme from these agency experts is transparency and expertise. You don’t have to be reinventing the wheel or doing anything completely earth-shattering.

It can go a long way if your clients and prospective clients can see you by openly sharing your knowledge and expertise. Whether through social media, on a one-on-one basis with clients, at conferences, or simply on your own website, it can go a long way to help set you apart.

Look hard at how you can use the experts you have in-house to help tell your unique stories on SEO. Do this, and you’ll not only show you know what you’re doing, but your happy clients will tell others, too. Being true subject-area experts can even stop you from having to work so hard at outbound sales.

That being said, looking ahead is important. Put together a robust plan, look at investing in the right people, and then nurture them to be the best they can be.

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter one of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

The guide takes inspiration from Claire Carlile’s Academy course ‘How to Win Your First Local SEO Client’.

Setting up a new local SEO agency is exciting. Being your own boss, working on your terms, and doing things your way is a hard gig to beat. It’s professionally and personally rewarding. One thing it isn’t, though, is easy.

Whether you already run an agency but feel it’s time for a reset, want to add local SEO to your other digital offerings, or are a consultant ready to scale up to agency owner, getting started requires considerable upfront planning.

The sheer volume of tasks you’ll need to complete before launch day can feel daunting. Many of the decisions you need to make come with a huge side order of pressure. That’s because each decision directly impacts the direction of your new business and its chances of success (or failure).

That’s where we come in. Our Agency Playbook is your blueprint to get your new local SEO agency off the ground.

Defining Your Services

Before you can successfully launch your business, you need a clear idea of what you’re going to sell. You might think that’s the easy bit. After all, it’s a local SEO agency, so the clue will be in the name, right? Not exactly.

In today’s search landscape, local SEO is a broad umbrella term for a rapidly growing range of tactics and specialisms. That means you could opt to focus on just one or two niche areas of expertise, such as:

• Google Business Profile Optimization
• Reputation Management
• Local Link Building
• Copywriting
• Citation Building
• Data and Analytics
• Social Marketing 
• Technical Optimization 

If you read that list and answer, “Check. Check. Check,” you may feel you’re sufficiently experienced and knowledgeable to offer a full-service local SEO solution. When you’re building a new business, it can be tempting to try and do it all. However, it’s essential to consider your strengths and weaknesses and whether you have the budget to fill any skills gaps with freelancers, subcontractors, or full-term hires.

That means your options are:

Whether you’re more inclined to be a niche expert or launch a full-service local search marketing agency, there’s another critical question that you’ll need to consider. Do you want to fly solo, or are you interested in building a bigger business with a team of experts working for your agency? 

Determining what scale you want to achieve is a very personal decision. There’s no right or wrong answer; it comes down to what you want from life.  

Some people are drawn to the solopreneur lifestyle because they can stay in complete control. Being a solopreneur means you’re only responsible for yourself. You don’t have the pressure of making payroll each month, nor do you have to take on a manager role. It can be the more flexible path, at least initially, and affords a greater amount of personal freedom. 

That said, if you’re serious about building an agency, bringing in other local SEO experts can help you develop your service portfolio and offer a more comprehensive solution to clients. It also gives you more man-hours and resources, which means you can take on more clients, generate more turnover, deliver better results, and not have to do everything yourself.  

What kind of local businesses will you target? 

With your business’s organizational structure decided, you can now start to think about who you will sell your services to. This is your client niche, and it can be a whole lot trickier to settle on than it may first appear. Your client niche could be determined by a specific industry, a certain size of business, or a local area. 

There are a couple of clear advantages to saying that you’re only going to work with this kind of client.

Advantage 1: You have the chance to become a big fish in a small pond

If 100% of your efforts and results come from a single sector, you can expect to become an established authority within that vertical. That depth of expertise means your services should become highly prized within that target niche.

Let’s say you decide to work only with dentists. With a few happy clients and excellent results, word should soon spread through the dental community. Any dentist looking to grow their local search visibility will know that you can get the job done. There could even be an increased desire to work with you to gain the upper hand over local rivals.

Local SEO for Dentists

by Ian de Jongh from Pain-Free Dental Marketing

Find out more

Advantage 2: You’ll have a unique insight into search trends

Choosing to work with just one type of client allows you to immerse yourself fully in that sector’s search landscape. You’ll instinctively learn what works and what doesn’t because you’ll work with the same kinds of businesses and keywords daily.

Essentially, you’re developing your own substantial back catalog of search algorithm intelligence. 

This unique insight cuts down on the guesswork associated with running new local SEO campaigns. It allows you to deploy tactics you’ve tried and tested and feel confident they will move the needle in the right direction from day one. And it means you’ll deliver consistently strong results for your clients.

Advantage 3: As a specialist, you can focus on what you do well

Having a particular niche—whether that’s an industry you have a particular affinity for or a certain size of client business you prefer to work with—can help you avoid a common trap associated with running a business: spreading yourself too thin. You can focus on what you enjoy and know you do well because you aren’t trying to be all things to all clients.  

Advantage 4: Day-to-day operations can be streamlined

There are plenty of practical advantages to having a well-defined niche. Many service providers define their client niche by geographical area. Service businesses like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians define their niche by radius.

Staying within your geographical area can also make day-to-day operations smoother. It makes it much easier to host client meetings, travel to networking events, and pitch to new businesses.

Advantage 5: Your marketing and messaging can be tightly focused

Knowing your audience is one of the golden rules of successful marketing. For your sales and marketing efforts to resonate, you need to understand who you’re talking to and what their challenges are. You should be able to clearly articulate how you can help them specifically.

If you don’t have a niche:

• Your sales messaging could be too generic to generate a connection.
• Your pitch decks could leave your prospects cold.
• Your advertising could fall flat.

A real estate agent, for example, will have different priorities than a mom-and-pop convenience store. A veterinarian won’t be looking to solve the same search problems as a locksmith. A restaurant will expect different results from a lawyer. Only by having a clear idea of your audience will your marketing and sales messaging hit their mark. 

Despite these clear advantages, there are some pitfalls to deciding on a client niche. 

Pitfall 1: Your niche is too narrow 

While there are genuine benefits to having an area of expertise, your niche must be able to sustain your new agency. There must be enough of those kinds of businesses to keep your business in business. You could quickly run out of clients if your focus is too specific. 

Opting to only work with surf shops in Nevada, for instance.

Pitfall 2: Industry downturns will impact your business too

If your agency focuses on a particular industry or a specific type of business, any downturn in that vertical will also hit your business hard. A change in that market could render your services no longer required, jeopardizing your entire agency business. While that may seem like an extreme scenario, you only have to cast your mind back to the industries entirely shut down by the pandemic or made obsolete by the surge in online services to understand how quickly things can change. 

Pitfall 3: Too many clients request non-competition clauses 

Being super successful in your niche is a beautiful thing—your clients know they can trust you to deliver results. But what happens when they don’t want you delivering those same results for their main rival across town? Having a client with a non-competition clause could put dozens of other businesses out of bounds in one fell swoop.

You can’t afford for your niche to be too narrow that you run out of new clients you’re permitted to work with.

Taking on the Pricing Conundrum 

If there’s one thing guaranteed to keep any business owner awake at night, it’s cash. Setting your agency pricing model is no small feat, and it’s also far from straightforward. 

As a new business, you may be tempted to price your services lower to attract clients. That could mean you need to charge more to cover your overheads and make a profit. You could be toying with charging more to value your skillset. But set the bar too high, and you could price yourself out of the game before you begin.

The key to creating a sustainable pricing model that reflects the value you bring to your clients, keeps the lights on, and doesn’t send prospects running for the hills is to work systematically and impartially through the process. 

Step 1: Decide on Your Pricing Model 

There are many different pricing models for SEO and digital marketing agencies. You need to decide what yours will be. Will you charge per hour or go for a fixed monthly or quarterly retainer? An hourly rate can initially seem more affordable for clients, but it’s also less transparent and makes budgeting much harder. You may also find it harder to make financial forecasts and plan as the hours you bill (and therefore how much you make) will likely fluctuate monthly. 

A fixed fee can initially be off-putting for some businesses, especially smaller enterprises. It may feel like a big commitment, but it should be a much more precise cost to manage each month. A monthly or quarterly retainer also gives you some security and certainty, so you can accurately forecast turnover or confidently take on a new staff member. 

Some service providers operate a pay-on-results model. This is perhaps the most difficult model to understand as a client and local SEO agency. It requires a lot of forward planning because you’ll need to have an ironclad agreement in place that clearly defines the result being targeted, what that success looks like in practice, and how long it will take. You’ll also need to clearly understand how long the desired outcome will likely take and ensure that the input costs don’t outweigh the reward. 

Step 2: Work Backwards From There 

Once you know how you will charge, you can start to think about what you will charge. 

• Do your research: You don’t want to under or overprice your services. As a first port of call, try to understand what other local SEO providers are charging in your area. Some agencies may have pricing guidelines on their site to give you a ballpark figure. Friends, family members, and acquaintances may have their own experiences working with other agencies. Ask them how much they paid. If you’re a member of a local Chamber of Commerce or attend networking events, feel free to ask local business representatives what they have or would expect to pay for local SEO support. 
• Be creative: If those avenues leave you drawing a blank, go online. Many smaller agencies and solo service providers use freelance and on-demand platforms to find work. Many of those platforms allow providers to post fixed-price jobs. Review standard costs to build up an idea of average pricing. Some sites will also show you past reviews and the number of clients worked with, helping you understand if that service provider has got it right and is winning new business. 
• Calculate your outgoings: One of the most important defining factors in your pricing model is the amount of cash you need to cover your outgoings. Create a list and tally it up. Include any business expenses such as rent, Wi-Fi, staff costs, equipment costs, and software subscriptions. Remember things like taxes and healthcare insurance. Next, think about your personal circumstances and how much money you need to make each month to live comfortably. 

What Should My Agency Be Charging for Local SEO?

Find out more

Carving out Your Place in the Market 

Local SEO is a competitive space. You must be clear on your market position to ensure you stand out. This goes beyond your niche. It isn’t just about what you do and who you serve. It’s more nuanced. It’s about storytelling and weaving a compelling narrative that helps your target market understand your value and what makes you different.  

Your Positioning Statement 

Writing a positioning statement is an excellent way to focus your thinking and clarify your mission. It is a very short piece of text (around three sentences or so), but don’t be fooled. Less can be surprisingly more difficult. 

To create yours: 

• State who you’re targeting and what their problems or opportunities are.
• Outline what your service is and the main benefit you bring to the table. 
• Identify your competitive differentiator. 

Once you have formulated this statement, you’ll be able to clearly convey what you bring to the table, how you can help your clients succeed, and how your solution differs from competitors. 

You can refer to this document anytime you need to center yourself and check whether you’re continuing on the right path. 

Generating Leads 

Lead generation is one of those jobs that you can never tick off your to-do list as an agency owner. But, as a local SEO practitioner, the good news is that you’ll already be well-qualified to market your agency’s offerings. 

It should go without saying that many of the tactics and methods you use to boost your client’s search visibility should be applied to your own business: 

• Create, optimize, and manage your Google Business Profile.
• Build a website and regularly add helpful, original, optimized content.
• Start local link building.
• Build citations.
• Be proactive about asking clients for reviews.
• Be active on social media. 
• Participate in local and industry events.
• Share valuable tips with your network.
• Seek media coverage and other forms of local exposure, such as volunteering to speak at a Chamber of Commerce event or participating in a podcast. 

Generating leads is often about sharing your expertise and offering your insight. There’s an educational aspect that not only provides useful information to your prospects but also allows you to showcase your expertise. This doesn’t just build trust in your agency; it can also build goodwill. 

Aside from the local SEO tactics you already know and are proficient in, there are many other ways to generate leads. Raising your local visibility can make a huge impact. Why not host a free seminar for local businesses within your client niche? You could also donate your time to a local non-profit in return for a testimonial or reference on their website. If you’re confident in front of the camera or happy to appear online, another great tactic is to approach local media about guest author spots.  

You could also consider creating a presence on one of the many on-demand platforms. These platforms already have a volume of traffic you can benefit from, and you can instantly connect with local businesses actively looking for local SEO solutions. This is also a great way to quickly build up a store of reviews, which you can then use as social proof to generate additional leads for your new local SEO agency business.

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter five of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

As in any industry where trust has to be placed in an expert or authority, there are sharks in SEO. While we in local search like to think of ourselves as the more approachable, more trustworthy kid brother of mainstream SEO, sadly there are always opportunities for professionals to behave less than professionally, taking advantage of businesses and eroding the good standing and expertise SEOs should have. You might have experienced this when getting your first local SEO client.

You might not have dealt with SEOs playing fast and loose with the truth, but if you’ve been in SEO for some time, and worked with a variety of clients, you’ll no doubt have come across clients who have.

The experience of dealing with SEOs who overpromise and overcharge can leave more than a bad taste in the mouths of local business owners and marketers, but that doesn’t mean you should leave them to turn tail and charge forth with an agency-free, Google-only strategy, leaving SEO in their wake.

No, when confronted with a prospect who says they’re “done with SEO,” you have an opportunity—nay, a responsibility (okay, I’ll get off my high horse now)—to rebuild their trust in SEO and deliver the kind of service they should have received in the first place.

If you’re staring at a huge gulf between yourself and your client, wondering how to broach the topic of SEO with someone who’s been burned by a former SEO agency, this guide is here to help. (Fair warning: we’ll be talking a lot about relationships and I’m going to be doing my best to prevent this from sounding like a dating advice column—wish me luck!)

Why might a business be suspicious of SEO?

In order to define the best approach to turning someone around on SEO, it’s important to know what sort of experience your prospect has had, so you can learn what their misgivings might be.

Here are a few examples of ways in which SEO might have underserved local businesses:

Spammy Sales Tactics

There are numerous ways to approach a potential SEO client from an informed and considered position, such as approaching them with a bespoke audit of their performance. However, very often marketers choose to go down the cold-as-ice route of “hitting the phones” and promising the earth to unwitting local business owners.

To these people, sales are merely a numbers game, and as long as you’re always bulk-sending emails or dialing every number in the phone book, you’re doing your job.

Every single day, business owners are bombarded with phone calls and emails from self-proclaimed “digital marketing experts” vying to help them get on the first page of Google, get social media likes and followers, build a new website, etc. The promises made by these marketers are endless, and the sheer volume of contact attempts can leave most business owners frustrated and confused about who to trust and believe when it comes to their own business’ digital marketing strategy.

Leveraging the ‘Dark Art’ of SEO

While SEO has undergone a transition over the years from an inscrutable practice to something a little more clear-cut and easy to communicate, many business owners still see it as a ‘dark art’ with machinations unknown to mere mortals.

This is, as it always was, due to the fact that Google doesn’t explicitly tell you how to rank in search. This alone adds an element of alchemy to the role of an SEO. Your job is to scan the SERPs for a glimmer of insight and test that hunch to the breaking point.

Marketers stirring this mystic brew are playing on the mythic ambiguity of SEO, spinning a yarn and peddling Fool’s Gold, making grand promises and delivering only dust.

These SEO alchemists can spot a technophobe a mile away, and they use this knowledge to their benefit. They speak in tongues about schema, UTMs, and link juice. They tell tall tales of the ancient one, RankBrain, and ask merely for monthly financial sacrifices to appease the God of Google.

Anyway, I think I’ve taken that metaphor as far as it can go! My point is this: a lot of marketers play on the perceived complexity of SEO and use that to bewilder businesses into working with them, which isn’t a good look for the SEO industry as a whole.

A Notable Lack of Expertise

On the flip side of the ‘dark art’ of SEO is the perception that anyone can do it: that anyone with a step-by-step instruction manual and a bit of time can do everything you need to rank well in local searches.

If you’re wondering where this perception can come from, just take a look at the oodles of people offering SEO services for disconcertingly cheap prices through sites like Upwork and Fiverr.

You’ll soon hear a klaxon in your head; a wake-up call alerting you to how many of the SEO tasks you perform can apparently be completed by someone suspiciously devoid of skill or experience.

This view of SEO as a cheap tactic beneath a low skill ceiling does yet more damage to the cause of SEO as a whole, but it’s not just gig economy chancers taking the shine off of it. There are plenty of marketers out there who don’t want to get their hands dirty and do the actual work required to deliver local search success beyond basic tasks like citation building and Google Business Profile setup.

I can certainly appreciate the simplicity of this approach, and if you’re being completely transparent with your clients about the minimal impact of the base-level work you’re doing, who’s to argue against it? But this, combined with those selling SEO on gig sites, leads to yet more erosion of trust in SEO as a practice performed by professionals and experts.

What might cause a client-agency relationship to go sour?

We’ve discussed some of the ways that a local business might have a negative perception of SEO, but there are plenty of real-life experiences they could have that might lead to a mistrust of SEO.

Here are a few of the ultimately avoidable ways that agencies might find themselves on the receiving end of a contract cancellation. We’ll be using these to define exactly how to approach and work with clients who have suffered from these situations before.

A Careless and Uncommitted Approach to Work

Some SEOs see local search success as a long game, in which they have to first set up an online presence that gives a local business the best chance to rank, and then go on to work on the things that really make a competitive difference: the link building, the listing tests, the on-site SEO, the review generation.

Then there are marketers who only do the first part and barely that. Those with a ‘set it and forget it’ mentality to local SEO aren’t going to provide long-term value to local business clients. Some even follow this up by offering a barebones service as a retainer, returning each month to say whatever the client wants to hear in order to keep them on the books.

The client experience of paying for very little at the start and getting even less over the course of the relationship naturally leads to misgivings about local SEOs.

Poor Communication

Good communication practices should be at the heart of the client relationship, and this, as we’ll go into a little later, should be set in place right at the start.

Some business owners and in-house marketers will want to know how things are going at your end, and that they’re really getting something for what they’re paying, whether that’s explicitly stated ROI or just the security of knowing their business is in good hands.

Sadly, too many marketers stick to their guns a little too much when it comes to not going outside their retainer or scheduled calls, and miss opportunities to answer small questions from clients or even acknowledge their requests. Worse still, some marketers go the whole hog and completely ignore communications as a rule, leading to a very negative perception of the practice on the part of the local business.

Poor Performance

This is the bitter pill to swallow. Whether it’s through an agency’s mismanagement of goals, priorities and tasks, or just a flick of the wrist from Google’s algorithms, online performance can suffer, and this can lead to clients having second thoughts.

That’s not to say that this naturally leads to the end of a relationship, though. Any good SEO will pick themselves up, dust themselves off and get to work to learn why the expected results aren’t materializing.

Even so, there are times when a downturn in fortunes can encourage clients to look a little closer at their books and make tough decisions around what to cut back on. For example, as I’m sure many readers can testify, the spread of Covid-19 and the subsequent shutdown of many local businesses led business owners to eye their budget carefully, crossing out any line not bringing in a profit.

It’s not only poor performance at a macro level that can tell a client that something’s up, though. Attention to detail is critical when it comes to management of a business’ online presence. Consider the poor SEO who receives the call telling them that their client’s Google My Business short name has been spelled wrong, or the client that gets a 404 on their website homepage. The little things add up.

The rule of thumb is that if a client has to tell their agency that something’s wrong, the agency has already failed. It’s harsh, but you can see why so many businesses are a little skeptical when approached by new SEO suitors promising the earth.

How to See Success When Working with SEO skeptics

So, with these experiences and perceptions in your potential client’s rear view mirror, but still very much front-of-mind, how do you convince them that you’re different, that you’re not like the others, that you’ll treat them right?

The specifics of your approach will differ based on your type of agency, and also the experiences your potential client has been through, but broadly, the following advice could and should apply to every stage of the relationship.

1. Listen carefully to their complaints and plan to show how you’re different

To really get through to a potential client that’s been burned by SEO in the past, you need to sit down and pay attention to what their complaints are, and plan to address each one in an honest and forthcoming way.

Showcase as many points of difference between you and the previous agency as you can. Depending on what you’ve uncovered about their issues with the previous relationship, this can be as simple as outlining your communications process or highlighting the way your teams are structured. This won’t just show that you understand their complaints; it’ll highlight that you actively combat those types of issues.

For example, your potential client might feel that they never got taken seriously by the previous agency, and had no opportunity to speak to more senior members of the team. In this case, build in scheduled times for regular monthly or quarterly meetings where a senior member of the agency is in attendance, and reassure your potential client that this is a common practice for your business.

You may need to re-educate your potential client on the benefits of local SEO. Assess their level of SEO knowledge and bring your explanations of tactics and strategies down to their level, adding just enough technical language to showcase your knowledge and expertise without sacrificing comprehension or trust.

The potential client is likely to be fairly cautious around marketing types, so while you might have done due diligence and checked out their website performance in order to make a good case for SEO, and to see where an agency might have let them down in the past, you should ditch the stylish presentation and opt instead for a simple printout or report page.

If it’s clear that they feel like SEO is a minefield of complexity, you can explain how the playing field has changed over time, to the point that Google has made SEO easier to grasp, with Google My Business, Google websites and its own Google marketing kit. This will tell them that agencies are now competing on performance rather than access to some ‘secret sauce’ of SEO.

Above all else, treat them like a person rather than a project. They’ll notice in your behaviour and mannerisms that you’re to be more trusted than those they’ve dealt with in the past.

2. Manage expectations

If you’ve managed to get through that difficult first conversation, and your potential client is willing to hear you out on your proposed strategy, congratulate yourselves on the fact that the first, and hardest, hurdle is well and truly jumped.

But the battle to win back trust is only just beginning. When going into detail on a strategy for a client who has seen little success with SEO in the past, it’s crucial that you manage expectations effectively.

Firstly, try to avoid making guarantees. With local SEO having so many moving parts that are specific to individual businesses, industries, and locations, there really isn’t a way of guaranteeing that coveted number one spot in Google. Plus, it’s entirely possible that this is the kind of approach your potential client previously fell foul of.

Be frank and honest about how much of an uphill struggle your potential client might be facing, but ensure them they’re in the best possible hands to make the climb. (This is a good time to provide testimonials and case studies, which we’ll come to more a little later.) If you think it’s going to take 16 months to get them to rank where they want to and stay there, you need to be upfront about it and, crucially, explain why it’s going to take that long and how any other approach will lead to very short-lived results.

To really hammer home how much you can be trusted with their business, consider being open about the tools you use for each tactic, go into detail about your overheads, and show how what they’re paying for will translate into results and increased revenue. This is a great opportunity to speak business-to-business and use language that they’re familiar with in order to establish common ground and a foundation of trust.

A fantastic way to lay out everything I’ve mentioned above is in a collaborative ‘relationship agreement’. This is a document that you work on, together with your potential client, that establishes clear lines of communication and outlines the basic processes and methods for working and communicating with each other. This is particularly important if you know that a breakdown in communications or a poor management process led to a poor agency experience last time.

In this agreement, you can promise to respond to calls or emails within a certain timeframe, outline who should attend meetings and reviews, and cover a basic process for handling issues and requests. It should also dictate the best way to raise issues (such as by phone or email) and who the main point of contact should be for both companies. Outlining processes like this sets expectations clearly from the start of a relationship and avoids any uncertainty later.

3. Build trust over time

You might think your work is done after securing the contract, but people who have had past issues with marketing don’t turn into the SEO faithful overnight. It can be a long road to fully reestablish trust in what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going about it, but now that you’ve started on the right foot, that should be a far smoother road to travel.

In fact, this journey can be made much easier before it’s even begun: if you’re worried that your potential client isn’t going to buy into a long, ongoing relationship, you could offer to start with several smaller project-based jobs before offering the opportunity to commit to a retainer. Show value incrementally until you’ve built up trust. This way, you start by taking the relationship at a pace they’re more comfortable with and only commit to an ongoing one when they’re ready.

(So much for this not sounding like dating advice, huh?)

When it comes to regular reporting, you must live up to the promise of honesty by showing all results every time, warts and all. Don’t hide negative performance. Instead, offer to explain why it’s occurring and suggest tactics that can reverse the trend. After all, rows and rows of green numbers start to look a little suspicious after a while, and even more so to someone who had little trust in marketers in the first place.

Finally, don’t allow your agency to become a stranger. Even when things are ticking along nicely, tactics are working, and everyone seems happy, try to go beyond the regular, mandated calls and reports. Check in with your client now and again to share an interesting piece of SEO news relevant to their industry or your strategy, or a small update on progress on a particular piece of work.

By doing this, you’re showing that you care, and that even when you’re working on something else, you have them in mind and… okay this is sounding like dating advice again…

4. Be good at what you do, and be able to prove it

This is the hardest part, and for good reason. Even with all the client relationship tips and tricks in the world to hand, ultimately it’s all for naught if your agency can’t deliver the goods. If you’re not genuinely good at what you do, you risk becoming another bad SEO experience for your client.

Local SEO is hard, and for you, that should be a good thing. That’s why you’re hired to do the hard work and really earn both your clients’ trust and their budgets. So make sure you’re always becoming a better marketer: always be testing hypotheses for yourself, keep up with the latest in local SEO, and learn from everything you do.

Remember that you’re always only as good as your last campaign or project, so if you’re truly delivering success for your local business clients, you should be able to prove it with case studies and testimonials.

If any of your clients had misgivings about SEO at the start, all the better: get them to say that in their quotes! These pieces of social proof will be integral the next time you’re faced with a potential client who’s been burned by an SEO agency.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you find this advice useful when you next need to turn around an SEO skeptic. Remember that if they’re talking to you in the first place, the battle is half-won—good luck with the rest of the fight!

On the other hand, if you’re a local business owner who wants to feel less alone in your distrust of SEO, I hope this guide has shown you that while you may have had bad experiences in the past, there are plenty of other fish in the SEO sea (okay, I’ll stop now).

This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter three of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

One of the most common questions we get about local SEO at BrightLocal is ‘how much should I charge for local SEO?’

It comes from fresh-faced SEOs dipping their toes into the local space and experienced consultants alike, and the answer is never a simple one. It’s a particularly tricky question to answer when seeking to win your first local SEO client.

While I’d love to be able to say: “It’s $500 a month – that’s what everyone charges,” and grab a neat featured snippet for my time, the fact is that the answer is the same as it is for many SEO questions:

“It depends.“

Still with me? Haven’t bolted grumpily out the door after not getting the clear-cut answer you wanted? Great, you’ve probably got what it takes to develop a considered and appealing pricing plan that will better pit you against your competitors and give you the edge when compiling pitches.

Before we go on to how to decide what to charge, though, let’s talk about when to charge…

Retainers vs Project Work vs Daily/Hourly Rate

The first question to answer is whether the work you’re pitching for is going to be on a retainer, a piece of project work, or paid for by the hour or day. I’ve defined these below, and provided thoughts on who they’re most suited to.

Retainer

A regular (usually monthly) payment provided for equal use of your time and expertise each month. You arrange with your client what this work will consist of and agree top-up fees in months where additional work is required. You can offer a retainer based on time spent per month or deliverables complete per month.

Which agencies are most suited to retainers?

• Startup agencies who are less experienced with billing and just want to get the ball rolling with clients for a general, uncomplicated fee
• More experienced agencies who have clear service products and know what they cost per month (they will likely offer project and ad hoc work alongside this)
• Agencies who are concerned with guaranteed cashflow into the businesses

Which clients are most suited to retainers?

• Businesses which have faith in SEO as ongoing service rather than a one-and-done operation (it may well be up to you to convince your potential clients of this)
• Businesses short on time and resources, who want to hand over the management of areas that require regular monitoring and attention, such and ranking and reputation performance

Project Work

One-off projects that are performed for an agreed sum. Timescale and scope of work is agreed between client and marketer at the start of the project. Once the project is over, there is no guarantee of further work.

Which agencies are most suited to project work?

• Experienced consultants who thrive on variety in their work, and want to face new challenges with new clients regularly
• Agencies that specialize in a specific area of local marketing that doesn’t require ongoing management (e.g. local search audit, technical SEO audit, training)
• Startup agencies that want to experiment with different types of clients in different industries, in order to decide where their focus should lie

Which clients are most suited to project work?

• Businesses with a very specific problem to be resolved, likely within a specified amount of time
• Businesses with the budget to pay for the most experienced consultants and agencies in a given field

Daily/Hourly Rate

As the name suggests, this is a simple daily/hourly rate billed based on the time you spend working for a client.

Which agencies are most suited to daily/hourly rates?

• Senior consultants used to a very high salary for their expertise
• Agencies that manage staff workload by assigning billable and unbillable hours.

Which businesses are most suited to daily/hourly rates?

• Businesses with a simple but important request (e.g. investigation into dropped rankings or traffic) that isn’t expected to take too long
• Businesses that prefer to manage ongoing work at a more micro level and want to know exactly what they’re paying for
• Budget-conscious businesses with more knowledge of local SEO, and have a good idea of how long activities should take

If you’re the type to make highly data-driven decisions, then the below chart may help. It’s pulled from our Local Search Industry Survey, which is definitely worth a read when you’re done here.

Here you can see that, of all the local SEO-focused agencies, consultants, and freelancers we polled, a monthly fee based on deliverables is clearly the most popular solution. And it’s easy to see why! Most businesses, particularly fledgling agencies, need regular, assured income and the retainer is the way to achieve this.

The retainer also reflects the nature of local SEO work better. If you’ve convinced your client (rightly) that improving local search performance and using local marketing tactics to reach new customers and generate revenue is an ongoing project with no clear endpoint, then a monthly retainer is a natural solution that reinforces this strategy.

How to Decide What to Charge for Local SEO

Use the Local Search Industry Survey as a Baseline

The BrightLocal research piece mentioned and linked to above really is a treasure trove of insights into how local SEO agencies say they charge their clients, so you should take the time to absorb it and try to use it as a baseline for your pricing decisions.

If you’re looking inward and want to think about how much your time’s worth, there are interesting statistics on salaries, working hours and the job market. Plus, you could even use the survey as a baseline for your service offering, as it includes a section on the services most commonly offered by local SEO agencies and freelancers.

What can you learn from the location of your client base?

If you’re planning on keeping your local SEO work, well, local, you’ll want to consider the economic geography of your chosen playing field, be that at a city or state level. There are a few factors here that can affect not only what you can reasonably charge but also what your clients can reasonably afford, regardless of how powerful your pitches might be.

As a local resident yourself, you’ll no doubt have an understanding of the local economy, what the wages are like around your area, and how profitable different types of businesses are. This needs to be factored into how you price your services, as being in a highly cosmopolitan area is likely to drive prices up, regardless of the quality of services received or offered.

When looking to understand exactly what local businesses are willing to pay, it can be tricky to learn to walk the tightrope of inquiry and snooping. But it can be done: consider holding or attending networking events and striking up conversations in local business forums online.

If you exercise tact and informality in your conversations and questions, you’ll get a feel for how seriously businesses take their online presences and how much they’re willing to invest in improving them.

Another important, but somewhat less impactful, location factor is population and business density. If your client is the only dentist in the area, they’re not going to be hurting for local visibility or clients (however they might have got blasé and dropped the ball on customer experience, meaning that reputation management services might be suitable).

At the other end of the scale, larger cities can have dentists competing for local search visibility that differs from block to block. Suddenly, the Local Pack becomes a turf war, and rankings become increasingly prized.

This is especially true when all competing businesses are firmly aware of the importance of reputation and have invested in it to the point that they’ve all plateaued at 4.8 stars on Google Reviews.

So you need to consider how valuable, and in-demand, different local SEO services are, depending on the population density and client’s sphere of influence. As we’ve just touched on, the industry you’re serving plays a big part in this, too, which brings us nicely on to…

What’s your specialism (and do you even need one)?

Perhaps less relevant for those just starting out with their agency, but very impactful when it comes to pricing, is how specialized an SEO agency or consultant is. This specialism, or focus, can be in:

1. a particular discipline (e.g. reputation, on-site SEO, GMB management)
2. a given industry (e.g. dental, medical, law, home services)
3. sometimes both!

It’s generally considered that an agency or consultant that specializes in a particular field of marketing and has been around for a while must have had enough success with prior clients to warrant this focus—it just makes logical financial sense. If you weren’t one of the best social media experts among your peers, why would you try to position yourself as such?

This naturally means that specialists tend to be more senior SEOs with a proven track record in their given field, a virtual Rolodex of satisfied clients, and a healthy stock of testimonials and case studies. If this sounds like you, then you’re likely to be able to charge more for your time.

In a similar vein, specializing in delivering services to a specific industry or niche can help elevate your status to expert, again based on the natural assumption that focus equals experience.

However, specializing in a given field doesn’t require quite the same level of expertise and experience if you’ve chosen an industry with a very healthy competitive landscape in your chosen area. You’ll need to show that you’ve performed exceptional work for relevant businesses and that you clearly understand the unique local search aspects of your chosen industry.

Good examples of industries with specialist requirements in local search are law, medical and dental, service-area businesses, restaurants, and hotels. These requirements actually lend themselves, over time, to the additional development of a marketing discipline focus.

To put it another way, if you only work with restaurants, you’ll be dealing with review generation and social media a lot, so you’ll naturally hone your skills in that area!

Specializing in a discipline or industry is a great way to improve the selling power of your services, provided you’ve considered what’s feasible and relevant to your location (as discussed above).

Those just starting out on their agency journey, however, might want to start by developing a broader set of skills for a wider range of industries in the first instance, particularly as marketing is holistic. Developing a true understanding of the gamut of local marketing tactics, from content to PPC to social media to GMB spam fighting, allows you to see how the puzzle fits together so you can later focus on one particular piece.

Don’t be disheartened if you feel a lack of specialism means you won’t be able to charge a lot for your time, though. Remember the old saying, a ‘jack of all trades’ is a ‘master of none’? Well, how many businesses do you know that can afford one ‘master’ of PPC, another ‘master’ of on-site SEO, yet another ‘master’ of reputation management, and so on? Sometimes it pays to be the jack, provided that what you charge reflects your broader, but perhaps less deep, skillset.