How to Start an SEO Business?

I would like to start a small SEO service that provides services such as local, national, social, submissions, guest posts and backlink building packages. To start I will be using a reseller account and marking up the service cost. However, I would eventually like to do all of the work myself and keep all of my hard earned business.

Can anyone provide information on the best way to get started doing your own SEO for clients?

Suggestions as what tools or where to get quality backlinks - best reseller services - or anything else that may be helpful in my venture. I look forward to hearing from some of the experts in this field.

Have you ever gotten a page to rank number one in Google for a competitive term?

And, are you absolutely confident you can get a new page on a new website to rank number one for a competitive term? And are you absolutely confident that you know exactly what you would need to do to accomplish that?

And are you absolutely confident you can take an existing page on a website and modify it and get it to rank number one for a competitive term? And are you absolutely confident that you know exactly what you would need to do to accomplish that?

And do you know how to tell the difference between a good keyword and a bad keyword?

If you answered no to any of those questions or if you are unsure of your answer, then don't start an SEO business. Period. You don't know what you are doing.

That would be the same as just saying "I think I'll be an electrician" when you don't know how electricity works. You are probably going to electrocute yourself or someone else or burn someone's house down because you don't know what you are doing.

If you aren't supremely confident in your SEO skills, but you still want to enter the field somehow, then go ahead and offer link building services of some kind. But sell those services as link building services. Don't sell them as SEO services. The difference is, if you are selling links, then links are all you need to deliver. If you are selling SEO, then rankings are what you need to deliver. And it is a lot, lot harder to deliver rankings in most cases than it is to just deliver links.

What you will probably discover if you try to sell link building services is that the public wants to buy the wrong link building services. If you really know what a good link looks like and what a good link building service looks like, you will discover that it takes immense effort to educate a website owner about what a good link really is and how much that good link is really worth. The vast majority of website owners are so misinformed about this topic that they think they need "x", and they want to buy "x", but what they really need is "Y" and they don't want to buy "Y" because it costs too much because of the effort involved and because they are so misinformed that they don't believe you when you tell them that what they really need is "Y".

Unless you are dealing with real business owners of real businesses, you will probably find that most website owners are dirt cheap when it comes to SEO and often times flat out stupid. You will get people who think that if they buy links from you and point them at their crappy good-for-nothing affiliate site which is part of some ridiculously scammy affiliate program, that they are going to be rolling in the money they make from it. And you can't fix stupid. Sell those idiots links. Don't sell them rankings.

Don't do this. It's a bad idea. From your post, it is pretty clear to me that you are an amateur SEO at best.

Do you realize that in today's search engine space, if you do not know what you are doing you can literally ruin a company's entire business?

SEO is one of the only professions I have ever seen where people think they can just wake up one day and throw their hat in the ring. You never hear anyone say, "You know what? I think tomorrow I will open up a law firm."

If you want to resell, then move forward with that. As othere said, you don't know much so you shouldn't be taking SEO into your own hands. Make sure you are using a solid provider though. I outsource safe "black hat" and it works fine and gives my clients a huge boost.

For instance I have a VA, that will construct blogs and Web 2.0 properties (usually expired with existing link profiles) with contact page and address specific to the area of the business, then add content while linking out to authority sites, and after a couple months, add contextual links to the blogs and 2.0s.

Works like a charm and is as white hat as black hat gets.

This is just one example of a process that can be outsourced.

Understand to really be an SEO you have to establish assets on the web. Whether they are relationships you've built with other webmasters or properties you create yourself, it's all about those assets.

WarriorPK said:

Website
The first thing you will need is a website for your new SEO business. I recommend using GoDaddy for your domain name and Bluehost to host your website.

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I wouldn't use GoDaddy. Use NameCheap. You get one year of privacy free and can avoid the constant solicitations.

As for Bluehost, you would have to be crazy to host anything you care about with them. They are another awful company owned by EIG.

kipjmejia said:

The first thing you will need is a website for your new local SEO business. If you don't already know how to build a website then check out my guide here, which shows you how to build a brand new WordPress website in less than 10 minutes! I recommend using GoDaddy for your domain name and Bluehost to host your website.

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From advice of you guys here I feel difficult in starting a new SEO business, I will try to update my knowledge of SEO before joining this field for work.

I can agree to use godaddy for domain but for hosting then bluehost will not be my choice, I left bluehost 2 year ago due to slow loading and more down times.

Emilio, I sincerely applaud you for taking the advice to heart. Not to
devalue or demote the importance of all the other aspects of running
a business, but SEO is sort of the heartbeat of any online business.

Trying to run an SEO company without proper knowledge and know
how is like becoming a brain surgeon with absolutely no training or
experience. One slip, or mix up, could seriously cause some major
damage to someone's online business.

Many people would have come in here, asked for opinions of others,
and simply shrugged it off with a "Well I can do it and I don't care
what you say" type of attitude.

Why ask for opinions and suggestions, then? You know.

You asked a question, you got some very valuable input and, from
the sounds of it, you are really taking it to heart and have actually
HEARD what others have said.

For that, I applaud and commend you. Kudos to you. As well as all
of those who gave their honest opinions.

It really is folks like you (and those who posted their honest opinions)
that makes me so glad to be a member of this great community.