Your customers likely are asking for SEO services. They want a one-stop-shop digital agency. They need a great website + quality traffic from the search engines to grow their business.
If you are like many web professionals, you might think you don’t have time to add a new service to your business, especially a service like SEO which is constantly changing.
And yet, without SEO services, your agency is less competitive and is leaving money on the table.
A common solution is white label SEO.
What are White Label SEO Services?
White label SEO service is a means of reselling SEO services provided by a behind-the-scenes partner. The dynamic is simple:
- Your agency sells an SEO package
- Your agency bills the client
- Your agency communicates with the client
- The white label partner delivers the work
- The client never knows about the white label partner
For many years, my agency offered white labeled SEO services for other agencies. We specialize in SEO while others specialize in web design and development. It made sense to partner. Those partnerships were structured via a white label or reseller dynamic. We discovered advantages and disadvantages along the way.
White label SEO services will:
- Increase the capacity of your agency without hiring
- Allow you to offer a service in an area where you don’t have a depth of expertise
There are unforeseen disadvantages to consider:
- Your margins will be limited. White label SEO partners charge industry rates for their services. You’ll want to mark these up to account for a sales commission and the value your team brings to the table in the communication role. Either, your margins will be slight to stay within reasonable industry standards or your pricing will be high.
- Your account managers will lack the depth of expertise needed to communicate effectively with clients about SEO. Ongoing SEO services require ongoing communication. Ideally, that’s in the form of a monthly call with the client. Along the way, you’ll review the monthly report, talk about strategic direction and answer questions. We found these conversations didn’t go well as clients would ask questions about a task that was completed and the account manager would lack a response that left the client confident in the manager’s SEO knowledge.
- Your partner may or may not deliver. Unfortunately in the SEO industry, services are delivered with mixed results. There are great partners and agencies out there. And then there are those who charge a monthly retainer and deliver very little. You might find your white label partner comes out of the gate strong with communication and delivery, and then this wanes over time.
All too often, the final result of white label SEO services is that a client doesn’t see high-value results, and your agency isn’t really making money. You are at a stalemate. Your customers still need to get found on Google. Your agency is leaving money on the table by not effectively offering SEO services. Here’s where guided SEO comes in.
What is Guided SEO?
Our guided approach to SEO was born out of our industry experience with white label SEO services. After trying (and trying again) to get the white label dynamic to work, we thought there must be another way. We developed guided SEO in response to where white labeled services were failing.
Guided SEO gives you a proven process without requiring you to become an SEO expert. It offers a series of lessons — each with specific homework assignments — so that you can effectively deliver SEO services. It’s both practical and tactical.
Guided SEO includes the tools you need (keyword research, rank tracking, and monthly report). And the best part of guided SEO is the coaching — you meet with your SEO coach each month to review your client accounts, talk through client-specific issues, and more.
Guided SEO also includes the business resources you need to launch an SEO services offering. We teach you how to package, price, and sell services. We empower you with sample sales proposals, email templates, and much more.
Guided SEO Makes You the Quarterback
Guided SEO puts you (or somebody on your team) in the driver seat of your SEO offering. You’ll follow our SEO Checklist to deliver high-value SEO services. The SEO Checklist is step-by-step and easy to follow so a junior team member can deliver this work with consistency and ease.
The quarterback role doesn’t require you to deliver every component of your client’s SEO strategy. It makes you the driver of what needs to be done and when. The how depends on your team.
Agencies deliver on the tactical steps of SEO in a variety of ways:
- Your team is the engine. If you have a larger staff or a team member who would like to dedicate themselves to SEO, you can deliver all of the SEO services in-house. Easy enough.
- You outsource specific SEO tasks. If you have a capacity constraint, you can outsource specific pieces of an SEO strategy to contractors. At our agency, we have one contractor who focuses on content and on-site optimization, for example. A great place to find contractors is Upwork. You can also outsource to industry-specific specialists who offer a productized service such as content creation or citation building. Crowd Content is a great source for blog posts and Loganix is fantastic at building citations.
Take the First Step
The first step in offering high-value SEO services is business planning. Spend 1 hour taking our free Getting Started with SEO Services course to learn how to package, price, and sell.
Then, sign up for a subscription to Pathfinder SEO. You can practice the delivery of services on your own website to see just how easy it is.
