Got your first local client? That’s great, yes I know how it feels, excited at the same time a bit nervous? Not to worry, we are going to share some simple tips which will help you to go through all the process.
Local SEO is a great way to rank businesses in your local area. The first most important step to rank any business in Google is to open a Google My Business account. Listing of Google My Business will greatly help your client in many ways.
Read More: 7 Reasons Why You Need Google My Business
Google My Business, helps you to get your business on Google Maps and 4million people who search Google daily, can find your business and give you more visibility.
One another reason one must have GMB is that Google itself advertise your business for free when you listed your business for GMB.
So as an SEO we all know the importance of listing businesses in GMB, great that you close the deal with your first client, but it is important to remember some points when you just started.
The first thing which is the most important when you are just started is to build trust with your first client. Though they have signed an agreement with you, to earn their trust you need to follow some simple steps.
Go beyond what is expected as an SEO. Whenever we are hired as a Local SEO, a client has specific expectations and it’s important to realize what they expect from an SEO when it comes to ranking websites. We at least should have the perception to go beyond what is expected from an SEO expert. Whenever we overdeliver than their expectation, it is observed that trust can be easily gained.
Listen to your clients:
It is important to listen to your client’s needs, wants & desires. Also, it is important to listen to their complaints. once you know their expectation from you, it will be much easier to meet their expectations. It may be possible that they do not know the exact terminology we use as a local SEO, but it is important to explain the different terms and their meanings if needed to be.
For example, your client may not know what citation is? He may be totally unaware of it, but it is important to explain to them that citation is different forms of business directories like BBB, Yelp, Yellow pages and so on.
When you explain things and different terms in their language, naturally they going to trust you and have faith in what you are doing as an SEO to their business.
Anticipate their needs:
As a local SEO, you should be able to anticipate their needs to rank and grow its business in different search engines.
Being able to anticipate their needs means be able to foresee and be prepared to meet the customer needs in advance and if you can anticipate their needs, before telling you, definitely you earn trust.
Anticipating your customer needs is important for your business also, most of the times businesses are started and expand with the knowledge of the customer’s need.
Be Transparent:
It is important to be transparent with your client as to what you are doing and your progress on a weekly basis.
Communication is the key and letting them know all the major steps you are taking for their business, helps a lot. It is also important to keep your communication through any one medium like email, or Basecamp. So that you can always track back if any dis pernancies occur.
If your client wants you to make any changes let them know to email you or whatever system you are using to communicate with them.
Go above and beyond:
AS I said earlier also, it is important to know what their desires and expectations for you as a Local SEO. they might expect a 10/10 but try to deliver 11.
When you over-deliver what you expect, is a sure way to gain their trust.
Thank them for business:
Once you finish your project, it is important to thank them for giving you business, through email or any preferred way.
Also, you can ask them to leave you a review on GMB and also ask them to refer you to other people, who might need help and can be benefitted from your services.
The Very First Important Steps Before You Work With Your Client:
Have them sign an agreement
Send them an invoice for 50% of the initial quoted cost
Have the ability to take credit cards
These are the 3 most important steps before you work with your client. Signing an agreement is needed to save from any unwanted and unforeseen circumstances.
You can ask for 50% money as a deposit and make sure that you have the ability to take credit cards so that it will be easier for both parties.
To start with you need to have all the information about your client and his business. You can use a spreadsheet, like this one:
You can also use an in-depth questionnaire to get the real picture of your clients’ needs.
These questions give you all the important information, you can personally visit your client if he is busy, but also you can send or share this questionnaire.
Now when you have all this information, it’s now time to decide your SEO priorities, so let’s check out with:
- Do they have to Google My Business Account? does it have the correct information? If no, then start from this step.
- Do they have a domain name? Is it of their business name? If no, then start from here.
- Do they have a website? Is it WordPress? if no, then start from here.
- Is the website ranking? Is it their targeted keyword? No, then start here.
So from this question, you can easily decide from where you need to start the building websites or GMB for a business.
It will be much easier to work in the above manner, make it super easy to organize things while building your own business as SEO.
SeedProd is one of the best option for coming soon page. It is a free plugin, and it’s very easy to use. Until your website is ready to showcase, this plugin helps you to create curiosity among the readers. Also, Google-like it when we use Coming soon page. 
Seatprod is the most popular WordPress plugin, for coming soon and a maintenance mode. It gives your business a big head start by helping you build an audience before your site even launches.
Over 800,000 websites use Seedprod to build beautiful coming soon page and maintenance mode in WordPress.
I hope these simple tips will be useful to you to build your own as well as other’s business. Local SEO is a great way to rank local websites and businesses on Google.
Google My Business is a great tool, through which you can help people to list their business on Google, thus giving them more visibility.
As I said before, it is important to earn the trust of your clients and that with the right information we can easily rank a site in the search engines.
If you have any questions, pl let me know in the comments below and I will be happy to guide you in the right direction.