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For such a youthful sector, the size of the SEO industry is truly impressive. By 2020, it is estimated that US businesses will spend $80 billion per year on SEO services – a truly staggering rate of growth for an industry that didn’t exist 25 years ago.
If you are an SEO specialist, that figure is likely to delight you – and also come as no surprise. As more and more businesses embrace the power of their online presence, SEO has moved from something that businesses like to have and into the realms of a necessity. If you have chosen to embrace this change in attitudes and open your own SEO agency, there’s no doubt you have chosen a thriving, growing sector on which to base your entrepreneurial intentions.
However, there’s also no denying that SEO is a crowded sector. As a result, SEO agency owners have to be constantly seeking new ways of expanding their business offering and capturing a slice of this huge market for themselves. To assist you in this effort, we’ve put together a number of ideas that you may want to consider if you’re seeking a way to take your SEO agency to the next level…
Quantity expansion
If you are looking to expand any kind of business, the most common form of expansion is to do exactly what you have been doing… but to do more of it. SEO agencies are much the same, and your first option when contemplating expansion would be to see how you can increase the volume of work that you process on a regular basis.
There are various ways to do this, from formulating a new marketing strategy to directly pitching to business-to-business clients. Essentially, you would go about all your usual ways of finding clients for your agency, but you do more of it.
However, it is important to note that taking on more business is often easier said than done. One of the major issues that SEO agencies face is resources – or, more specifically, a lack thereof. A drive to complete a higher volume of work would, in almost every scenario, require you to either hire employees or expand the hours of your existing workforce. If you do have the capacity to increase your resources, then it’s the most straightforward route to expansion, and well worth considering.
Work with a Reseller
Basic expansion may be the simplest option on paper, but in practice, it can be extremely challenging. Increasing your worker resources is incredibly expensive, as well as placing huge demands on your time in terms of dealing with bureaucracy, training, and recruitment. If your agency is not yet equipped to meet the demands of internal recruitment, then you may be pleased to learn there is a second option for basic expansion: working with an SEO reseller.
By working with a white label SEO reseller, you will be contracting be a third-party to perform a variety of SEO services on your behalf. This arrangement allows you to increase the number of clients you have and the volume of campaigns you work on, but without having to directly recruit new staff to your business. The agency you outsource the work to are responsible for resources; you’re responsible for finding the customers. The arrangement is beneficial to both parties, and can function as both a short-term stop-gap until you raise the funds to hire additional resources for yourself, or as a genuine long-term plan for your business’ future.
Of course, you’ll need to ensure you work with a reputable agency who produce quality work that enhances your brand, but managed right, working with a reseller is a great method of expansion – without enhanced labor costs.
Sidewards expansion
This kind of expansion is riskier than the propositions we have discussed thus far, but done well, it can be very beneficial to your business’ future. A sideways expansion is an extension of your business’ operations beyond the realm of SEO.
There are countless services that you can offer in addition to SEO, as you expand on your core product to offer services that your existing clients also need. Marketing, advertising, content production, and website design are natural accompaniments to an SEO service, and are well worth considering if you wish to break new ground. Essentially, think of the services that your existing SEO clients have to hire from other companies, then seek to expand to provide these services yourself – making your agency more of a “one stop shop” as a result.
The one downside of this option is that it tends to involve a huge amount of time and financial investment – especially if you have little prior experience in these SEO-adjacent fields. For most agencies, this kind of move is only suitable if your workforce has transferable skills in the new areas, or you have a substantial budget available for new staff recruitment.
Monetize your knowledge by teaching
SEO is inherently accessible; there are few formal qualifications in the subject, and many of the biggest names in SEO are primarily self-taught. However, this also means that anyone can claim to be an SEO expert – and plenty do, despite knowing next-to-nothing about the subject. Google for advice on any basic SEO topic and you’ll soon see how poor the quality of information can be, with many self-proclaimed SEO gurus insisting on techniques that are horribly out-of-date, unusable, or certain to draw a Google penalty.
If you have opened – and kept open – an SEO agency, then it is clear that you have developed a great wealth of knowledge regarding SEO practices. You’re the real deal, and you have a business record to justify your claim to expertise. This level of authority is inherently valuable, and your services to teach SEO to others will undoubtedly be popular.
Of course, on first inspection, this idea seems outright bizarre – why would you want to teach people not to need your agency’s services? However, choosing to expand into SEO education doesn’t need to cost your business its customers. The key to this kind of expansion is to provide some information to those who wish to learn SEO for themselves. You would focus on providing background information that is useful, but not overly specific or specialist – so there’s no risk of putting your agency’s services out of business.
A particular benefit of this form of expansion is that you can reach customers who fall outside of your agency’s usual target demographic; for example, a hobby blogger is highly unlikely to be able to hire your full SEO services – but may be willing to purchase an ebook, or watch a monetized YouTube video, for insights.
In conclusion
To truly take advantage of the ever-growing size of the SEO industry, expansion is crucial. By exploring one of the ideas above, you should be able to increase both your agency’s scope – and its profitability, too.