| Oct 17, 2018 | | 14 min read

How to Sell SEO with the Snapshot Report

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Successfully selling SEO solutions to businesses starts with understanding your prospect's current online performance. By first auditing their SEO and assessing their needs, you'll have a place to start the sales conversation and ultimately, be better equipped to close that deal with the perfect solution. If you take a needs-based approach to your sales, rather than a product-pushing approach, businesses are much more likely to buy.

This article will dive into Vendasta's Snapshot Report and how you can use the automated insights to sell SEO solutions to new and existing clients—better than ever before.

Explore SEO products and services to resell in the Vendasta Marketplace!

SEO and the Snapshot Report

The first step in making the sale is helping your prospects understand the value of SEO. How do you do that? The right education coupled with the Snapshot Report.

Why do local businesses need SEO?

Business owners must first understand that search engines have completely revolutionized the modern buying process and that consumers are searching for their business services online. Consumers are using search engines to assess their options and to qualify the goods and services they’re interested in without ever needing to set foot in a brick and mortar store. In fact, a recent study revealed that 81% of consumers will perform an online search before making a purchase decision.

Let’s set the record straight: every business needs to invest in SEO!

SEO is the work that goes into improving a website’s ranking in organic (unpaid) search results on search engines like Google and Bing. The goal with SEO is to rank on page one for the right keyword search phrases that are relevant to the business.

A rockstar SEO strategy involves keyword research, link building, reputation management, content creation, and more. However, most business owners don’t have the time, tools, or expertise needed to invest in an effective SEO strategy on their own. They need your help! With a strong SEO strategy, you can help your clients get found online, increase engagement, increase their organic website traffic, and produce real customer conversions.

What is the Snapshot Report?

The Snapshot Report is an automated needs assessment report that scans the web for a business’s digital marketing, reporting how they stack up online in six key marketing categories. The insights provide a place to start the conversation with business owners by highlighting gaps in their marketing and proposing the optimal solutions to address their needs. You can send off Snapshot Reports to prospects and clients as one-off emails or use Vendasta’s Marketing Automation and pre-built email campaigns to send a prescriptive campaign to numerous prospects.

Analyzing the Snapshot Report for SEO

The SEO section of the Snapshot Report shows your prospects and clients how their SEO stacks up compared to their competitors. It assesses SEO in two areas:

  • Organic Keyword Performance - to compare a prospect’s keyword performance against their top competitors.
  • Organic Keyword Ranking - to assess the top keywords that consumers are using to search for your prospect’s products or services.

Let’s break these sections down further:

Organic Keyword Performance

When you create a Snapshot Report for your prospects and clients, the platform will automatically scan their business website for the top keywords in our database as determined by Google. Based on these keywords, the report generates a list of top competitors (also determined by Google) to compare:

Keyword overlap: How similar your prospects are to their competitors, based on shared SEO keywords.

Why is this important? The more keywords that your prospects share with competitors, the more likely they’ll be fighting to rank on the same search queries.

Number of keywords: The number of keywords for which your prospects and their competitors will appear in the top 50 search results on Google.

Why is this important? This is the number of different routes that a potential customer can take using search queries to get to the products and services that are on your prospect’s website. Your prospect should aim to have as many different search routes as possible in order to maximize their exposure and opportunities to gain clicks. If competitors with a high level of keyword overlap are ranking on more keywords than your prospect and seeing a higher volume of clicks, it’s possible that your prospect is not ranking on search queries that are relevant to their business and they’re losing out on potential traffic as a result.

Monthly clicks: The estimated number of clicks your prospects and their competitors get from all of their organic keywords within a month.

Why is this important? When people search for products and services on Google, they're usually looking to buy. So when people are searching for the products and services that your prospect offers, they’ll want to see as many clicks as possible.

If the number of monthly clicks are low compared to the number of searches, you and your prospect need to figure out why. People could be visiting your client’s website via other channels (social media, advertising, print, etc.), but if they’re visiting competitor websites, it’s worth investigating further. It could be that they’re not ranked high enough on relevant keywords, in which case an SEO campaign that boosts their ranking is definitely in order. Or, perhaps their business is perceived as untrustworthy due to a lack of online reviews. In that case, a review request campaign would be a more suitable solution.

It's hard to pinpoint the exact motivations for every action within a consumer’s search journey, but this data can help you make some educated guesses. For example, does the report reveal a competitor with lots of keyword overlap and high clicks that eclipse the number of low clicks for your prospect? They might be losing business to their competition.

Monthly value of clicks: The estimated value your prospects and their competitors are getting from all of their organic keywords.

Why is this important? If a business wants to see results and they aren’t currently running any PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns, this section gives them an idea of how much a click would cost them on their relevant keywords. Remember that SEO campaigns take time. If immediate traffic is needed (such as for a promotion or to get customers in the door in time for the holiday season), focusing on a PPC campaign as part of their SEO strategy might be the best way to start.

Organic Keyword Ranking

The Organic Keyword Ranking section in the Snapshot Report uncovers organic keywords that your prospects are currently ranking for. These are some of the top keywords that consumers are using to search for your prospect’s products or services on Google.

These insights are valuable because they give you an idea of:

  • How people search for their business online
  • The types of keywords they should be targeting in PPC campaigns
  • The type of organic content your prospects need on their site to gain relevancy.

Under this section of the report, you’ll see the top five keywords that the prospect is ranking for within their business category. Each keyword will highlight:

Competitiveness: How difficult it is to appear in the top Google Search results.

Why is this important? The more competitive the keyword, the more businesses you’ll see targeting those exact keywords in SEO campaigns and the more effort will be needed to improve SEO. This is because those keywords are commonly used by consumers who are searching for your prospect’s business services and search engines deem them to be extremely relevant to their business category.

Rank: The position of your prospect’s website in Google Search.

Why is this important? These are the approximate rankings for some of the keywords related to their business category. You can leverage this information to ask if the prospect is happy with their current rankings on the keywords provided. If they’re happy, great! If not, you can start an SEO campaign for them right away. This is a good opportunity to spark a conversation around the specific keywords they may want to target with organic or PPC campaigns.

Your prospects need to understand that if their rank on high value, relevant keywords is low, competitors could be taking the lion’s share of clicks. Conduct an SEO audit and use keyword analysis tools like Ahrefs and Keyword Finder to find where those other opportunities might be.

Local Searches: The estimated number of searches per month in the prospect's country.

Why is this important? This is relevant if your prospect are competing in a local landscape. When the number of local searches is high, it means that more people in your prospect’s country are finding and clicking through to their site when searching with the keywords surfaced in the report. It’s an indication that they should be targeting those keywords–especially if their rank on those popular keywords is low.

Global Searches: The estimated number of searches per month across Google.

Why is this important? This is relevant if your prospects are managing a multinational enterprise.  If the number of global searches is high, it means that many people all over the world are clicking on their site when using the search terms surfaced in the report. Once again, it’s an indication that they should be targeting those keywords, especially if their rank on those popular keywords is low.

Crafting the Perfect SEO Sales Pitch

Using the data uncovered in your Snapshot Report assessment, you can start to identify SEO tactics and solutions for your clients in Marketplace, or within your own portfolio of services.

Here's how to successfully sell SEO solutions to your business clients.

1. Have your prospect consider their own buying journey

Start by making your prospect think about the buyer’s journey and the importance of being found on search engines like Google and Yahoo! Try asking your prospect to consider the steps they would take in their buying journey. Chances are, they would do a search on their phone's browser to research local places.

"What steps would you take if you wanted to find a good, local, and inexpensive restaurant for dinner tonight?"

Here is a visual representation of the modern customer journey:

modern consumer journey

2. Have your prospect consider their business' place within that journey

With the buyer's journey visualized, you’ll want your prospect to begin thinking about their place within that journey. Where can their business fit into that buying decision to catch more of that traffic? And what parts of that journey can they effect?

“As a business owner, would it be valuable for your business to show up in searches when people use keywords related to the products and services you offer? People are much more likely to click on your site since they are actively searching and ready to make a purchase. Even better when your site is trusted by consumers at the top of relevant search results. How much is it worth to get that one click from a qualified audience?”

When crafting an SEO pitch for a specific business, you’ll also need to take these key details into consideration:  

  • Who is the business trying to sell to? Different audiences have different search habits. Do they go on social media? Do they go on search? It’s important to craft a strategy that is targeted towards your target audience.
  • Who are their competitors? Who can we immediately identify as the top competitors to beat? What keywords are they ranking highly on or targeting in their own campaigns?
  • What is their market size?A divorce lawyer in New York needs to capture the attention of a much larger audience compared to a small town gift shop owner. Evaluate your client’s market to set realistic benchmarks and goals for the campaign.
  • How many products and services do they offer? This will help you gauge the volume of keywords that the business should focus on.
  • What is their budget? Set a budget based on what your clients want to spend and what they can afford.

3. Show them the SEO section of the Snapshot Report

Review the information in the Snapshot Report to help them gain an understanding of their current SEO. Use the data in the "Organic Keyword Performance" section of the report to create urgency for your prospect to get started with a PPC campaign. If their competitors are ranking higher on searches when consumers are ready to buy, they'll steal that business!

"Based on these metrics, your competition may be a step ahead and stealing potential business right out from under you. Do you think it’s valuable for your site to appear at the top of search when consumers are looking for your business services?"  

4. Conduct a live demo

Open up a search engine like Google and try finding your prospect’s business based on the keywords that are most relevant to their product offerings. When searching for their products and services, is their website showing up on the first page of search? Because if not, they’re losing money every day that their site is not optimized for search.

Pro tip: As the salesperson, you should do this BEFORE you meet with the prospect/client, so you’re not surprised by the results. You want to illustrate that they could be ranking higher on relevant keywords. And if needed, you can perform a more comprehensive SEO audit. Regardless, the SEO section of the Snapshot Report is very useful for starting the conversation and highlighting where potential lead opportunities are.

5. Use a keyword analysis tool to provide further insights

If a prospect wants to know how they rank for keywords other than the ones we report, you will need a specialized tool. Knowing which keywords to run a campaign for is typically the last hurdle in the sales process.

A good way to get started with your audit is to use MarketGoo, which leverages artificial intelligence to scan a website and generate a step-by-step SEO plan to help your clients increase their website traffic and rankings.

Other Helpful Local SEO Tools Include:

  • Ahrefs -  a toolset for SEO & marketing that covers backlink checking, competitor analysis, keyword research and more.
  • Keyword Finder - a keyword research and analysis tool that will help you identify keywords to target.

Bonus: Design your elevator pitch

Now that you understand the key components in selling SEO, you can begin to craft a killer elevator pitch. Here’s a sample pitch you could use:

“People conduct more than 3.5 billion searches every day on Google. With a custom Search Engine Optimization strategy, we can ensure that those most valuable consumers can see your business where it counts. SEO is about getting your website found on search engines like Google. Consumers see the top search results as the most trustworthy, which is why establishing good search rankings is absolutely critical. In fact, studies show that the first five search results get nearly 70% of all clicks, and 75% of consumers will never click past the first page of search. Furthermore, a whopping 88% of local, mobile searches result in a store visit within 24 hours! If you aren’t showing up at the top, you’re losing the battle. We can help you get found online with an SEO strategy.”

Final Considerations

Set the right expectations with business owners. There is no single, ‘instant fix’ SEO solution–it’s the sum of many small tasks that work together to elevate the ranking and visibility of a website over time. Some of these other components include: mobile-friendly and Google-fast websites, providing web content that is relevant to customers, ensuring your Google My Business page is claimed and verified, and creating and promoting a keyword focussed blog on your site.

Incorporate multiple solutions to build a solid foundation for good SEO. Online listings, reviews, digital ads and social activity all contribute to search engine rankings for local search. The more places your clients are listed online, the more visible they become. The more positive reviews they receive for their business, the more trusted they become. The more targeted ad campaigns they run, the more paid traffic they can generate. The more social content they share, the more engagement they will experience. All of these factors go a long way to influence how search engines perceive your clients' online relevance, and ignoring certain elements can have a detrimental impact on their overall SEO.

Plan to measure the success of your SEO campaign. Just like with any other marketing campaign, business owners want to be shown how success is measured and what they received in return for their investment.

Ways to measure the success of your SEO strategy include:

  • Tracking a site’s increase in rankings over time
  • Measuring increases in organic search traffic
  • Measuring increases in conversions

SEO tools like Ahrefs can help you track search rankings, while free tools like Google Analytics can be used to track web traffic and engagement.

By showing the Snapshot Report metrics to your prospects and connecting this data back to your available SEO solutions, you can deliver a compelling sales pitch that proves your ability to help drive more brand awareness and conversions for any business!

Now go out and make some sales!

Login or sign up for a free account to test out the Snapshot Report yourself, or check out the Marketplace for our available digital advertising solutions!

About the Author

Aristo Lam is a former Product Marketing Manager who thrives on shaping the marketing and communication strategy. When he's not cooking up the latest go-to-market strategy, you can find him cooking up some fancy dishes at home.

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