How to Start an SEO Business in India – a Full Guide

Introduction to start an SEO business

If you are looking to set up an online business in India, a popular industry at the moment is “Search Engine Optimization. An SEO company in India is quite easy to set up even for an inexperienced individual, and it’s reasonably simple to learn the ropes. Read on below to get an in-depth guide on what is SEO and how you can help your business grow with the right methods.

An SEO start-up does not require huge investments like organizational costs. You can easily start SEO from your home initially as an independent SEO service provider and develop it into an agency in the future. SEO is important for any business to advertise their products on the first page of a search engine and this helps in marketing their products better.

Ideas to start SEO business in India

SEO is an ever-growing business that will always generate employment opportunities as long as the internet age thrives. New businesses are always looking for SEO services in India to help put their services on a global map. Every day almost 90 percent of the individuals spend time browsing Google, looking for different kinds of information, websites, services. The future scope of SEO business is highly profitable. In this article, we will let you know the requirements of the profitable SEO business and how to start an SEO business.

Requirements of profitable SEO business

1. a) Thorough knowledge of SEO optimization skills

Before you plan to start an SEO business, it’s advisable to have certified training on SEO or you can even work for SEO companies for at least 1 to 2 years to acquire the expert-level knowledge. You need to have a thorough understanding of:

• Keyword analysis
• Writing quality contents with the strategic insertion of keywords
• Complete knowledge of Google Analytics
• Writing SEO friendly meta tags and meta descriptions
• Reviewing and solving website errors
• Expertise on Social media, blogs and working with hyperlinks
• How to build user interaction
• HTML programming skills 

1. b) Build an interesting website

A creative and professional website is a must to build trust among clients. Build a strong portfolio on your website listing out your SEO certifications, work experience, training experience, your area of expertise, and the services you will be providing. Research the pricing you are going to offer for your services and mention them accordingly on the website.

1. c) Build a Monitoring system

Create an analysis, monitoring, and reporting feature on your website, to set some specifications before offering your services to the client. You can seek the help of any developer to integrate this feature on your site.

How to start an SEO business

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We made this guide – to provide you with the step-by-step guide on starting and running your SEO business.

1. Choose your niche

Consider the following, when choosing a niche for your SEO startup.

• Go with an industry you’re familiar with. The more you’re well-versed with the industry, the easier it will be to connect with prospects.
• Start with your social circles. Leverage the power of referrals.
• Do market research. This makes it easier to do prospecting and qualify leads later on.

2. Determine your business structure

You need to decide on your business structure before you even come up with a name for your agency. Your decision will depend on which provides the best structure when filing your taxes to the IRS (Indian Revenue Service). Do you want to operate as a sole proprietorship or as an LLC?

As a Single Proprietorship

Registering your SEO agency as a sole proprietorship means you’ll be running your business with a single owner. But it may come with a few risks.

As a single proprietorship, the agency may be liable for damages in case problems arise. Single proprietorship also doesn’t require filing business taxes separate from personal taxes. This makes it hard to determine the value of the business when it’s tied to personal assets. 

As a Limited Liability Company (LLC)

As opposed to a single proprietorship, registering as an LLC means you can have more than one owner to run the business. Operating as a Limited Liability Company (LLC) poses fewer risks for startup agencies—one of these is having business taxes separate from personal assets. By using this structure, your agency also provides you with legal protection.

With limited liability, you can protect your assets from business debts and obligations. An LLC is also more favorable if you’re planning to reach out to suppliers or lenders.

3. Set up your payment methods

Most agencies rely on the easy way to receive payment – PayPal.

Other payment methods are:

• Automated Clearing House (ACH) Transfers: Clients send an electronic money transfer from their bank account to a US-based business bank account. This can either be credit or debit transactions.
• Credit Card Payment: One of the most common payment methods practiced by businesses globally. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express are often the common card networks used. Many businesses prefer this method because clients only need to enter their credentials over a secure network to complete their transactions.
• Digital Wallets: PayPal falls into this category. Alipay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay are other similar services.

When deciding the payment method of SEO, think of what works best for your clients. Keep the experience smooth by ensuring each transaction is secure.

4. Your company’s brand matters

Your brand is one of the things you need to develop – not just at the start, but also as you grow your agency. Building your company’s brand is all about identifying what makes your clients choose you from other SEO companies. It’s what differentiates you from the rest.

Choose your company’s name and logo

Your company name and logo are the most recognizable aspect of your brand. Both go into all of your assets – website, business cards, online ads, lead magnets, and other digital resources. When choosing your company’s name and logo, think of the following:

• Value proposition
• Audience
• Personality

5. Build your website

A website can make the difference between getting prospects and losing them to the competition. At this point, it doesn’t matter if the website isn’t as stunning as most established digital marketing businesses. What matters is you have one. For now, you’ll need:

• Domain and hosting: Choose a domain name that resonates with your company’s brand and have it hosted on a web hosting site. GoDaddy, Blue name, and WPEngine are some of the domains and hosting sites that are recommended.
• Platform: Start with WordPress. It’s reliable, easy to use, and, best of all, free.
• Design: Not a designer? That’s fine. You’ll find tons of web design templates that take away the heavy lifting when it comes to design building. But, if you have the budget, you can outsource website design (or have our team build it for you).

6. Work on your SEO methodology

SEO companies are doing the same thing. While on-page optimization, link building, and content marketing are the common strategies for ranking websites, each SEO agency has a different approach for their clients.

Use SEO tools

Every SEO starts with the basic knowledge of Google Search Console or Google Analytics. Many SEO tools and marketing tools for small businesses are designed to accomplish other tasks, such as keyword research, link building prospecting, and competitor analysis. You’ll find a combination of free and paid tools online—we recommend starting with the free ones, so you can get a feel of how the tool works first. Be sure to check out the following tools:

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Google Data Studio
• Ahrefs
• SEMRush
• Moz
• ScreamingFrog

7. Market your SEO agency

Marketing SEO services and your agency is about positioning yourself as the provider of choice for businesses looking to increase their digital presence. You can use the following methods to market and promote your SEO business: 

SEO

SEO is the most cost-effective way of building your online presence, but only if you do it right. The key is to optimize your website as you do with clients.

Social Media

If you don’t have a social media page, it’s time to create one. Businesses spend six hours on social media per week, with Facebook being the most popular platform they use to stay active. Using social media for your inbound efforts requires more than publishing posts on Facebook, though. You need to:

• Customize your message according to your audience and the platform.
• Be a member of social media groups to get insights on what your audience is talking about. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit groups are great places to learn about updates and topics that your audience is interested in.
• Be human. Don’t be a robot and post just for the sake of engagement. Instagram and Twitter are great platforms to show the human side of your agency.

Content Marketing

Content will always be king. But, it’s not simply about publishing a blog post and hoping prospects will stumble upon it. A solid content marketing strategy is all about presenting the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Optimize your website content around the intent of your buyer personas. Dive into Google Search Console and look at the queries your website is getting. Remember that your content should always be evolving. Update and optimize to align the content with the interests of your audience.

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Paid Ads

Using paid ads is ideal for a highly targeted audience. Paid ads can supplement your SEO efforts, as this puts your agency in front of people who have the highest intent of working with an SEO company. You can go about this in two ways:

• Google Ads: This involves text, image, and video ads that appear on Google Display Network or Search Marketing Platforms.
• Remarketing Ads: Ideal for users who have already visited your site, remarketing ads help reinforce your value proposition to your audience.

With paid ads, you can stay on top of your prospects’ minds and be there when they’re ready to hire an SEO expert.

8. Sell SEO Services

Here are the tips to sell SEO to businesses and provide your agency with a repeatable process and tactics that lead to more revenue.

• Establish Your SEO pricing structure
• Find your clients
• Qualify your leads
• Pitch to your SEO prospects
• Close your SEO prospects
• Retain your clients

How to gain Clients for an SEO business

Here are the ways to gain clients for SEO business:

a) Free give away resources

As an independent startup, you can start with a free giveaway of resources to attract web traffic. Prepare a quality report of one or two pages about yourself, your services, and pricing and set it for free download. Now whoever downloads the report and shares it gets a valuable resource from you with your company name mentioned and in return, you draw CTR traffic to your website.

b) Partnerships

Search for agencies that have partnerships in areas other than SEO so that when clients ask for SEO services to them, they can refer them to your website and in return get 10% as the referral fee from your charged amount from the client. This way from renowned agencies you can gain many clients but make sure services are up to the mark so that you can sustain the partnership with them.

c) User interaction

Make a point to use the live chat feature on your website to speak to the visitors. You can also address inquiries in LinkedIn and Quora for better user interaction. Answer all of their inquiries about SEO, help them but make a point no to do excess promotion of your services.

Final words of starting an SEO business

SEO business is great to start with if you follow the above-mentioned strategies. For better results, you can even hire freelance web designers to provide designing services along with SEO to yield more profits.

To be the best SEO company in India, you have to first lower your prices below competitive market rates. When your prices are low, you begin to generate clients quicker as opposed to premium pricing.

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