In my final year or two with my SEO agency, we got so good our retention rates went through the roof. Just before we were acquired, most of our SEO clients would consistently re-sign with us every six months. Our retention rate, in addition to our MRR, made us very attractive to our buyers. But it didn’t start out like that. In the beginning, our SEO clients almost always left after one or two contracts, even when showed impressive results. It took years of trial and error before we got our client retention rate way up. In fact, at it’s highest point, we retained close to 90% of our SEO clients. That’s pretty impressive in the world of SEO, where clients are wary of every move we make because of previous experiences with other SEO companies. Read more

The last day of September in 2003 was almost like any other day. I woke up at 5:30 a.m., showered, got dressed, and began my one hour commute to work in my 1999 Honda Accord. I got there at about 6:59 a.m., sat in my cubicle, and pretended to work for an hour or two. What I was really doing was mentally preparing myself to walk into my boss’s office and quit! But I wasn’t just quitting this job, I was quitting corporate America. I was done with hours or traffic, 12 hour days, cubicles, and bosses. My plan was to start an SEO business out of my kitchen, in my tiny two bedroom apartment in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago, IL. Read more

This post was actually tougher than you think. Finding 10 WordPress themes that would be perfect for SEO companies and agencies was fairly difficult to do. Not only were WordPress themes for SEO companies hard to find, but most of what I found was awful. So, I searched, dug, and sifted through hundreds of themes to find the best WordPress themes for SEO companies, freelancers, startups, and contractors. Read more

Last week I jumped on Skype to have a video chat with the Wizard of Moz, Rand Fishkin. But we didn’t talk typical SEO strategies, tactics, and techniques. We talked business. More specifically, we discussed how to grow your SEO business. If you’re an SEO service provider or a digital marketing agency that offers SEO services, you may want to watch this 30 minute video.  From SEO consultant to CEO and founder of the most popular SEO software on the planet, Rand has a unique and interesting perspective on how SEO companies can provide better SEO services to their customers and grow their business. Read more

Do you want to know how to scale your SEO Agency to handle tons of clients? In the last few years, we’ve been able to scale our services to 20,000 registered users – but it wasn’t all easy. In today’s article, I want to show you the top strategies we’ve used to bring in the money AND keep the ship rocking so that you can grow your own SEO business successfully. Read more

I want you to think about everything you know about search engine optimization (SEO). Every little tip and trick you’ve been taught, all that niche vocabulary you picked up, every “best practice” you’ve memorized and absorbed. Now realize that, in the time you took to read that last sentence, SEO’s goal posts have moved and your information is suddenly out of date. And – there they go again. Read more