How To Put Together an SEO Proposal

In my line of work I have to generate 2 – 3 new Search engine optimization proposals and quotes every single week. All these take time to create. Luckily for me I’ve it down to a fine art at this stage.

In general the bigger the potential client is, the more work needs to be put into your pitch. Big clients have large budgets and you need to demonstrate your competence in the field if you want a slice of this spending budget. You need to be able to point out what’s currently going wrong with their site and how you’re going to fix it.

The areas that I really feel you’ll need to cover in each Search engine optimization proposal are:

1. Quote – Try and get this one dealt with on page 1. For me personally, I always quote the bare minimum investment values, under which I will not go. If a company attempts to bargain then I politely ask them to take their work elsewhere. I always give a genuine quote and never charge a Cent more than what I think is necessary for a site to be a success.

2. Search engine optimization Breakdown – This section needs to give a percentage break down of where a search engine optimization budget is going to be invested. It covers five important areas: Discovery 5% Optimization 40% Link Building 40% Landing Page Creation 10% Reporting & Analysis 5%

3. Search engine optimization Audit – Give a detailed break down of the good and bad aspects of a site. Every web site you will audit will have various degrees of good and bad Seo elements. Loads of websites I work with will have perfect optimisation but they will have a small number of inbound links to power the website up the search rankings. Clearly this sort of customer would require much more link building work for their web site than other websites.

4. 5 Key Areas To Focus On – Here you need to list the top 5 Seo elements that need to be focused on. Supply a small outline of the current situation and let the client know the precise steps you will take to solve this. The top five factors to list out here are typically:

1. Link Building 2. Optimisation 3. Landing Page creation 4. Content Creation 5. Social networking

5. Ranking Analysis – Perform keyphrase research for every client and put together a benchmark ranking report for them to view. This really hits home the message that their web site is under performing in the natural search engine results. The rankings do not lie. Many clients will have a notion from Analytics that search engine traffic is their main traffic source. What they often fail to comprehend is that 80% of the organic traffic is generated through branded search. A ratio of 4:1 (branded : non branded traffic) is not good enough and needs to be fixed. Their Seo tactic will mostly focus on targeting the non branded element of search.

6. Ranking Targets – Should you advise the client to go with a 6 or 12 month search engine optimization plan then try to make precise predictions of what you think is achievable with regards to ranking improvements. Personally, I do not give specific predictions for specific words. My estimations work off percentages. Using their ranking report, aim to increase top 1, 5, 10, and 30 rankings by a certain percentage.

7. Reporting – Provide a quick explanation of what the client can be expecting in terms of reporting. List the KPIs that you will be following and the frequency of reporting.

8. Function Experience – Personally, I have worked with many of Ireland’s top businesses and I want my prospective client to realize this. They are employing someone with massive practical experience obtaining results in competitive industries and they are paying out very low prices for this. Having been inside the business for almost 7 years now I have worked in a huge number of different niches. If this report is for a new finance client then I list out the financial clients I’ve worked along with and also list out key ranking achievements I’ve produced in that niche market.

That sums up quickly the important areas to focus on in a search engine optimization sales pitch. As I stated before, they take time to develop. This is work that you’re not going to get paid for, but if you want to catch some huge Seo fish then you need to take time to prepare the right bait.

If you are interested in SEO then check out more information at the JumpStart Blog. JumpStart Marketing are an SEO company based in Ireland.