When I first started my SEO agency back in 2016, I was completely clueless about search engine optimization. I could barely spell “SEO,” let alone strategically optimize websites to rank higher in Google and drive traffic.
But remarkably, within just three short years, I was able to grow my fledgling agency to over $1 million in annual revenue. (1)
In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly how I was able to achieve this unlikely journey from knowing nothing about SEO to running a highly successful seven-figure agency in a very short period of time.
I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but was ultimately able to persevere thanks to persistence and a willingness to invest what little money I had into proper SEO training.
My Disastrous First SEO Client
In the early days when I was first starting out, my SEO knowledge was extremely limited. But I was eager to get my business going, so I jumped right into trying to find clients. By sheer luck, I was able to land my very first client almost immediately. They were willing to pay me $3,000 per month to drive more traffic to their website.
It was a great way to get my agency kickstarted. However, there was one major problem – I had no idea how to actually do effective SEO work at this point.
Armed with the client’s money and eager to deliver results, I made the crucial mistake of trusting bad SEO advice that I found online. Following these misguided tactics ended up disastrously getting my client’s entire website deindexed from Google searches.
As you can imagine, they no longer required my “services” after that catastrophic failure.
I had botched my very first client by blindly following poor advice and damaging their site without having the necessary SEO skills and knowledge myself at the time. It was a hard lesson about the need to truly understand what I was doing before trying to sell my services.
Investing Everything into SEO Education
After losing my first client in such an epic fashion, I realized I desperately needed SEO training if I was going to make this agency idea work long-term.
So I decided to reinvest all profits I had made from that initial client back into proper SEO education for myself. I felt like an imposter calling myself an “SEO expert” when I clearly didn’t have the qualifications or competence.
I spent a small fortune on high-quality online courses and certifications to learn from proven industry experts. This helped me both understand effective real-world SEO strategies, as well as begin establishing my own processes for optimizing websites.
I knew if I was going to position myself as an agency owner, I needed to get truly confident with doing SEO properly.
The investment into knowledge rather than trying to land more clients before I was ready was absolutely crucial. It also helped me become comfortable with the idea of failing early on, as long as I could learn lessons that would improve my skills.
I had to completely shift my mindset away from feeling like an incompetent imposter.
Building Confidence by Landing a Big Client
After intensely studying SEO and honing my abilities for several months after the disaster with my first client, I gradually began to prospect for new clients again.
Despite having very little experience besides that one failure, I managed to sign one of the largest online course marketplaces, Skillshare.com, to a $5,000 per month contract.
Landing such a big client so early in my agency journey was a massive validation that I could actually get results for a high-profile company. It gave me a tremendous boost of confidence that I really could succeed with SEO with the knowledge I had developed.
However, I knew delivering success for a much larger site like Skillshare would require more manpower than just me as a one-person shop. So I also had to quickly build an SEO team to fulfill the workload needed for a client this size.
This introduced a new challenge of how to train employees to properly implement my SEO strategies when they had no prior experience themselves.
Creating a Training System for My Growing Team
As demand rapidly ramped up with the Skillshare contract combined with a few other clients I acquired, I needed to scale my agency’s capabilities. I set out building an entire training system for bringing new hires up to speed on my proven SEO processes, despite them having no prior SEO experience.
I knew that I didn’t want to bring on team members who claimed they already knew SEO. That would likely mean I needed to untrain incorrect assumptions they made, which proved very difficult.
Instead, I focused on hiring smart people from related fields like writing and teaching them SEO specifically the way I had developed it.
The training program combined pieces of the various courses I had taken along with a lot of my own experimentation and refinements. I would meticulously test different aspects of SEO campaigns to determine what actually worked in terms of driving real rankings and traffic, compared to what was speculative or “guesstimated” advice.
This split testing of methods allowed me to separate reliable tactics from misguided techniques.
Funneling new hires through this system allowed me to scale up my agency capabilities very quickly while ensuring everything was executed just as I wanted it, based on my own verified approaches.
Stopping Prospecting Was My Costliest Mistake
As the contract ramped up with Skillshare occupying more and more of my limited time, I made one of my biggest mistakes at this point in my journey – I stopped focusing on acquiring new clients altogether.
I wrongly assumed that with such a large $5,000 per month contract secured, I no longer needed to dedicate energy toward lead generation or sending proposals.
This proved to be a disastrous decision when Skillshare ultimately decided they no longer wanted to prioritize SEO campaigns going forward. Despite achieving tremendous success ranking them #1 for high-value keywords, they shifted gears into other marketing channels.
Losing my one big cash cow client meant that with zero new prospects in my pipeline to backfill the massive revenue hole, my agency essentially stagnated overnight. I lost months of momentum and had very little to show despite all the early wins.
This painful lesson hammered home the absolute importance of consistently bringing on new business, even while current clients have you extremely busy. Prospecting is truly never “finished” in the agency world – it is an infinite ongoing effort.
Reviving My Agency by Returning to Upwork
In the aftermath of this “feast or famine” debacle stemming from failing to consistently prospect for new accounts, I evaluated various options to try to revive my fledgling agency and regain lost momentum.
As much as I despised having to essentially restart, I knew I needed to get back to basics and take on smaller clients while rebuilding.
I returned to leveraging Upwork as a platform for propelling agencies since it had been the source of my original breakthrough into five-figure monthly contracts like Skillshare.
Despite 97% of freelancers ultimately failing on there due to improperly pitching services, I knew from experience that it could also work very well.
The key is that Upwork removes the need to convince potential clients about the merits of services like SEO. Prospects on there have already decided they need such services before posting jobs. As a vendor, you simply need to stand out as someone who can deliver on the results they want.
Too many people mistakenly try to sell the value of the service itself to Upwork prospects. But this is wasted effort that immediately eliminates you from consideration.
Instead I focus on competency and case studies that prove I can achieve the KPIs they want. This positioning allowed me to land huge accounts like Stanley Black & Decker, Adobe, and several Fortune 500 brands.
In just a couple years, I was able to completely revive my SEO agency through leverage Upwork to consistently build my client pipeline. Instead of always starting from scratch in growing my company, Upwork enabled me to bypass business development hurdles by exposing me directly to so many high-value prospects.
Key Takeaways from My Unlikely Agency Success Story
Reflecting on this unlikely journey from blindly struggling to rank my very first client’s site to running a highly successful seven-figure agency, I can point to a few key lessons:
- Failures and mistakes will happen, especially early on – power through them by investing into your knowledge instead of giving up. Be willing to learn crucial skills on your own dime.
- Have confidence in your abilities by testing yourself with bigger and bigger clients, even if you feel underqualified at first. The wins will compound your credibility.
- Codify what actually works through meticulous split testing instead of guessing or trusting others’ assumptions. Create systems that run based purely on proven methods.
- Never stop the consistent effort of acquiring new clients, even when swamped with existing work. Prospecting keeps your agency alive through ups and downs.
Overall, while SEO can be complex at first, with the right strategic framework put into practice, combined with resilience in pushing through early setbacks, I’m living proof that it is possible to build a highly thriving consultancy around it even without extensive technical expertise before you begin.
References:
- HuffPost, 11 Companies That Are Going to Revolutionize 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/11-companies-that-are-going-to-revolutionize-2018_b_59e3e462e4b02e99c58357a9
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