Personal experience: how I opened an SEO agency in the region and turned out to be a plus

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

From a student part-time job to a monthly profit of 500,000 rubles.

Business in the field of SEO is very ambiguous: some do not want to get involved with search engines and depend on online, while others are sure that the golden antelope ran somewhere in the first line of the results of Yandex or Google. We talked with the founder of an Internet marketing agency from Vladimir and found out how to work with freelancers, who is preventing us from becoming a leader in search results, and why regional clients are a real hell.

Student part-time job

I studied at the Vladimir State University at the Faculty of Information Technology. In 2007 I was in my second year, and the guys from our department were offered to earn extra money. Like any student, I wanted to get my own money, so I responded. It turned out that a SEO assistant is required for a large project.

My tasks included working with textual and technical factors on the site, as well as placing links to our resource in other sources. This increased the authority of the site, so it rose in the search engine results. The global goal of SEO is to come out on top, so that as many people as possible follow the link, and the resource gets the maximum traffic.

I liked SEO, so in parallel with my work, I studied information about online promotion. My first book on this topic was the publication by Igor Ashmanov "Optimization and Promotion in Search Engines". I read it in two weeks and immediately began to put the advice into practice.

Work in a large city portal

When I realized that I wanted to further develop in the field of SEO, I got a job at the regional studio Vladimir Media, which created its own project - a city portal. The company lived off the fact that it sold banners and placements on the site. My goal was to promote the portal: to increase the number of visitors that come from search.

For six months of work, attendance from 100 people increased to 1,000 per day. We have grown 10 times, although I did not put in a titanic effort.

The fact is that the SEO field was quite young, so even basic things were not organized on the site. As a result, we optimized its structure, worked with headers and purchased links from external sites - at that time the method worked perfectly. The result was not long in coming: we quickly climbed the search results and collected a lot of traffic.

Over time, the studio began to provide client promotion services: we promoted not only our own project, but also those of others. I directed this process. There were few tasks and money too - about 10-15 thousand per project.

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Your blog and the first money from advertising

All this time I studied in detail the nuances of promotion. Several SEO blogs popped up that I got hooked on. The main ones are Shakin.ru and the Dimka blog, which is no longer functioning. Then the idea crept into my head that I also want to share my experience. In August 2008, I registered the domain SEOinSoul.ru, which has now moved to impulse.guru, created my blog and started posting. In the first articles, I reviewed the services that help promote sites, and then began to share the experience I received in the city portal: I told you what methods work and how the innovations of search engines affect the result.

The number of subscribers began to grow, the first comments appeared. Six months after opening the blog, I sold the banner ad placement, which cost the client $ 25 a month. As the development progressed, the number of banners increased, and so did the cost per placement. In 2009, I was ranked third in the ranking of SEO blogs. All this motivated me to continue working and writing articles.

Thanks to the blog, clients began to come to me - people who need to promote the site. From that moment on, freelance projects appeared in my life, which I was engaged in in parallel with working in the studio and studying. I took no more than 10,000 rubles a month for promotion, which is not much. I didn't have that much experience, so I couldn't set a high price.

Crisis, army and the lost blog

In 2010, the number of clients coming from the blog began to grow, and the situation in the studio worsened. Due to the crisis, we had to move to an apartment with the director. I did not see any particular prospects, so I left Vladimir Media.

After university he went into the army, so he dropped out of the sphere for a year. I transferred all projects to other specialists, and we parted with clients amicably. I prepared posts four months in advance to keep blogging. Closer to demobilization, publications were published every two months, but this helped to maintain at least some activity.

After my return, work on the blog continued. Thanks to references and articles, I was able to return several clients. Over time, the number of projects increased and approached 15, but physically, within a month, I did not have time to conduct them in parallel.

One day, towards the end of the term for one of the clients, I did absolutely nothing.

I remember that I was very worried that the person paid for nothing. It was a very important call for me, after which I realized that it was time to assemble a team and delegate responsibilities.

A team of three people and their own agency

In 2011, I started collecting a remote team on the freelance exchange: I posted one-time tasks to solve at least some of the issues. I worked in this mode for several months, but nothing good came of it. Working with freelancers is a constant stress. They lack responsibility, so you can never be sure of the result. It takes at least a year for a remote employee to prove their effectiveness, but I didn't have that time.

At the end of 2012, I registered an individual entrepreneur, and in 2013 I began to assemble a team offline. Now it is important for me that a person is flexible, trainable and really wants to work in SEO, but then I wanted people to already have basic knowledge of website promotion. As a result, I invited only those who had experience in this area for interviews. The selection was made by two people who trained in a large Vladimir company. I started teaching them particular tasks, but communication with the client remained with me.

Employee salaries and head work

For almost a year, five of us worked: me, two offline and two online employees. The first office was quite modest and budgetary. There are not many of them in the city, so we chose it for a pleasant interior. The rent cost 15,000 rubles, two computers cost 40,000 rubles, and tables and chairs cost a maximum of 10,000 rubles. The total salary of office employees was about 45,000 rubles.

In 2014, the number of clients increased, the team also began to grow. Another SEO specialist and account manager has joined us. The latter helped me in communicating with clients and took over some projects. I began to feel much freer.

At the end of 2015, the digital sphere began to grow more actively than before. People carried money from offline to online promotion. There were more and more clients, so we expanded the staff to 12 people and moved to a more spacious office. There was a time when a team of eight people worked in an office of 20 squares: we sat on each other's heads. Fortunately, the renovation was quickly completed in the new building and we were able to breathe freely.

A new era in the world of SEO and the technical department

There were so many clients that there was not enough specialists who could lead the project. We received an assignment and looked for employees for the new budget. The company's classic profit was 20-30% of the order. About 50% goes to the employee's salary, and the rest is administrative and overhead costs.

Impulse.guru currently employs 20 people. We are located in a business park in the city center and are gradually taking over neighboring offices. We have 110 square meters at our disposal.

In 2019, search engine optimization has evolved a lot. The result in SEO depends on how the recommendations of a specialist will be implemented, so we also took on web development. At first, we organized a technical department and dealt only with edits in the system, and now we are preparing projects from scratch.

Agency profit and free schedule

When I was a freelancer, I was able to earn about 100,000 rubles. With the opening of the office, the profit dropped dramatically, but I deliberately took this step. If you close everything on yourself, the weaving will be the ceiling. At first, the agency's profit was 50,000 rubles, but it gradually increased. The three of us worked and still earned no more than 100,000 rubles, but the load on me significantly decreased. I was no longer dying of an infinite number of tasks.

In the agency business, everything depends on the number of projects and production load. Theoretically, in the region, you can earn up to 1 million rubles, and large Moscow players get much more.

It is rather difficult to calculate the monthly profit: a large client with a budget of 300,000 rubles may come in March, and in July he will leave, and you will slide down to 100,000 rubles. If we evaluate the annual profit, then 500,000 rubles per month for our agency is a proven figure.

Failures and insights

In the process of work, we went through a lot of fakups, but we learned a lesson from each. For example, when the staff got bigger, we faced an important problem: there are many projects, but there is no one to perform tasks. We hired new specialists, but could not immediately delegate real tasks to them.

The issue was resolved thanks to the streamlined training system. We have collected a knowledge base and implemented a graduation of specialists: junior, middle, senior. Each employee understood what skills he must possess in order to rise to a new level. From that moment on, we began to quickly teach beginners and correctly distribute the load.

Then we ran into a mirror problem: there were people, but we could not load them at least 60%. Then I decided that I needed to work on a sales funnel, and we started using the cold calling method. This is a good option for loading production, but by 2019 we have completely abandoned it. The lifespan of such projects is rather short.

Now we are focusing on large clients whose marketing and search engine optimization have already been built up. We sell expertise that allows you to get much more traffic in the long term. As a rule, contracts are concluded for at least a year. In addition, we actively participate in various conferences, as well as conduct seminars and webinars. Market education increases the number of incoming orders.

Working exclusively with regional projects is also a failure. We tried to promote on the market in Vladimir, but the local client is specific: he does not have large budgets and does not understand that the site can really cost 200,000 rubles, because five specialists have been working on it for several months. We tried to form regionals, but in 2016 our efforts were in vain. Right now we are making a second attempt, but for now it is much easier to concentrate on the Moscow market, where the client is understanding and developed.

Another mistake is working only on word of mouth. At some point, the recommendations may end. Moreover, we cannot control who advises us and how. For a team of four, a sundress is acceptable, but when you are already 20, it is impossible to hope for it. We started launching active advertising sources and doing content marketing. For example, they took an author who writes articles about website promotion.

For a long time we did not deal with standardization and regulations - we did everything on a whim. It seemed that each case is unique, but it is not: 80% of the projects are similar, so most things can be standardized. Previously, we did a technical audit for about 10 hours, but now the process is automated and takes no more than four.

Prospects and main problems of business

SEO business doesn't have a very bright future. Companies are not investing as much money in online promotion now as they were in 2014. The sphere continues to develop, but much more slowly than before. However, start-up companies still live off 20 clients, so the general economic component in the region may not bother them much.

The subject of excitement is the cannibalization of search results. At the very top, there are as many as four ad placements, and in the near future there may be five of them. In addition, Yandex, for example, is actively buying up various projects: Avto.ru, Kinopoisk and others. Of course, they are the first to appear in the search results.

It is more and more difficult for third-party projects to get traffic from search engines, because Yandex is trying to take it for itself. One of the solutions is evolution. We use search engine marketing and generate traffic through other sites that are somehow present in the search. There are difficulties, but you can fight them. True, without high expertise it is more and more difficult to enter this area.

Life hacks from Ilya Rusakov

• Grow specialists within the agency. 90% of success in digital is the expertise of employees who work on projects. Train the guys so that they become professionals and can help clients.
• Standardize your processes. Write the rules: for how long does it take to respond to the client or how often to conduct resume meetings. These are standard things that need to be adjusted in order for the project to be carried out correctly and clearly. In addition, it is important that the specialist understands the priority of a particular task. First of all, you need to do what will bring results as soon as possible.
• Develop as a specialist. At business courses, they often say that you just need to choose the niche you like and start, but the probability of success in this case tends to zero. First of all, it is necessary to gain sufficient expertise, and then competently enter the required area. So the chance that everything will work out is much higher.
• Develop management skills. Working with people is a very important skill to learn. Read books on this topic. My favorites are "Ideal Leader" by Yitzhak Adizes and "Leader Tools" by Vladimir Zima. They will tell you how to set tasks correctly and gain credibility. I also like the book "Jedi Techniques", which was written by Maxim Dorofeev. It's about how to properly manage time, yourself and big projects.