Scaling Up: How To Expand Your SEO Services To New Markets via @sejournal, @jasonhennessey

Many SEO agency owners have a vision of growing their business, building a model that drives recurring revenue without having to sacrifice their time, energy, or sanity.

Unfortunately, many agency owners get stuck in a plateau. They hit a ceiling on how many clients they can manage, yet don’t have the cash flow to hire a team. What’s an ambitious agency owner to do?

In this guide, I’m sharing my growth strategies as a 10+ year SEO agency owner – from how to expand to new markets to how to implement a sustainable, scalable agency model.

A CEO’s Secret To Scalable SEO

How did a hopelessly distracted C student grow a 100-person global SEO agency?

Well, it wasn’t through “growth hacks”, offshoring, or selling courses.

It was through a passion for the craft: 30,000+ hours obsessing over the algorithm, speaking to clients, testing strategies, and doing the work.

There is no shortcut.

But there is a mindset.

It’s a mindset that’s attentive to the needs of real business owners. One that’s future-forward, recognizing the unique challenges business owners face today. And a mindset that’s creative in crafting an SEO service that helps business owners overcome these challenges.

This starts with understanding the market, finding the gaps, and bringing something unique to the table.

Here’s how to do that.

1. Trim The Fat

Very often, we agency owners get stuck in a rut of managing a high volume of low-paying clients. This burns out our resources and makes it very difficult to scale.

If you can’t take on more, higher-paying contracts, you have very little room to grow. That’s when it’s time to “trim the fat”, so to speak.

First, identify the clients that are causing the biggest headaches for the least amount of contract value.

Next, identify your best clients – not just in terms of money, but the client-agency relationship.

The tough news is that you will likely need to let some of the difficult clients go. But this is just to make space for more enjoyable, lucrative projects. Doing so also opens up breathing room for you to get more creative with your service offerings.

2. Remove The Operational Bottlenecks

Besides time-consuming clients, there are likely other factors that are hindering your agency’s growth. This could be the lack of team resources to take on new projects, a lack of skills to reach that next caliber of service, or a lack of time on your part to bring it all together.

This is the time to take a good, hard look at your agency structure, resources, and processes.

Here are a few common issues that can lead to inefficiency (and, ultimately, stagnation) in your business:

Identifying the bottlenecks is the first step in fixing them. Trust me, this isn’t just about good housekeeping; if your agency works like a well-oiled machine, it’s better positioned to expand to new markets and take on more clients.

3. Assess The Financial Health Of Your Agency

Now it’s time to get your financial house in order. The last thing you want to do is start selling SEO to new markets without first establishing a profitable, sustainable revenue growth model.

If available, look at your agency’s past 2+ years’ Profit and Loss statements.

Analyze your financial reports to look for inefficiencies.

This activity isn’t meant to deter you from expanding to new markets; rather, it’s a practice of taking a look at your business financials and making data-informed decisions.

I highly recommend having a health cash reserve to help you manage unexpected costs and/or potential setbacks as you expand to new markets. Change can come with some unpredictability, so the more you can give yourself a cushion, the better.

4. Identify High-Growth Markets

By this point let’s assume your agency is financially sound, you have the space to take on new clients (because you have trimmed the fat), and have put systems in place to facilitate growth. How do you identify the hot new markets for expansion?

One way is to “stay in the know” by monitoring industry trends and news. Outlets like our very own Search Engine Journal are great at covering emerging markets, technologies, SEO applications, and more.

Another source of market research is Google Trends, where you can spot a rise in search volumes and emerging keywords. For example, at the time of writing this article, there was a significant uptick in topics related to law and government.

I also recommend reading industry reports and surveys to see what’s new in the market. For instance, Forbes often covers ‘emerging markets’ by location, demographics, and industries.

Look for opportunities that indicate increasing and sustained growth. For example, the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been on the upswing for quite some time, while others (like all the craze about Instagram Threads) fizzle out.

5. Look For The Gaps

Look for opportunities in which your competitors have yet to capitalise on a new market or growth trend. If you’re able to beat them to the punch, you’ll be better positioned to win the lion’s share of the market.

There are a few ways to do this. For one, you can be the first to launch a service offering to a new/emerging market. However, another way to “fill the gap” is to offer a different take on an existing service/model.

For example, say there’s been an increase in demand for SEO services by tree removal service providers as a result of local storms (this has really happened).

In the midst of other marketing agencies pushing generic SEO packages, perhaps you offer a “storm-response” -focused digital strategy, including rapid content updates and pay-per-click ads emphasizing emergency services.

This really requires you to think outside the box (remember, Mindset) to figure out 1) what the market needs, 2) whether you can be first to fill the gap, and 3) what makes you different from other SEO providers.

6. Restructure Your SEO Offering

Scaling up your SEO agency requires adaptability. Stagnation is a real agency killer. To maintain an upward trajectory, you need to make some changes to your SEO service offerings.

For example, AI has been a hot topic for quite some time. While many agencies claim to leverage AI to streamline the content creation process, your claim to fame could be that you don’t use AI, and instead offer a customized content model to provide additional value to businesses.

Or perhaps instead of offering soup-to-nuts SEO services, you realize Content is the most profitable, so you niche down to focus on content strategy and blogging.

Restructuring your services doesn’t necessarily need to mean changing what you offer, though. It could mean changing how you offer it.

Like if you typically provide customized SEO strategies (that change month to month), perhaps you find it more economical to offer out-of-the-box SEO plans that include the main components most businesses need to see traffic growth.

In my own SEO agency, Hennessey Digital, I noticed where some of our services were “good to have” but not “need to have”, or even services clients never ended up subscribing to.

We focused on the services that provided the best results for clients. And we are constantly adapting to the times, incorporating new technologies and strategies.

7. Build A Scalable Team

The truth is, it’s very difficult to grow your SEO agency with a team of one. At some point, you will need to bring on support, not only to manage the growing client load but also to offset gaps in your own skillsets.

A great entrepreneur can recognize their constraints and see the strengths in others. New team members contribute new ideas, new ways of doing things, and new processes to help economize your business.

They may also have insight into the new markets you are looking to expand to. For example, if your agency has historically worked with home services providers, and now you’re looking to expand to law firms, hiring a Marketing Manager with experience in the legal industry could be a huge benefit.

Start by identifying the top 3 challenges your business is currently facing — and how hiring a skilled team member could offset these challenges. If the cost of hiring is easily offset by the new revenue brought in, it’s a done deal!

Maybe you can’t hire someone full-time right away. That’s okay! Consider outsourcing to start and then scale up incrementally as your business grows.

Scale Your SEO Agency With Confidence

Scaling up an SEO agency comes with its challenges, from resource limitations to difficult clients to financial constraints.

But most of these can be mitigated by proper planning, trimming the fat in your business, and shifting your mindset from solopreneur to CEO.

It’s what’s allowed me to grow my SEO business from a solo practice to a global agency. And while that didn’t happen overnight, it was made easier once I was able to identify the gaps in my own skill set and find great people to inject creativity into my business.

Every agency owner is capable of scaling up — just look for those gaps and bring a fresh take to the market!

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