How to get SEO clients in 2026: expert insights
The internet is currently flooded with “growth hacks” and outdated advice on how to scale an agency. Most of it is no longer relevant: rehashed tips from 2018 about cold calling and mass-spamming social medua. But in 2026, the landscape has shifted. Between AI-driven search, the rise of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), and a market that is more skeptical than ever, those old-school tactics aren’t just failing. They’re simply damaging your brand.
To cut through the noise, we went straight to the source. We ignored the “gurus” and asked actual SEO business owners – the ones currently managing six and seven-figure pipelines – for their real-world advice. They’ve shared what’s actually moving the needle right now, from building “AI authority” to the unconventional networking strategies that close high-ticket retainers without a single cold email.
What you’ll learn:
- How clients want to evaluate SEO decisions, what clients look for when choosing between options, and how clients and position internal teams versus external help
- How to generate leads and find SEO clients, including local SEO clients, without relying on generic outreach or inflated promises
- How to get new opportunities clients via clearer decision framing that aligns seo and marketing with real business priorities
- How to identify what clients might need at different growth stages and attract clients for your business using transparent comparisons that signal best SEO thinking
Build and rank your own SEO site for a competitive keyword
Position your own site as proof of competence by ranking it for competitive queries like SEO services, local SEO, or industry-specific variants.
The idea is simple: if a potential client finds you through Google, sees you ranking, and clicks through, your work already speaks for itself. For many marketing agencies, this feels like the most “pure” way to get clients.
Ranking your own site looks like a scalable way to generate SEO leads without outreach. In theory, it attracts potential SEO clients who already search for help, often business owners with active intent. It also doubles as a live portfolio for SEO strategies, since every ranking page acts as a case study for your SEO business.
In competitive SERPs, you compete against large agencies, directories, and long-established brands. Even a strong SEO expert may wait months before a single potential client reaches out. Tools help spot gaps and track movement, but they do not change the reality that high-intent keywords attract the strongest players. Many consultants burn time writing blog posts, sharing SEO tips, and polishing their business profile, only to find that traffic does not convert into new SEO clients.
This tactic works best when narrowed. Instead of generic SEO services, focusing on local SEO or a tight niche can shorten the path to trust. Ranking for one clear problem, tied to a specific audience, can still help attract clients, especially when paired with other ways to get visibility.
However, as a standalone method to find SEO clients, it is slow. As credibility support, it can help you get clients once conversations already start.
That skepticism shows up clearly in how Martin Woods, founder and SEO director at Indigoextra, approaches growth. Reflecting on years of client acquisition, he is blunt about this tactic:
Turn failed SEO case studies into teardown content
This tactic takes what most agencies hide and puts it front and center. Instead of publishing polished success stories, you openly break down SEO work that went wrong: traffic drops, migrations that failed, experiments that did not deliver, or assumptions that turned out false. The teardown focuses on what happened, why it happened, and what you would do differently now.
Most prospects already distrust SEO case studies. Everything looks too clean, too linear, too perfect. A failure teardown signals something rare: lived experience. It shows pattern recognition, not just execution. For the right buyer, honesty about mistakes builds more trust than another “+312% traffic” chart ever could.
Buyers who reach out after a teardown usually carry scars. They lost traffic, hired the wrong agency, or tried to DIY SEO and paid for it later. When they see you name mistakes they recognize from their own situation, the sales conversation starts halfway finished.
Do / don’t
- Do show real data, even if it looks uncomfortable
- Do explain decision points, not just outcomes
- Do focus on learning and recovery, not blame
- Don’t disguise failures as “challenges” with happy endings
- Don’t publish teardown content if you are not ready to defend your thinking publicly
A failed case study only works if it feels honest, specific, and grounded in real consequences.
That mindset is exactly what helped RHILLANE Ayoub, CEO of RHILLANE Marketing Digital, close new business. In her own words:
“I closed a €4k/month contract in November 2024 by publicly documenting a failed SEO experiment on my own site. A founder reached out saying ‘if you’re this honest about what didn’t work, I trust you with what does.’
For months I’d been chasing prospects through webinars and guest posts that positioned me as an expert, but nobody was buying because everyone claims expertise. The mistake almost everyone makes is hiding their failures when vulnerability actually builds more trust than another case study ever could.
The uncomfortable truth? My best clients came from admitting I lost 40% of a site’s traffic during a migration. They hired me specifically because I knew what recovery looked like from the inside.
I’ll never again spend energy on proposals for companies that ask for ‘a quick quote’ before a discovery call. If they won’t invest 30 minutes to explain their business, they won’t invest properly in the work either.”
Failure-driven teardowns do not attract everyone. They attract the clients who already know SEO can go wrong—and want someone who has seen the fallout up close.
Partner with web design and dev agencies for monthly SEO packages
Here, you partner with web design and development teams that already work with companies before SEO becomes urgent. When their potential customers start asking why traffic stalls, conversions lag, or visibility never takes off, you become the trusted SEO specialist they bring in. It is one of the most reliable ways to get SEO clients without constant outbound.
Design and dev agencies sit upstream in the buying journey. They speak daily with founders and teams who need seo services, even if they do not articulate it yet. Once a site launches, SEO issues surface fast: indexing gaps, weak structure, neglected Google My Business, or missed technical SEO basics. A warm intro at that moment helps you get more clients faster than chasing people already comparing SEO companies.
Strong agencies know their limits. They also know clients won’t trust a designer who suddenly claims deep SEO expertise. Referring out protects relationships with previous clients, helps them upsell responsibly, and reduces risk when clients may start questioning results. For you, this creates steady SEO lead generation, better-fit new clients, and fewer pricing battles.
How to do it well?
Target agencies that already serve your ideal clients, including those focused on local clients or SaaS teams. Make it easy for them to refer you: explain how your SEO consulting fits their workflow, how you handle SEO proposals, and how monthly SEO packages work post-launch. Clarity around ownership, reporting, and SEO and content responsibilities helps partners confidently refer clients. Over time, this setup supports consistent inbound and helps you get SEO leads without chasing.
Myth busting: agency partnerships
- Myth: agencies want to steal your clients. In practice, most agencies want to keep clients happy, not expand scope they cannot deliver well. Clear positioning avoids overlap.
- Myth: revenue splits kill margins. A referral fee often costs less than paid ads or outbound tools. For many, it is the best way to get predictable deal flow.
- Myth: white-label work damages your brand. White-labeling does not erase credibility. It helps you get you in front of companies earlier and builds leverage with partners who send repeat work.
- Myth: only big agencies make this work. Smaller teams often benefit more. One good partner can unlock a lot of SEO work across similar clients.
This is exactly how Andrew Edwards, CMO of Brainy Bees, approaches growth:
For many teams, partnerships are not just another channel. They are how you attract SEO clients, build momentum, and create a steady stream of clients for your business without burning energy on constant pitching.
Win clients through founder-led LinkedIn posting
Across B2B, LinkedIn consistently outperforms other social platforms for lead quality. Internal platform data and multiple industry studies show that decision-makers trust posts from people far more than brand pages—and founders see higher engagement rates than company accounts when they post consistently and speak from experience. For service businesses, that trust often converts faster than any gated asset or outbound campaign.
Founder-led LinkedIn posting means the founder shows up regularly under their own name to share firsthand observations, lessons learned, and opinions shaped by real work. It is not content marketing dressed up as personal branding. It is public thinking in progress, visible to the exact audience that buys SEO.
SEO buyers do not want generic advice. They want confidence that the person they hire has seen their situation before. When founders write about real trade-offs, failed experiments, pricing conversations, or why certain SEO efforts did not move the needle, they pre-qualify inbound interest. The posts build familiarity long before a sales conversation starts.
However, many founders treat LinkedIn like a content calendar exercise. They post occasionally, over-polish language, or recycle safe tips that sound like everyone else. That approach rarely drives conversations. Consistency and specificity matter more than reach. A small audience of the right people beats viral posts that attract the wrong ones.
How to do it well
- Post frequently enough to stay top of mind
- Share what you see in real client work, not abstract SEO theory
- Pick a few recurring themes and go deep instead of rotating topics
- Write like you talk to clients, not like a blog post
- Let opinions stand, even if not everyone agrees
Over time, this becomes one of the most reliable ways to attract inbound without explicitly trying to sell.
That pattern shows up clearly in how Joe Hall, SEO consultant at Cloud22, signed clients in practice. Reflecting on his experience, he shared:
Founder-led posting works because it compresses the trust cycle. By the time someone reaches out, they already know how you think, how you communicate, and whether you are someone they want to work with.
Offer free SEO audits via LinkedIn DMs to get more SEO clients for your SEO agency
Replace pitching with diagnosis. Instead of asking for a call or explaining what SEO is, you send a short, concrete audit directly to a prospect on LinkedIn. The audit focuses on visible issues: what ranks on page one for their brand, which competitors sit above them, or which irrelevant results shape first impressions.
SEO only becomes urgent when it looks embarrassing, risky, or expensive. A targeted audit makes the problem obvious without asking the prospect to self-diagnose. You also remove the trust barrier upfront, because you already did real work before asking for attention.
Long PDFs, tool exports, or generic checklists feel automated and self-serving. They force the reader to interpret data instead of reacting to it. The goal is not to show how much you know. The goal is to show one problem they cannot unsee.
How to do it well
- Choose prospects deliberately, not at scale
- Highlight one or two issues with real-world impact
- Use live SERPs or screenshots, not SEO tool jargon
- Keep the message readable inside LinkedIn or link a short Loom
- End with a question, not a meeting request
- Done right, the audit feels less like outreach and more like someone pointing out a fire alarm that has gone off unnoticed.
That exact approach is how William DiAntonio, CEO of Brand911, signed clients in practice. In his own words:
“I signed three clients in Q2 2024 by publishing detailed teardowns of prospects’ Google search results before they ever contacted me—basically auditing their online presence publicly (with permission) and posting it as LinkedIn content showing exactly what was burying their brand and how I’d fix it.
Before that, I wasted six months on cold outreach and findy calls where I’d explain reputation management concepts to people who weren’t convinced they had a problem. The mistake almost everyone makes is waiting for someone to admit they need help instead of showing them the problem they didn’t know existed.
Here’s what I don’t usually say: I deliberately search for professionals with terrible first-page results—outdated LinkedIn profiles, competitor sites outranking them, or random forum posts showing up—then I screenshot it and reach out saying ‘I noticed this when I Googled you, mind if I break down what’s happening?’ Half ignore me, but the other half become clients within two weeks because they’re horrified at what I showed them.”
This is not about giving away free work. It is about making the problem undeniable before the sales conversation even starts.
Publish niche-specific SEO playbooks
A niche-specific SEO playbook focuses on one audience, one context, and one recurring set of SEO problems. Instead of broad advice, it explains how SEO actually plays out for a specific group: what breaks, what usually gets overlooked, and where money gets wasted. That clarity helps attract potential clients who feel the content speaks directly to them, not to everyone.
Most people looking for SEO do not want generic answers. They want to know how SEO fits their reality and whether it makes sense to invest in SEO at all. A niche playbook helps with finding potential clients who already show intent and filters out those who are not ready. Over time, this approach helps get more SEO clients without constant outreach and supports a strong online presence that compounds.
Playbooks act as a self-qualification tool. They help clients understand their own situation before a call ever happens. When someone reaches out after reading one, the conversation shifts from “do we need SEO?” to “how do we apply this to our case?” That makes it easier to close clients, define the right seo contract, and work with clients who need real help instead of quick fixes.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Helps attract higher-intent leads and clients for seo
- Positions you clearly for clients for your seo agency
- Builds trust with people already interested in seo
- Reduces time spent explaining fundamentals during sales
Cons
- Slower to produce results than outbound
- Smaller audience, even if more qualified
- Some clients don’t read long-form content and still want shortcuts
For many teams, one strong playbook outperforms chasing a lot of clients who never convert.
That balanced framing is exactly how Scott Kasun, founder of ForeFront Web, generated inbound demand. In his own words:
“One piece titled ‘You Don’t Actually Need an SEO Person’ generated three qualified inbound leads within two weeks, two of which signed because they appreciated the transparency. Before that, I wasted months on generic ‘10 SEO Tips’ content that attracted zero decision-makers. The mistake almost everyone makes is trying to sound like the smartest person in the room instead of the most honest. We literally tell prospects they can do SEO themselves if they have time—most realize they don’t and respect us for not bullshitting them.”
Pick a narrow audience and commit to it. Show what typically goes wrong, where budgets get spent on SEO without impact, and what most providers miss. Use examples from one of your clients where possible. A playbook does not replace services or offering a free SEO audit. It helps use to get trust before the conversation even starts and brings in SEO clients for your business who already align with your thinking.
Use social proof by showing live rankings
This approach treats social proof as something people can verify instantly, not something they have to trust blindly. Instead of leading sales conversations with audits, diagnostics, or tooling screenshots, you show real rankings in real SERPs. Prospects see your work in action, live, without needing to understand SEO mechanics.
SEO is one of the few services where proof is public. Anyone can open an incognito window and see who ranks. That makes live results far more persuasive than explanations. For a potential buyer, seeing a competitor or peer ranking because of your work removes doubt faster than any deck or report ever could.
Technical audits focus on what is wrong, not what is possible. They also assume a level of SEO literacy most business owners do not have. When you start with issues, you create friction. When you start with outcomes, you create confidence. The audit can come later, once trust already exists.
Prepare a short list of keyword sets where your clients already rank. Mix industries, locations, and intent types so prospects can recognize patterns. During a call, ask them to search those terms themselves and spot your client in the results. The moment they confirm it with their own eyes, the conversation shifts from skepticism to curiosity.
That philosophy comes directly from Curtis Chappell, SEO Manager at Purge Digital. In his own words:
“The one thing about SEO is there is nowhere to hide when showing proof of your SEO efforts. You can conduct on-page & off-pages audits, and point out all of the technical SEO issues on a given site, but that does not build instant rapport and trust from a sales perspective.
The mistake almost everyone makes is trying to communicate very technical details to a business owner who doesn’t understand these technicalities anyway, instead of just showing live examples of clients who are actually ranking.
For this sales strategy to work, you have to have clients on page one already. Once that happens, you create a list of keyword sets where you know your existing clients rank. Get them to search in a private browser and simply ask where they see your client.
Going forward, I would not lead into an SEO sale with technical SEO audits. Get their buy-in first with proof.”
Social proof works best when it removes interpretation. When prospects can see the result themselves, belief stops being a barrier and the conversation becomes about fit, scope, and timing.