This one comes up a lot, and I just saw it discussed on Linkedin today and thought it’d be a fair topic to write about here.
The logic makes sense: why should a prospect trust your abilities as an SEO pro if your own website doesn’t have top rankings for SEO-related services? Aside the obvious fact that you’re competing against every other SEO in town, and thus the competition is incredibly fierce, it doesn’t always justify itself.
My experience over the years has been that doing SEO *for* SEO services is a mixed bag in terms of results. Years back I put the effort in to rank #1 for various queries related to “SEO consulting” and “SEO services” in my city. I maintained those rankings for quite a few months, but got very little site traffic and virtually no calls for it.
Now sure, I can feel some of you thinking, “Maybe your meta titles weren’t engaging enough!” or “maybe your site wasn’t set up well to convert!” I did attempt to address both of those things when I didn’t see a lot of result, but you are right. Those are still possible.
However, I’ve also partnered with web designers over the years and helped them with their sites (ultimately helping both of us) and saw similar things. Sometimes, ranking well for web design services was huge and drove a lot of leads. Other times, being in the top 3 all year produced fairly little.
There are reasons for that and I won’t derail this post to get into them, here but to me it highlights a key truism in this business.
SEO’s viability can vary by industry. It can technically work for any industry, but some definitely benefit more than others. For a more local-serving SEO business, I don’t know that every pro would agree that the considerable effort to outplay every other SEO pro in town is worth it.
Does ranking for SEO have any value, then?
Definitely, but my experience has been that the main value is the flex it allows for you once you’re already talking to a prospect. Say you have a good meeting with them and they’re thinking about everything you’d presented.
That’s probably where they’ll check you out, see who else has worked with you, and maybe how well you rank.
It’s not a total deal breaker if you don’t rank at the top for everything related to your profession at that point. But it sure is a big feather in the cap if you do.
Put another way, I’d say that building your own rankings as an SEO pro helps you close deals more than it does to find prospects.
Brian Watkins is an SEO consultant and writer with over 18 years of experience helping businesses grow through clear, strategic content. He specializes in translating complex ideas into practical, search-driven content that connects with real people.