I’m wracking my brain trying to solve a seemingly unsolvable dilemma: a workable strategy for consistently and effectively growing an SEO firm. You see, one of my friends owns an SEO consulting firm and he is wrestling with this particular problem.
The core question is how do you grow an SEO firm to include numerous employees and retain those employees? SEO is an extremely profitable market sector these days, and any employee who is hired to work at an SEO firm and is taught all the tricks of the trade will soon realize that he could probably make a lot more money if he left the firm and went into business for himself! This realization will lead to economically rational but morally unethical behavior such as stealing clients from the firm.
Allow me to illustrate: Frank owns an SEO firm, let’s call it Maximum SEO. Frank has been enjoying decent success in this endeavor, and grows his company by hiring some much needed help. The brightest and most enthusiastic of his new hires is Wally. Wally loves doing SEO and constantly strives to broaden his understanding of the subject, and Frank is more than happy to teach him all the little strategies and techniques that got Maximum SEO to where it ; after all, what does Frank have to lose?
Wally continues to really distinguish himself, and quickly rises through the ranks of Maximum SEO and becomes Frank’s right-hand man and trusted confidant. Everything is going great with the business, and the clients are coming in left and right. What about Wally? He’s doing pretty well for himself, actually; but in his new managerial position, he sees “the big picture”. You see, Wally becomes aware that with all these big contracts that Maximum SEO lands, there is a LOT of money going into the company’s bank account… and that’s where it all starts. It’s nothing big at first, Wally is thinking “hey, I can make some extra money on the side by handling some of these smaller clients on my own. The Firm is already making enormous profits, they don’t need the additional revenues from these small fries.” So Wally moonlights by freelancing his SEO talents to potential clients who had initially contacted Maximum SEO. As time goes on, Wally realizes that it isn’t very hard to do all this SEO stuff on his own, so why bother working for Frank when he can work on his own for twice as much as he’s currently making at Maximum SEO?
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And so Wally leaves, simultaneously crippling Maximum SEO with the departure of his talent while empowering his new firm, Wally’s SEO, with all the skills, training, and techniques that he obtained from Frank while working at Maximum SEO.
End result? By teaching a bloke how to do SEO, you are effectively giving your playbook to a future competitor. When he quits his job to strike out on his own, he simultaneously weakens his former employer while empowering the competition (his new firm) with all the resources (intellectual capital) possessed by his old firm.
Non-compete agreements are the common tool employed in this scenario, but I don’t really feel that this is a viable option for small to medium size firms, as such agreements are difficult and costly to enforce: not only do you have to pay the legal fees associated with enforcing the agreement, but you also have to pay the opportunity cost of the time associated with the detection and investigation of potential turncoats. Smaller SEO firms simply do not have the cash to afford to cover these costs!
Similar problems plague both of my former jobs - mortgage lending and credit repair. The common factor in all three is the low barrier to entry and the virtually nonexistent capital requirements associated with launching one of these ventures.
I have a few possible remedies for this problem, but nothing firm enough in my mind to write about at this time.