Freelance SEO Things Need To Know To Succeed:-
- Use expert advice to level up the freelance SEO game, do what’s worth it, and enjoy a successful freelance career.
- Freelance work is often romanticized and seen as an escape from an annoying boss who doesn’t value it.
- But often when people start working on their own, they quickly find that they “quit 9 to 5 to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
- This can have detrimental effects on self-esteem and mental health, but it doesn’t mean that self-employment isn’t worth it.
- It can be a rewarding experience if to come to it with the right mindset.
- Learn freelance SEO tips to help to find more (and better) clients, build a sustainable business, and really love what to do.
- Let’s take a look at why so many people choose to be self-employed.
Advantages of an independent career:
- Mentioning a few cons of starting a freelance SEO business, now is the time to balance it with the advantages of this journey.
- When someone is autonomous, will have more control over time and life.
- It is not necessary to ask for permission to go anywhere during the working day.
- Even take a full day off of the week if projects allow.
- The schedule is the owner.
- Salary can grow quickly.
- 60% of SEO professionals earn the same or more than the US average while working full time.
- But growth is often limited by the years of experience one has and, in addition, it is difficult to increase the salary substantially within a company.
- It is often necessary to change jobs to get a higher raise.
- But when an SEO freelancer, don’t need to expect a “3% annual increase” in salary.
- It can be done faster.
- He earned a full-time job salary during his first year of self-employment, and more than doubled it the following year.
- That’s not a one-size-fits-all result, there are plenty of other success stories from fellow SEOs who decided to start their freelance careers.
- Plus, there is literally no limit to how much one can earn from becoming an agency for the freelancers business.
- Work with clients directly.
- It was one of the most important advantages to having a greater impact on the success of the clients.
- Better understand customers.
- Being a business owner, better understanding clients and knowing more about prioritization and estimation of effort vs impact.
- It helps to focus on the most meaningful recommendations instead of trying to fix all the SEO problems.
Here are the 10 most valuable tips that will hopefully help speed up the freelance SEO business.
1. Talk to other freelancers:
- No matter where are, there are people who have already been there.
- They have experience and knowledge that one can benefit from.
- Getting advice from these people can save months of figuring things out.
- Some tips on how to contact people for advice.
- Be respectful of the time.
- Don’t just send a direct message to the question list or something vague like “please help me.” If want to build relationships instead, people will be happy to help.
- Ask specific questions.
- The answers get depend on the questions to ask.
- So be sure to ask specific questions that really turn the needle.
- Be responsible for decisions.
- People to get help, not to hold them accountable for the business.
- So use common sense and see what works and what doesn’t.
2. Build the online presence:
- Be the best SEO of all time.
- But if no one knows, it will be difficult to be successful.
- Live in the world of so many voices on social media, and the voice must also be heard.
- Use LinkedIn to build a presence and use Twitter, start a newsletter, or do it all at once, depending on the choice.
- It is much easier to talk to potential customers if have a large fingerprint.
- Start building a presence on LinkedIn and Twitter a few months before leaving a job.
- It will help clients and students join the course.
3. Treat like a business:
- When starting the own business, whether are an accountant, a salesperson, an account manager, a legal department.
- It is not enough to calculate the hourly rate to have in a daily job.
4. Learn how to price services:
- Know that is a company, even if are currently the only person who works for it.
- The main objective of any business is to make a profit.
- So the next important thing is to accept it and stop selling at lower prices.
- Here are some tips:
- Don’t work for free.
- Use project-based pricing instead of hourly billing.
- Constantly improve and raise prices accordingly.
5. Learn to sell:
- When it started, heard people say “not in business if one can’t sell.” It would make me shiver all the time.
- Also, there is the misconception that if are good at the trade (SEO in our case), there will automatically be a lot of clients lining up to work.
- That is not true. In reality, selling and SEO are completely different skills and need them to be successful.
- Everything changed for anyone when they accepted the truth. Start learning how to sell.
- It’s not about door-to-door sales or sending annoying messages to LinkedIn contacts.
- It is much more subtle.
- As long as to answer a call with a potential customer, keep selling.
6. Create processes and systems:
- Many people say that they still don’t have a clear path to follow for an SEO audit or similar repeatable tasks.
- It’s okay if don’t have processes or systems at the moment. But it’s time to start building them.
- Building processes will help make the freelance business more efficient and improve margins.
- The processes are also valuable for the delegation at later stages if to decide to hire someone else to help.
- A process can begin in the form of a simple checklist that can be expanded over time.
7. Build assets:
- When he started an independent business, he simultaneously started creating a course.
- While it is not recommended that everyone do something as big as that (as it is exhausting), it is still worth starting to build some type of assets.
- He really believes that selling products in addition to services does much better SEO as one can learn a lot of marketing skills.
- Start looking at audience research differently, learn how to write, and understand SEO clients much better.
- In addition, assets generate passive income and also keep busy when there is not much work from the client.
- They can also become something bigger in the future.
8. Ready for a long trip:
- Starting a trip as a freelancer is not easy.
- I need to solve a lot of things quickly.
- It can also be lonely.
- It can all lead to constant overwork and mental health problems.
- So it’s best to take care of the work-life balance before it becomes too difficult to remember who’s out of business in life.
Here are some tips:
- Have a support group that one can encourage (spouse, friends, self-employed peers).
- Having a hobby that isn’t work-related (and ideally doesn’t involve a computer, either).
- Schedule free time.
- Set clear boundaries with.
- All of these little things will ensure running a marathon, not a sprint (yes, it’s an allusion to SEO).
9. Know the “laws” and follow them:
- Cannot work on all types of SEO projects out there.
- Cannot work with all types of clients that to approach.
- Trying to help everyone will only wear out.
- Instead, need to be clear about what to do (strengths), how to help (services), and who to help (types of clients to work with).
10. Help people along the way:
- Be valuable.
- No matter where are on the autonomous journey, help someone a few steps behind.
- Help in the way that suits them best: write a blog post, tweet the suggestion, answer someone’s question in a Slack group, and more.
- Just know that experience is important and that one day will be the one to help someone just starting out.
- Life is too short to stay in a job don’t like or work on projects that don’t enjoy.
- When to open a trip as a freelancer, one will have no limits.