How to be a successful freelance SEO
Doing freelance SEO is tricky for a number of reasons, in this post I want to explain what the problems are and discuss a few ways to become more successful. A few years ago I was a freelancer so I know the challenges pretty well.
Finding work
Finding new clients can be tough, building up a personal brand by blogging, speaking at conferences and participating on forums is the best way but using freelancer sites such as elance, Get a Freelancer and PeoplePerHour.com are also very good sources of business. PPH has a good freelance SEO’s page and also a list of SEO jobs that are often priced closer to UK levels rather than the more well known freelancer type sites.
Looking Big
The problem with being a freelancer is that big brands won’t want to use you apart from perhaps for certain specialist projects. Freelancers often get stuck with smaller projects which are twice as much hassle for a half the money. Also smaller brands take much longer to deliver results for than big brands due to the trust Google places in brand factors.
The solution is to think big – pretend you have an office if that’s what it takes. There are plenty of virtual office suppliers who can give you meeting space, a receptionist and a fancy address for £100/month. I’m not saying you should lie about the fact you are a freelancer but some clients need to know that they are dealing with a reputable person and having a nice office does make you appear more reputable.
Thinking big
A fast working, nimble & talented freelancer can often accomplish the same goals as a cumbersome and slow moving agency in the first 6 months but freelancers often try and spread themselves too thin and have a few small clients and no big ones.
For freelancers a single client where you can really get your teeth into the campaign is normally more than enough as long as they pay you a decent amount of money.
Get some legal advice
There are quite a few things to think about legally, such as whether it’s better to be a Ltd company or just a sole trader. You need to find a team of people to handle the invoicing and legal / tax issues for you so you can focus on SEO rather than admin tasks.
Focus
Maybe you are a great link builder, maybe you can do PPC, maybe it’s competitor analysis or viral seeding – whatever you choose to be your speciality you need to focus on marketing yourself as the best person in the country at that task. If people think you are the best they are happy to pay more for your services.
Further reading
No post about freelancing would be complete without a mention of Freelance Folder and Freelance Switch however one of the strategies that does work well is to hang around at the usual design / development / creative freelancer locations because SEO projects get pitched on there a lot and landing the work might be less competitive.
Post category: Search Engine Optimisation Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 24 comments below, or add your own!
Nice advice there. I think that many people are also guilty of relying too heavily on one client. I guess it’s a thin line between this and not having any really big clients.
Like your version of this, i mean on the topic on being a succesful freelance SEO.
Hey – you hav someone stealing your blog post
http://www.jatinmahindra.com/2010/03/23/how-to-be-a-successful-freelance-seo/
I’ve been doing freelance SEO for about a year and a half. It takes a good while of trading to actually work out the best way to make money and discover how to leverage yourself. Along with networking your ass off, you need to find other good freelancers to sub-contract work to and help you out with certain tasks.
There is good money to be made working with medium sized companies who don’t want to use big agencies, but I believe the best way to go is find a niche -like specialising in ecommerce SEO for example. I believe many SEO agencies will head this way too as the market becomes even more competitive.
I agree with Gareth here. Small and medium businesses might be tempted to use freelancers rather than big marketing firms or agencies, but trust is a huge factor here. If they trust you, you might end up with big project.
I think networking with small web design companies or other freelance web designer can also help.
I’ve been freelance for about 8 months now and I had to work my arse off whilst still doing the nine to five to get to the position where i could make the switch. I had to make a lot of “friends”, build a decent network and continually ask/remind clients to recommend me or keep me in mind as a referral. I actually went as far as offering my services cheap with the verbal promise that the client would make the effort to find me more work.
As a result, I have never used any of the freelance sites you listed above.
One point that I’ll also make is that you should never hinge too much of your income on too few clients. In this situation you only have to loose one or two clients and your income is screwed.
Starting as a freelancer is the hardest part. Once you learn the basics, things will go smoother and smoother, you will have a growing number of clients and your business will grow, easily and steadily.
I used to work as link builder, it was fun and i really learned a lot but as a freelance SEO .. I have not tried it yet.
Nice tips. To share one of my favorite tips, use a tool like biterscripting to gauge the results of your SEO work. Example, enter this command:
script SS_URLs.txt URL(“http://www.google.com/search?q=disk drives+portable+cheap+free shipping”)
When you have worked on a site, and it shows up the first page of google, you can prove it using this approach and you can put it on your resume. You will need biterscripting to run commands like this – but that’s free.
Hi,
I read whole article…i am agree with you. i like your all point.. whenever we start freelancing project,we should that care of quality work..
Keep updating…
Thanks
Swapna
hehe, I was thinking to start a seo small business and you article (I wanted to be bigger
) turned on the light in my mind.
As I was just guessing it seams that people are willing to trust more in big names (even that they’ll spend much more money) than in freelancers or small seo companies.
I just hope my idea will work.
Thanks a lot for the tips! Website bookmarked!
Great Post here this is something worth thinking about and this has provided me with some great informaiton.
Very nice article.. worth reading it. Thank you for posting such a nice post about seo
To be honest its difficult when your a freelancer to get bigger clients. Even trust might not come in play in this. Freelancers have more chance to find small or medium size based businesses other than big businesses.
You can think big to get big businesses but how will you win them over from bigger SEO companies who are already approaching them?
Nice article.. worth reading it. Thank you for posting such a nice post about seo
good article and great and new information for me .
This block rockz cheers
To be successful as a business in SEO – you do not need results at all. It’s all about perception. That is important. For example there are authors and ‘gurus’ out there that are pretty mediocre – but big companies hire them at a premium become they are ‘famous’.
Most don’t disclose their results. Their sad excuse: “We are protecting the client’s privacy ..” *cof*
They waffle about fad SEO terms, about data mining, about trends etc etc conversions, bounce rates and it all feels pretty good – naive clients pay a fortune for that. Then they force the poor client to have a Blog. (Oh stuff blogs we have too many already!) They force the poor client to twitter like mad.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching the charade.
> To be successful as a business in SEO – you do not need results at all. It’s all about perception.
Well, that’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is the complete opposite and if you do it that way I reckon you’ll end up far more successful in the long run. I’m a successful freelance SEO and I havent BS’d once. Credibility is the way to long term success every time. Take solace in the fact that the “so called gurus” won’t get any repeat business.
And blogs are great for SEO IMO! Especially with the way Google are changing and putting more emphasis on recent results/fresh content (the design changes that we’ve seen recently).
The real SEOs that take the biscuit IMO are the ones who claim to be great when achieving high end rankings for low competition, geographical keywords.
>The real SEOs that take the biscuit IMO are the ones who >claim to be great when achieving high end rankings for >low competition, geographical keywords.
Don’t forget to include those who also think they are “great” by boasting mostly about one central project – their own private blog.
When I first started freelancing I tried out a few freelance sites but I found it a real waste of time tbh. Serious buyers don’t post seo projects on those sites.
For me networking at conferences, linkedin etc has been the best way to find decent jobs.
Nice post…Great results can be achieved in SEO with changing trends and acceptance of trends of algorithms. there is not only one thing to be taken care while providing freelancing work it get added asset to your portfolio as this is just not one time job by presenting cheat sheet clients get happy….these days clients are more tech savy and intelligent than you think.
one my best statement : though its freelancing work is work… give ur best
Nice Post – Really Good Information – Keep it Up
I think the hardest part starting out is juggling all the tasks associated with running a business in general. Not only do you have to deal with finding clients and doing the work, you also have invoicing, marketing, and system design to work with as well.
I think having confidence in your abilities and the ability to learn fast in an ever changing industry is important to being a great SEO, particularly if you are working for yourself.
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