Hello, I'd like to become a freelance SEO contractor. Unfortunately my experience is limited to copywriting. What are some resources to learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Also, where do you find freelance work? Thank very much 57 💬🗨
robjordan88 Serious question, why do you think you want to do freelance SEO if you don't even know Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? It would be better for you to get a job at an agency to get experience first and have some use cases
r0nneh This
TallTroll Get on some (good) forums, and maybe get a job at an SEO agency for a couple of years to learn how things work. Go to some SEO conferences too if you can afford it (or get said job, and have them send you if you can't). If you're really poor, don't pay for the actual conferences, just turn up for the drinking afterwards, that's where most of the good stuff happens anyway. The other big thing to do is build a site or two of your own. That will teach you a lot, quickly, and probably painfully, but you'll learn more about what does or does not work that way than any other
Endda Any GOOD forums, websites, etc. that you would recommend. I've just gotten into this and am reading about a dozen blogs and a couple forums, but I'm not sure who to trust. Especially with there being SO many affiliate programs in the field.
TallTroll
Any GOOD forums
For a noob, webmasterworld.com is a good place to start. There are several excellent SEO users on staff as mods and posting there. They also have a collection of basic, but adequate tools collected for the free use of users. They also run the PubCon conference series, which is one of the higher quality conferences running. The whole thing is owned by Jim Boykin these days, and he's a good guy Endda Great, thanks a lot for that. btw, how does WebmasterWorld.com compare to WebHostingtalk.com As I was just recently turned on toward WHT and liked how so much stuff was organized. But would love to hear your opinion on the content, knowledge, experience level and willing/wanting to teach/share tools with new years. Thanks again for letting me pick your brain TallTroll Can't say I know WHT (which is not necessarily an indicator of anything), but I had a quick look, and it looks like what you might think it is : a forum about hosting, with a couple of SEO boards. I didn't recognise any of the names there (again, not necessarily an indicator of quality), and it doesn't seem to have massive participation in the SEO boards (WMWs thread on the G update in Aug is 735 posts at time of writing) I'd say try them both for free, only pay for what feel is valuable. That judgement remains yours, though Endda Cool, thanks again
kanonig The truth is, you can't give what you don't have. If i were you i wouldn't bother doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but will focus on other things. As a copy writer you can make lots of money. Please to offer your services whether SEO or copy writing is freelancer.com, peopleperhour.com and upwork.com And the great places to learn about SEO are lynda.com and udemy.com I will also suggest you hire a mentor to help direct you as well. There are also various online marketing forums you can sign up with. They will really go a long way in helping you. removemugshots How to learn SEO. Like anything else that is challenging in life, you can read/study/observe the flawless execution of a task a million times. However, more than likely you'll inevitably fail miserably attempting to do it yourself the first dozen times you attempt it. The key is in the chaos! Eventually you will do something right, at which point you will need to compare it to all the failures that came before it. This process is known to some as split testing. How do you expedite the process. Quite simply, attack bigger targets, make bigger plays, and when your punches finally connect, the corpses from your chaos yield better lootz. Be aware fighting Mike Tysons in the SEO world might sting a bit more and the cost to play will be substantially higher. Summarized: Trial and Error! wes_ly Follow a lot of recent SEO guides, check the backlinking of sites and see if you can find certain patterns, get some experience by practicing self made cases or help some people online. Get a basic knowledge of html CSS js jquery, apache and gninx servers, and like everything else its just practise and learning helps out a lot. I also did learn a lot about SEO by just asking people and building websites for clients or school assignments and do the seo for free till I got good enough to charge.
kittenmitten82 As a newbie, are there tools for checking back links? How would one go about this?
wes_ly These are all tools I use related to SEO: seoptimer.com, pingdom.com, moztools, screamingfrog, Ahrefs and SEMrush. I also forget to mention a base in PHP in my last comment, I do recommend starting with html as your first language w3schools.com is a good place to learn.
AnotherSEOGuy I'd probably suggest you specialize in technical SEO, if you could make that your thing, and go from there. Learn everything about it, become an expert. Some of the main things I'd suggest learning, in detail, include: • Link building (and how it works/why it works) • Schema/Structured Data • Sitemaps and everything about them • Robots.txt and everything about the little bastard • Proper technical structure of a website (hierarchy, how to properly use URL's etc) • Everything about redirects, from canonical links to HTTPS basics • Open Graph Master this and you'll either be able to walk into a $50-80k/year job or pick up $150-450/day contracts, depending on where you live/work of course. Hope that helps!
kevboleyn Hi I'm not OP, but i know most of the list but not sure how to get clients? do you have tips for me? thank you so much for this.
AnotherSEOGuy Hey, in all honesty acquiring clients when you're freelance (depending on your portfolio) can be tough, unless you're coming in very cheap with strong value props. What you might pitch for $500/mo as a freelancer an agency with a decent portfolio could pitch for $1k/mo, it'd make sense to them to go with the latter. What I'd suggest is finding a contract with a decent company, tonnes of technical SEO roles remotely in startups, do something notable there then use that as leverage to either pickup more contracts or clients to aide your contract, when you have enough clients to not have to work on a contract basis but have monthly retainers supplementing your income, offer your service to the company you have a contract with as you have with your other clients (if you're doing a good job, they'll take it, again with the right value offering). You can also go the manual prospecting/cold calling/cold emailing route, but again, that's tough and requires high numbers to make work. You're also battling in a highly saturated 'please pick me' marketplace then, rather than slowly creating reciprocated want for your service. kevboleyn Thanks for the time replying. I guess I'll create my own site first then rank it.
TheProph3t Copywriting is 95% of SEO. Trust me. Good Content will automatically beat whatever tricks or strategies your competitors will have up their sleeve. Keyword research is overrated, and probably only needs to be done once in a full moon to understand the searchers intent. If you can produce : • Engaging long form content • Craft some decent infographics/posters/images • Answer searcher's intent Most of these complicated SEO strategies everyone talks about is irrelevant. Links will come by themselves if content is helpful. If content is helpful, Google will know. Your pages will rank. Those days are gone when keyword density / exact match / 1000+ links were important. Most of these technical elements such as schemas, robots file & other mumbo jumbo are automatically fixed if you are on a content management system like WordPress.
BioMystro I was following you right up until your last sentence. Honestly, the number of SEO issues that come about due to people using CMSs. Technical elements make all the difference, if Google can't read your site or understand it then you aren't exactly Optimised for Search Engines. If you have the Copywriting knowledge then you should spend a little time on the technical side, you will already have some knowledge that is transferable :-)
TheProph3t Can you name some technical elements that make a difference? I could probably use what you know :)
peeksharmaa If you want to learn SEO, refer the given websites. These are the best websites to learn SEO. • Search engine land • Search engine journal • MOZ • Blogs written by Neil patel • YouTube channel named Backlink. io by Brian O Dean. To get the freelance work, make your profile on the given websites- • Upwork • Fiverr • Contentmart
