Areej AbuAli: My First Month As A Full-time Freelance SEO!

Patrick Rice: I Went Freelance ONE YEAR Into My SEO Career

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go live Introducing Patrick Rice In this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Patrick Rice, owner of Patrick Rice Co [https://www.patrickriceco.com]. Patrick has been in the SEO industry since 2018 and has a unique story in which he made the decision to go 100% freelance after only one year of SEO experience. How to connect with Patrick online LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-s-rice/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-s-rice/] Twitter: https://twitter.com/PatrickRiceCo [https://twitter.com/PatrickRiceCo] This Months Sponsor: BrightLocal.com BrightLocal is the all-in-one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. Its focus on local SEO gives you what other SEO platforms can't: local ranking tracking, local citation monitoring, Google Business Profile auditing, local competitor insights, and review monitoring - it’s all here. BrightLocal offers review generation campaigns, a low-cost local citation-building service, and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping-hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. The best part? It's super-affordable, with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white-label option to keep your reports professional and on-brand. Podcast listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer [http://www.brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer] and receive $75 in Citation Builder credits immediately.  Don't miss this opportunity to level up your local SEO. Head to brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer now. If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at nick@nickleroy.com TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. And today I'm excited to be talking with Patrick Rice, who has also been an SEO freelancer for a little bit longer than I am for going on five years. Is that right, Patrick? That's correct. Fantastic. Well, thank you again for joining us. We're very excited to talk to you today. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Real quick. Before we get into this month's conversation with Patrick, I want to do a quick shout out to this month's sponsor bright local, bright local is the all in one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. It's focused on local SEO gives you what other platforms can local rank tracking local citation monitoring Google business profile, adding local competitor insights and review monitoring. It's all here. Nick LeRoy  Bright local offers review generation campaigns a low cost local citation building service and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping hot leads perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. You know what the best part, it's super affordable with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white label option to keep your reports professional and on brand. Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer, sign up at Bright local.com/seo freelancer and receive $75 and citation builder credits immediately. Don't miss out on this opportunity to level up your local SEO, head to bright local.com/seo. Freelancer today. Thank you again to this month's sponsor bright local. Appreciate you guys very much. And let's get right into this interview. So first and foremost, for anybody who isn't familiar with you, can you give us kind of the elevator pitch of you know, who is Patrick rice? Yeah, so Patrick Rice  I kind of have a strange story. But essentially, I've worked at an agency for about a year, so really not not long. And then I went off and on my own. My boss at the time was a mentor. And he kind of mentored me to, you know, having my own company and, and doing things solo. So I've been doing that for five years, as you mentioned, and it's just been a roller coaster. I worked with a lot of E commerce companies. When I started out I was very much a link builder. So kind of link building an E commerce is what I'm known for. And yeah, so it's a it's an adventure. But I've been freelancing for a while now. Nick LeRoy  And that's amazing. I think you bring a unique angle that you're not a freelancer that had been doing agency or in house for 10 years, like I had and took that knowledge, you know, is it fair to assume you you probably had even just kind of scratched the surface? Excuse me, you know, you're probably you're continuing to build up your skill sets while you're venturing into freelance and figuring out the business side of SEO as well. Exactly developing the business skills alongside the actual SEO skills. Because of course, I was young and ambitious. So I thought I knew it all. But that just you know, one after another I found out Miss found out that sometimes the Guru's aren't telling you the truth. Nick LeRoy  To at the very beginning, like you almost have to have that false sense of like, I know it all to be able to go in. Yeah, I feel like 10 years into my career jumping in, I was kind of having the, you know, the pretender syndrome was like, do I really know enough to be able to do this on my own? And that was 10 years into it. So I say good for you. Yeah, I appreciate that. And, and now I know I also have the imposter syndrome sometimes and stuff. So it's, yeah, the more you learn, the more you don't know. It's great, though. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, what and before we jump into my my first question, I will just say, I've talked to quite a few people that will spend quite a bit of time talking about kind of like impostor syndrome, you know, pretending all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I've kind of come to the point where I feel most comfortable saying, when I have days where I'm no longer concerned, or that I'm not learning anymore, is the day that I'm probably truly going to be in trouble, especially in our niche. Yeah. constantly growing, you need to be Nick LeRoy  absolutely, it's like if you're not just a little bit nervous about that deliverable, or what you're saying, you know, that means you probably haven't thought through it enough, because we all know, it depends. So it's like really trying to think through it as much as you can. You're exactly right. Like, it's so nice. And that's one thing about being a freelancer that's difficult is you don't have as much as that back and forth between like a team and an agency, because it is nice, and sometimes I'll just call up a buddy call up a mentor and just throw around ideas. So Hey, I was thinking about doing this or I had this deliverable, what do you think? Cuz that can be so helpful to just run it by someone that you respect and that you know, that knows more than you Nick LeRoy  absolutely know, I do the same thing. There's still days, and I'm sure you've had this as well, and anybody who's in house or agency piezo, as well, it's like, some days, you jump on the computer. And it's like, you just kind of a brain fart. It's like, Why isn't this working? Right? Or you're just staring at a site? Or you're looking at the code? And you're like, I know, this isn't right. But for the life of me, I don't know. But if you send it to a friend or a buddy, you know, he or she might be able to be like, oh, yeah, Patrick MC with the heck's wrong with you, you know, it's right here, like, yes. Okay, thank you, like, I just need someone to help me out. So it's always good to get that second opinion. And without belaboring the point, I agree with you. It's like that can be one of the challenges as a freelancer. It is in it's a reason to build your board of advisors, as I was speaking with Noah Lerner, who you may know him on Twitter and stuff. And he did that really well. And that was his biggest advice is, you know, really build connections with people just ask to go on Zoom calls, you know, ask to do podcasts, like, get to know people. And then you can have this little board of advisors where like, Oh, I know, Nick is really good at this. I might, you know, call him up. I know that. This is the link building guy. This is the Econ guy, whatever. So it's really nice. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I love it. I think we'll jump into that more your networking, I think is one consistency across all of freelancers. But before we go deeper into that pattern, I got to roll back just a little bit to the very beginning. One thing that I like to ask all my guests here is just to give us an understanding of how you started your career. You know, I know you mentioned previously, you had a single year before going out, but can you walk us through a little bit? What was kind of that venture to getting into it. And if you feel comfortable, this may be a little different before like, I always love to ask people what were they getting paid the first job that they had? And then obviously, you have to share what you're making now. But I'm assuming it's more. Yeah, yeah, it's a bit more. Yeah, I loved I love my journey into SEO. And honestly, like, at times, I, I do recognize that it would have been even helpful to spend more time like an agency and other things like that, because you do learn a lot. I was really lucky. So it started way back, I had a really good friend whose dad was an SEO agency owner. And so he had an agency and I was actually had a Minecraft youtube channel at the time. And I hit 5000 subscribers. And I had one video with like, a million views. And so I was telling him all that I was like, Yeah, you can like post on forums, you can do this and that like, and he was impressed. He was like, okay, okay, this is kind of interesting. So he told me to come by the office, in just a small town in Georgia. And and I did in the story goes from there. He, he introduced me to SEO, he taught me it. And his name was Craig Lawson of click ready marketing. Okay. He's going but before that I had like, of course, I had, like, I worked at Pottery Barn, and I worked at like, all kinds of like, random jobs. But that was my first really agency job. And in marketing job, and I spent a year there, I learned keyword research, content marketing. And then at the end, I was really going deeper into link building with a content and outreach sort of perspective. And so when I, when I initially left that company, I was freelance, but I would still do some jobs for them. Sure. And I had a couple of people that I knew that I would do jobs for. So very much freelance at first, you know, building links here, doing some keyword research here, content stuff. And so I had a couple of years where it was very much kind of that you don't look, I have, you know, one or two clients of my own, and then a lot of freelance work. That's like pure, you know, like hourly. Well, now I do mostly just client work where it's on monthly retainers, Nick LeRoy  right. So a lot of people that are looking to just get into the SEO space are kind of debating do you need to go to school or not? Did you go to college? Did you jump in SEO right out of high school? What was kind of the journey on the education side? Yeah, so I jumped in, right after high school. And I spent two years in college but I didn't finish my degree because I was everything was going really well with SEO. So I was Nick LeRoy  can't argue with that. Right? Exactly. So I was like, I kind of want to put my foot focus on this, rather than, you know, diversifying. And yeah, Nick LeRoy  and I think that's such an interesting conversation. You know, I certainly am a personal fan of like going to school, I think there's things where a lot of us learn, just critical, you know, people skills almost. But when it comes to like, how much of that transfers to SEO, like, oh, you can save yourself six figures in student debt, and start making, you know, a pretty respectable amount of money to, exactly, it seems like, I don't know what college programs are like for SEO, even digital marketing in general. I feel like it moves so fast, you would just be way better off getting an agency job if you can. And it seems like you can get an agency job if you're willing to do like the grunt work, and you're ambitious. And then luck, especially if you know, some people, you can get an agency job without a college degree. That sounds my intuition. Yeah. Nick LeRoy  I've always told people that if I were to go back and get the ODU college over again, and it wasn't an option to not do it, that with SEO, I would actually probably go back and like get a psychology degree, like thinking about like outreach and how people react and share and interact with your website, and all these things that are so critical, you know, maybe I'm overthinking it. But I'd like to think that maybe some of the training, and you know, materials on that end would help us in our role versus, you know, I did two years of you know, General's accounting and then marketing and, you know, various coding classes that I probably don't remember any of it, but it helped me get the first job. So what do I know? Yeah, Nick, that's, that's very true. Because I have a very deep interest in psychology. And I was in college, I was going for philosophy of mind, which is psychology. But and I took quite a few classes in psychology. And and yeah, I think it's hugely important for SEO for for digital marketing. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I just think anytime you have an opportunity, not necessarily to read each other's minds, but to better understand why somebody may react or choose to make XYZ decisions. Yeah, I can just put you in a better position to react accordingly. So with that said, so I mean, you did this full year, your your friend's dad on an agency gave you the in, you obviously kind of start from the beginning ramped up pretty quickly. But what made you decide like, what, why one year, I would say, one year in a lot of people that I know, and I've had a lot of junior resources that have trade off the year, one year in, there's kind of this T in the road of like, do I like SEO or not? And I've seen people take both directions. But I don't think I've ever met someone that has said, I'm one year into it. Heck, I'm gonna go out on my own. What was the thinking there? So really, just because I'm an entrepreneur, so I had that in my blood. And, you know, you mentioned what I was making, and I wasn't making too much. Like, I was like, if I get to clients at 750 per month, I'd be making, like, considerably more than I am now. Like, I'm like, why not? You know, try to, and it's really about personality, because I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I just felt like, I could do it, you know, I felt like, whatever it took, you know, if I have to, you know, go into buildings and cold call whatever else, like I was going to do it. So I was very ambitious. And just, I really wanted that for some reason. I guess, just personality. Nick LeRoy  I absolutely respect the the ambition, like I said, you know, it makes me jealous, because I went through 10 years of working for somebody else before I truly pulled the trigger and convinced myself but I do think there's something to what you were saying of the risk is lower, when you're younger, if we equate cutting younger with your earnings, because a lot of people that I talked to, and I'm sure you've had these conversations, too. A lot of people think going freelance is, you know, working the four hour workweek and making six figures. So a lot of it's the inverse, especially at the beginning. So, a lot of times I do ask people, it's like, Hey, I'm not trying to be nosy, but what are you currently making? Because starting as a freelancer trying to make up a six figure salary, versus Hey, I make 30 grand, you know, working 40 hours a week for somebody, the opportunity to make that back plus more is significantly greater as a freelancer. That's very true. Very true. Because you can get Sleep makes six figures, as a freelancer, as you mentioned, it's not going to be the four hour workweek, that'd be a lot of stress, it's going to be some late nights, it's going to be all kinds of stuff. But yeah, compared to like a general 30k 40k job, the opportunity and freelancing is really big. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely, and like you said to a lot of it is just being able to show your value. And once you get some of these retainers, you know, even if it's 1000 or $2,000 a month, again, when you're trying to make 25, grand, maybe even 50 grand, it adds up pretty quickly, you know, you may not have to work 80 hours a week to be able to do that. In a perfect world, you know, maybe you're working 30 hours, or you're working more, because you know, you don't want to be capped at 40 5060 grand, you know, and I think for me, that's one of the parts of freelancing I've loved and hated, is like, I never want to have a cap on my earnings. But I'm also somebody that's very rarely happy with what I've got. So, you know, there's always a balance of, you know, how much do you work? How much do you play? A really is, yeah, cuz I've had that too. Just kind of being too ambitious, and then kind of stressing myself out in and working a little bit too much. So it is a balance, for sure. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. So Patrick, one thing I want to press just a little bit, because I think you're gonna be able to help others where I have never been able to, I get a lot of people that come to me, they're interested in freelancing, maybe they've even made the leap. And one of the first questions I get, and it's every single time is, how do I get clients. And for me, I've been so fortunate and blessed that I had 10 years of working in the industry, networking, I built my newsletter, I kind of got to flip the switch and start freelancing. I was very fortunate. And I don't take that for granted. But it makes it very difficult for me to turn around and tell somebody, oh, well just go back five years into your career and start a free, you know, a newsletter. So what did you do when you started? You know, day one, you're like, Okay, Patrick rice, I'm freelance, SEO? Yeah. How did you start? And what kind of advice do you have for people looking to start? Well, so it is difficult, you know, there's no getting around that it's difficult to do sales, especially if you're just starting out, and you don't have a huge track record. But there are, I think of it as there's really three ways that I've found to get clients, which is content. So as you mentioned, with like SEO for lunch in this podcast. So creating content is great. If you can do that, within an agency, that's definitely the move to do, you know, that's definitely smart, you know, build up some sort of profile for a year before you you drop out, or whatever. So I didn't do that. So actually, I wish I started creating content way sooner. But I really did it through the two other ways. I'm so content is great. And I'm publishing now on LinkedIn, and some on Twitter and stuff. But other than content is really cold sales. And so everyone hates that, but some form of sales. So whether that's cold email, sending out videos, so like, even this morning, I was sending out videos on just companies that I really see an opportunity, just send them a quick video recorded in 10 minutes. And you know, the success rate isn't high. But if you do that five times a day, for a month, you know, you might get one, so. Nick LeRoy  So that'd be it for a second. So when you say you're doing these, so this is so completely different than how I've done it. But like I said, I don't even pretend to say that I don't have an advantage from the things that I have. But when you say you're doing like these cold outreach, even with video, is it through LinkedIn? Are you kind of identifying local businesses to you and reaching out to them? Walk us through just a little bit more? Yeah, so I haven't gotten, you know, a huge number of clients from cold outreach, and I don't think it should be your number one source really, it can be though it especially if you're good at it. But yeah, so that's typically I'm reaching out on all platforms. So I'll if they have a LinkedIn, sometimes they don't they have a LinkedIn, LinkedIn is strong, especially if you have a profile. So if you built up a profile, you can connect with them, you can foster that lead, so you can just connect with them just you know, chat them don't pitch right away. And kind of over time, they'll they'll see some of your content, you can start some conversations, if it makes sense. And then you can send a video, which video worked really well for me, because you can show your expertise and the opportunity there actually is one. So that works really well. I also just cold email. So just you know Using tools to get the email seeing if they have a content, a contact area, and go in that way. So like building, it's like BDR sort of work, you know, like creating a spreadsheet, getting the emails, the contacts, the LinkedIn, and just doing it at some level of scale, because that's what people get wrong. And it's very hard because natural human tendency is do you do it like, two, three times, four times, and then you're like, This isn't working. Nick LeRoy  I can see already, Patrick, why you have success with like the link building side of it, because you're so focused on the scale, and finding just a little bit of a unique angle. And I love that you said that you do video, because I will admit, and hopefully, people won't do it here. But when people on LinkedIn, when they spam me, I don't think anything of it, just delete, and I don't move it. But when people send a video, I open it up 99% of the time. But what I am really looking for is to see if they actually make it unique to me. Even if it's saying like, Hey, Nick, how's it going? Yeah, I want to pitch you on my services. Because you know, what drives me more nuts. And you probably see this too, is it's like people are getting lazy. And it's the same video. And they're just sending it to everybody. It's like, Hey, I'm Nick, I sell SEO, I've realized that your company needs help. And it's like, yeah, like you got my company. Yeah, exactly. It's like, boo, you had my attention. You could have made your pitch. I don't know if it would have worked. But you got a heck of a lot further than the standard. Here's my list of links, you know. Exactly. And we get so much spam in the SEO industry from LinkedIn. It's terrible. Hopefully, I think some clients in some industries get less. We haven't particularly bad spam. I think we backlinks. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I was gonna say that SEO pie one of the features I paid for most on LinkedIn, if there's a way to mute anybody who says like backlinks or you know. Yes, exactly. It's like, that is that is a true category. But it's Nick LeRoy  well, so you're talking to us a little bit through that. So I'm sorry. So that's the cold outreach part. Yes. So really, you need to be if you're going to go freelance, you need to be posting on social media, and trying to figure out somewhat how that works. Don't get over, don't get obsessed with it, you know, just post your posts every week. And, and don't worry about it. Second, you need to be reaching out to people don't expect everyone to come to you. So you can sometimes get away without doing that. But especially if you're new and you need clients, you're gonna have to grind to kind of reach out to people, you know, call your network and, and see, see if you can get anybody that you know, and so that goes into the third part, which is networking, and referrals. And so we mentioned this at the start, it's hugely critical relationships or financial stability, you know, if you have, if you have relationships, and they can send you leads, they can send you work, I mean, if you have an hourly, they can send you a job here and there. It really, really helps to, to create that stability over time. So, those are the three Nick LeRoy  ways. See, that's where most, if not all of my work comes from it's referrals, or other clients that have worked with me that I've talked or gotten to a different place, it's, it's critical, but the amount of people as you know, it's like every project that comes through isn't necessarily going to be a great fit for you. Or, you know, it might be a conflict of interest. So just even that working within like freelancers is great, because you never know when you might be able to help somebody out. And it typically comes, you know, full circle. Yeah, I found it has for sure. Plant as many seeds as you can, and some of them will grow. Nick LeRoy  You know, I really like that analogy. I just like that is so critical. So we talked a bit about how you reach out to people why you went out on your own. But let's talk a little bit about your service offerings. How did you decide that you want to do SEO and link building, you know, versus, you know, SEO, local SEO and maps or, you know, any other angles? Yeah, so at the agency, we're doing mostly local SEO so I think to a degree I was I was listening to all the Guru's I was watching the, you know, reading the blogs, watching the YouTube so I was like, Oh, I have to like, I want to do this this big stuff with like ecommerce and SAS because those are kind of the two exciting fields. I feel like as a young SEO, so you see, like Zapier and you see, like, some of these big ecommerce websites just generating huge traffic numbers. And I still I think that was the killer. So I really wanted to kind of grow my skill set In start playing at the national level, Nick LeRoy  sure. I love. Honestly, not only did you jump your wine essentially out on your own, but you were also like, I'm not going to take you, whatever meat is laying on the bones, I'm going straight for the Porterhouse. Like I want to make these big, you know, massive websites, ecommerce, Seo was some of the probably the trickiest, dirtiest SEO you could get. That's great. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I definitely had some some, you know, obstacles on the on the road for sure. Like, at times, there's problems I couldn't solve, I had to get help. For example, I've had a lot of good mentors. So another one is Emory Rowland. And so he's been in SEO, you know, since the late 90s. So he's a tech SEO. And so if I have a hard question I like to call him. And so again, relying so much on your network is, is really crucial. But yeah, for my service offering, I started as a link builder, pure and simple. And so I worked with some agencies I worked with, with a pretty big ecommerce store, and just building links month after month, that gets a little bit tiring, I still do it for clients, because I've found really good results from it. And I think that's some of my competitive advantage is, is putting in the grind to like, find these really nice links that competitors don't have, and that most people just don't have the time to try to get. Yep. And so I do love to link build into into get some quality links that can that can really move the needle. But then I just kind of started moving towards highlight clients needed other stuff than link building, you know, like my link building wasn't working because they didn't have on page, or like, there was just easy content opportunities. So I just kind of started to expand my, my areas of a guest service. And then ecommerce was always a pretty big client base for me, in terms of, I got referred to a very really big E commerce client near the start, so like four years ago, and so I've always kind of, you know, played around in E commerce and, and so that's become a little bit of a passion. Nick LeRoy  And the one part that I've always enjoyed about e commerce and tell me if you agree is because the whole point of an e commerce website is to sell, it's pretty easy to be able to then show the value that you are providing, you know, let's say you're charging five grand a month, but you're helping them drive and incremental $100,000 in SEO revenue. Yeah, it's pretty easy to build that narrative versus if it's lead gen or needing to do phone calls, you know, there's ways to be able to kind of sniff around the quality of those, but you don't get that raw numbers easily. Yes, connecting it to revenue is so nice, you know, just connecting the landing pages to revenue to traffic. Yeah, that's a really nice aspect of E commerce, SEO is just being able to prove your worth like that really quickly. Nick LeRoy  Well, and I think that's one of the like, the biggest mistakes that I see from not just freelancers, but SEO is as a whole, you know, we all look at the very beginning as traffic as a success metric, because you obviously need the traffic to come for them to then have an opportunity to convert, which then means, you know, making money. But I think so many of us get caught into worlds where it's like, hey, I can only drive the traffic, I can't help the quality of the product or your conversion as a whole. But I think if you are a freelancer and SEO, who's thinking with the business acumen of I want to retain this client, you need to always be looking at success from a dollars perspective. Because the new thing that I love telling everybody is like traffic does not pay the bills. I love that. You're right, Nick. It's so important. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. So one thing I want to ask you before we jump in just going back a little bit is one thing I didn't hear from you about how you're getting clients or even from the beginning or currently is have you used any network places like are using any Upwork? Are you working with agencies, you know, kind of white labeling? What success have you dealt with? Those are do not do that? I don't do that. But I have in the past like so I've done a lot of white labeling type of stuff near the start. It definitely works and it's a great way to get your foot in the door and get started. Get easier clients. But what I had happened to me, especially with Yeah, with white label clients, is that then you don't have that one on one relationship. And so that client is actually Much less stable than if you have your own client, it's much less stable. So you almost should just consider it like a three to six month engagement or something along that line. Because even if you're getting that monthly payment, the agency is paying you, unless you have a really good relationship where like you can speak to the client. Typically, those engagements are much shorter. So like, typically like five or six months, while if you build a true relationships direct to client, you can have them for years. So that was the issue I found with white labeling, or any kind of like, partnership type thing. Yeah, it's just really, it's hard when you don't have that direct relationship, there's so much out of your control. So like, there was an instance where I lost a client, because that client left a web design agency that was giving me the client. But then, so then it's always kind of where you're like, Oh, well, I didn't do anything, but I lost his client. So right. Nick LeRoy  Now, I really liked how you kind of broke that out, because that's kind of my approach as well, you know, and what I've seen, and what I've told people before, is, white labeling is great in the beginning, in the sense of like, you're still chasing enough money to be able to pay your bills. And there's a certain amount of value to being able to do that. However, all of that work is a temporary solution, because and I'm kind of echoing what you've already said, these aren't your clients. So you don't get to use them as like a testimonial, you don't get to use them as a referral source. And you can't even make a case study because again, these are not your clients. And the whole point of being white label is most of the time the clients aren't even aware that you're either on the account, or that you're not employed by the agency, or whomever is hiring you. So that's the big thing that I like to say is like, a lot of people will say just strictly, don't do that at all. And I'm kind of a little bit more on the side of like, if you're going to do it, just be cautious of what the upside is. Because the other thing that I found is when I freelance, I kind of started over with my rates. And when I was charging, say 100 $125 an hour, agencies can pay you that. But once you get up and pass like $150, or over 200, you're gonna your hourly rates gonna be more than the agency charges. And there's never a mathematical situation where they're going to pay you more than what they're being paid, unless there's some extreme situations, which I've seen, but those are indeed, extreme situations. So Patrick, I think, I love that you really went into how you started this business, especially being, you know, younger at the time with not as much experience as you do now. But let's talk just a little bit more. And maybe it's just reiterating some of the things you've said, but people want to go out on their own. They're worried, you know, what were you post pandemic, at the end of the pandemic, however you want to call it? Like? What are your words of wisdom? Like, what would you recommend to people that are just interested in freelancing, but don't really know, they're kind of stuck in that? Do I go? Do I not? What kind of advice do you have for them? Yeah, that's, that's a hard one. Because, as a member of this, who been on this podcast, Ryan Derani, he recently posted, and he's been fairly open about this, freelancing is hard. You know, like, there's, you're going to be working late hours, in most cases, you're going to be working more, especially near the beginning, or within the first couple of years, you're going to be working more than a normal job, and you're going to have more stress. And, and so first, like, definitely be aware of the drawbacks. Like, if you lose a client, you might have to, you know, do cold sales, you might have to, you know, call everyone in your network and see what kind of work is available. So you got to be just aware of that. And then I would real, really, I mean, mainly, just the things I've said, like you can make a better income, and you can have more freedom. And especially if you're in a job that you don't like where you feel like you're spread too thin, because that's easy in agencies, where you feel like you're not even providing too much value to these companies. Then I definitely think you should, you know, start start considering the freelance route. You just need to start building up a profile, start building up a business case, an offer all of these kinds of things. And and learn the business side of things because that's really is going to be if you can speak well if you can articulate yourself and your offer. That's going to be really what makes the difference. Nick LeRoy  So the very last part you said, is so critical. And I think it's one of the biggest gaps in the SEO industry. People can tell you what canonical tags are, we can even go through server logs and go through each one of those lines. But can you build a narrative that someone in the C suite that doesn't know and almost doesn't care about SEO, so that they would understand and take the right actions. And if you can't do that, that puts you at a significant disadvantage to the other individuals that can. So I think that's just a big opportunity. And one thing, Patrick, I'd be curious, your thought is, I'm always a big proponent of telling people not to jump into freelancing, you're kind of cold turkey, it's like, keep your nine to five and try freelancing on the side. Because as you had mentioned, freelancing is not for everybody. And I know plenty of people that I've given them a lead, and they've checked it out. And they're like, Wow, okay, I did it. Freelancing is not my thing. I'm done. Like, I'm gonna double down on my nine to five career, because this is more my path. Or it's like, you know, giving someone just a taste of something that they absolutely love and crave. They're like, I need to do more of this. Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that's the right path, for sure is start started, like thinking ahead and play the long game, you know, like, start building more of a profile, start taking on like a client or two, probably like a single decent client and and see how you like it. Don't Don't rush things. But at the same time, be brave and take the leap of faith of when it's the time, right, so So as people, you know, you'd be surprised how many people like me, like Nick, like all these people on LinkedIn, and Facebook, they're really open to replying to your messages, if it's authentic, and, and jumping on calls. And so like I said, I've had amazing calls with people in the industry. And you can you can straight up ask them like, Hey, this is this is what I'm thinking, this is how I've been this is this and that. Do you think this is right for me? Do you think I should make the leap now? Or should I keep on my job and build up? You know, my assets? Nick LeRoy  Yeah, that's a great response. So I think with that said, you brought up Brian durante and one of the biggest conversations that we had. And I was just completely shocked that he wanted to talk about this, as he said, I may one day consider going back in house or agent, he said, probably not agency, but in house, you know that he wasn't 100% committed to freelance being his kind of forever solution. You said early on that, you know, you're an entrepreneur at heart. So do you see a situation where you go back and work for somebody? Or do you think you're gonna be doing some sort of consulting or entrepreneur, entrepreneurial adventure your whole life? So that's a great question. So I do think I'm, I'm building a company right now. And I don't really want it to be a typical SEO agency where you're servicing all these clients. But um, I am building a sort of consultancy right now. And I'm gonna stay on that path. But like Ryan said, I mean, I think the right company could probably convince me to go in house, I think agency is a, it's less appealing to me. Because you typically are so spread thin, right? Nick LeRoy  You're gonna do all your freelance tasks anyways, you're just not gonna get paid as well. Right? Exactly. Like, it feels like if you're able to get freelance clients, it's pretty much st similar to agency, but better. But the exciting thing about in house, where if the right company came to me is that you could be working for a company doing very innovative cool things that you might not be able to get as a client. You know, maybe a very, you know, like Zapier type, you know, big SAS company, or this or that active campaign, you could be on a really cool company. And you could have massive impact, and way low stress. So in house could definitely be an option at some point. But I don't see it for the near future. Nick LeRoy  And I think you echo pretty much my same sentiment, too, I'd be very, very hard to give up. The control, at least for me controls a big thing, whether it be my time or my earnings. But for every reason that you just said if you could do something really cool where you're learning and upskilling yourself from other smart people getting paid well and are not stressed out every day. I mean, isn't that ultimately what we all want if we have to work? Exactly. And that's a good point, too. It's like the education in it too. Because like if you're at an interesting company, there's going to be all kinds of it new people to learn from. So we know there's, there's definitely some benefit there. Nick LeRoy  Well, it'll be interesting as we all continue to move forward, it's like one year after another, the best part about freelancing is you don't necessarily have to do it forever, fairly low entry, you know, the overhead is, is low. And, you know, what, as our goals continue to shift, you know, so can the solutions to meet those goals? Exactly. So, Patrick, this has been awesome. I want to leave you here with two last questions. The first one being, for anyone who is continuing, you know, they're listening to you, and they're like, Okay, Patrick has convinced me I really got to start looking into this freelancing more. Do you have particular like resources? Is there any books or newsletters or anything along those lines that you say, you know, what, check these out, they were helpful for me. So I actually would say no, none that are huge. Now, there's, you should keep up to the industry. And you should keep up with, you know, SEO for lunch. Of course, you should, SEO FOMO. All kinds of the, you know, standard, great resources available. But I think that one thing I found is, you know, like, I've purchased courses in the pack past, I've watched a lot of people I've, I've over consumed. And so you've got to actually be mostly careful with that is that no course is going to fix your life no course is going to, you know, do this or that. They're all selling you something, you know, every every LinkedIn post, every Facebook post, they're all selling you something, even if it's just selling you on this person's, you know, career and like them as an influencer. So, to a certain degree, you have to tune a lot of it out and just focus on what is my core offer? You know, what do I sell? How do I communicate, and talk to your your ICP, so ideal customer profile, talk to them. So if you're wanting to work for Home contractors, call them up and just say, Hey, I just I'm a young entrepreneur, or a middle aged entrepreneur, and I want to I want to talk about your business and just kind of run a pitch by you, or just ask you questions. You'll find some people won't be about it. But a lot of people are very open to helping out people. So I would say that's been something for me is like have have some trust and faith into yourself and into what you're doing. And to your own notes and your own thoughts. And then you should, you know, you should consume content. But my problem was consuming too much content. And I think a lot of people find themselves in that area, especially if you're very afraid of taking that leap. You might have just read and consumed too much stuff. And now you're kind of all over the place. Yeah. And Patrick, Nick LeRoy  I think that is probably the best advice that anybody could give, and especially to that question who I ask everybody, ultimately, it's doing, you don't get paid to read, you don't get, you know, paid to learn. All of that is important. But I can tell you, at least from my experience, it's really easy to get into, you know, Twitter or LinkedIn threads into kind of that rabbit hole, it can get it's fun to get into chat GTP, you know, or, you know, whatever the newest thing is, but ultimately, you have to keep moving forward. And by doing SEO, in my experience, that's always the best way to learn SEO. So it's making sure that you're always kind of balancing it. 100,000% Exactly. Last but Nick LeRoy  not least, Patrick, if anybody wants to reach out to you get in touch, how can we best get in touch with you? So you can you can reach me on LinkedIn. Patrick s rice. I'm also on Facebook. I have a website at Patrick rice co.com. And, yeah, those are probably the best ways to reach me. And you can we can start a chat and I'm always happy to talk to young people, young entrepreneurs, whatever you're thinking and you know, see what's best for you. Nick LeRoy  Fantastic. Thank you, Patrick. So much. So I will make sure to put all those links in the transcript below. But again, Patrick, really appreciate your time, your story and just your your positive attitude towards freelancing. So thank you so much. Thank you, Nick. Yeah, I really appreciate my time on here. Yeah, thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theseofreelancer.com [https://www.theseofreelancer.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Craig Harkins: How to deliver to teams as a freelancer via a product mindset?

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go live Introducing Craig Harkins In this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Craig Harkins. Craig leads both the SEO and Content teams at Apartments.com. Nick and Craig talk about having a product mindset and how it can help you as a freelancer deliver more value. Craig has been in the digital marketing industry since the late 90s. While currently optimizing millions of pages on apartments.com, Craig has worked in-house for both large and small websites. Craig further shares his experience hiring both agencies and freelance SEOs. He also provides tips on how freelancers (or agencies) can provide maximum value within an enterprise business. How to connect with Craig online: Apartments.com - https://www.apartments.com [https://www.apartments.com] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigharkins [https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigharkins] Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigharkins [https://twitter.com/craigharkins] Resources Mentioned The SEO MBA [https://seomba.com/] by Tom Critchlow (check out my podcast episode with Tom here [https://www.theseofreelancer.com/p/tom-critchlow]) This Months Sponsor: Sitebulb.com Sitebulb has just launched their latest innovation, ‘Sitebulb Server’, which is like a hybrid crawler - combining the best things about desktop crawlers with the best things about cloud crawlers! Essentially, it gives you access to your very own dedicated cloud crawler - a cloud crawler that does not restrict your crawling with project limits or crawl credits. Your entire team can access Sitebulb Server, which means they can all work from the same crawl data in real time. Audit data and reports are all available 24/7 and accessible from anywhere, so data is always ready when you need it. It’s perfect for remote teams and agencies that need to collaborate on audit data or anyone that needs to regularly crawl really big websites. If you want to learn more about Sitebulb Server, you can check out demo video on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw6EuA7C8S0], or if you want to have a chat about it, book a call with Patrick [https://calendly.com/sitebulb-ph/sitebulb-server-chat] (Sitebulb co-founder) today! If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at nick@nickleroy.com Podcast Transcription Nick LeRoy  Welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. Today I sit down and speak with Craig Harkins, who leads the SEO and content team at apartments.com. Before we start this podcast, I want to say a quick thank you to this month's sponsor sitebulb.com [https://www.sitebulb.com]. I want to highlight that Sitebulb is one of two crawlers that I rely on nearly daily. Specifically, I like to use Sitebulb for my SEO audit deliverables, I find that the user interface is incredibly valuable for taking quick snapshots and being able to provide narratives as to why specific technical issues exist, and what the issue is. And I tend to plop those right into my audits and then provide additional context in the report itself. It's a tool that I rely on regularly and is well worth the price. If you have a very large website, Sitebulb has actually just come out with sitebulb server, which is a server based solution that will allow you to crawl millions of pages. If you want to give sitebulb a try. Go to their website www.sitebulb.com [https://www.sitebulb.com] and if you happen to be a subscriber to my newsletter, the SEO for lunch, go check that out, as well as I'm currently giving away two free annual subscriptions to those that are not only subscribers but pass on to additional members as well. Those details can be in the weekly newsletter, SEOforlunch.com [https://www.seoforlunch.com]. Thank you again to our sponsor. And let's jump into this conversation with Craig. Hey, Craig, how are you doing? Craig Harkins  I'm doing great today, Nick, how are you? Nick LeRoy  I'm doing fantastic. For those that don't know, you, can you give us a little bit of a background? You know, obviously, I had already jumped the bag that you worked apartments.com And that we used to work together but give us a little bit more information. Yeah, so I, I've been through the long and winding road of working for a company a startup back to myself. And then back to larger companies where I could play in the enterprise SEO space. So the last 10 years have really been on enterprise SEO, building out a local SEO and enterprise SEO strategies and working with dev teams. Fantastic. And as Greg had mentioned, you know, one of his skill sets is working at the enterprise level, as well as hiring and working with freelancers. Nick LeRoy  So I invited Craig to the show today because we want to have a conversation about how you can deliver SEO value as a freelancer, with a product mindset for both small and large companies. But again, as I mentioned, you know, Craig and I had worked together for a little while. And you know, Craig just has a great perspective on what to look for in hiring freelancers that can support such a large-scale website, as well as what it takes, you know, Craig himself being a leader on the team, but also with freelancing experience himself of what it takes to succeed. So Craig, thank you again, for joining us. I'm very excited just to have this conversation. Craig Harkins  Yeah, I think it's a good conversation to have. Yeah, something that I find when I've done freelance work in the past and with, like you said, hiring and working with a freelancers and agencies is understanding what is going to help the client the best and how to position that. You know, sometimes as SEOs, we can talk too deep into the technical and jump right into the weeds. And we leave our clients like wondering about the context and trying to figure out how it fits into their business strategy and what they've got prioritized for the next, you know, 369 months. And so the more we can come back and give that 10,000 foot level or that overview of, of why things matter and how it fits in the, you know, the better the recommendations are going to be. And the easier it's going to be to then see your recommendations actually get through the process and see the light of day. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. And I know we're going to go into this a little bit later. But the idea of, you know, if we look at this as client Freelancer relationship, how do I help you advocate for the SEO changes? I think this is the part of freelancing and like He said, even an agency relationship that is not talked about enough. We all assume that it's audits and massive recommendations and, you know, lines and lines of code to change. But before we even get to that point, you have to get buy in, which is communicating that only to your point of contact, but to leadership and sometimes even boards of advisers of why we should allocate resources and budgets. Nick LeRoy So Craig, to jump right into all this goodness, without having a quick conversation about your SEO career. I know you had talked about touching on each side of the industry. I know you've been doing SEO since I believe, was it the 90s? When you started Craig Harkins  Well, I worked for an internet startup, oh, they were one of the first independent internet service providers. And we had a web hosting product. And so I was managing that web hosting product and sales and marketing around it and said, Okay, why would a small business want a website, and then great, they want a website, they can expand a business, etc. This is still the early days of the internet. So then we had to also educate those customers on Okay, now you've got a website, how do you get someone to find it and see that so that you can generate business from it. So it's not just like, a waste, you know, so it's not a it's a real site, not just a hobby site. And so I actually put together a training guide on how to get search traffic for our customers, and then took that and did more with SEO, overall, you know, building out my own website, etc, for a while. And, you know, use that to level up each step of the way through my career. Nick LeRoy  And I love that I think a lot of people kind of forget, I mean, even in the 90s, as before, I had started, but this was prior to Google, like you said, this is just trying to get visibility, once you have something live, how do we get people to find it? Yeah, you know, I feel like it's a whole chapter of, I guess, whether it's Search Engine Optimization, or I don't even know what to call like, awareness optimization, but it's fun to talk to individuals is yourself that kind of progressed as the internet. Yeah, I have progressed. Craig Harkins  Oh, yeah, it's had massive changes. You know, now we're 100% on Google. But there were a lot of different sites we looked at back then. But it was like Yahoo directory. was a thing in the day before you had too many pages. And it's like, oh, wait, just like, a big page of links is not going to cut it for users anymore. You know, I do Nick LeRoy  still to this day, you're gonna spit out your copy out your jacket now. But I still kind of missed the Yahoo Site Explorer, when we used to use that as like our scores for inbound links for every site. You know, I thought when that tool was gonna die, you know that SEO was nearly dead. But I know, I'm certainly dating myself at this point. So it clicked one question, I like to ask everybody, when it comes to the first job, because there's been enough space for both of us, but you know, here you are, you're helping a company, you know, build out some of these websites and marketing them. Do you mind sharing what you were paid back then? Craig Harkins  Oh, gosh, this is probably going to date myself even more, what starting salaries were but you know, my first my first role is actually in sales and kind of inbound sales. And that was in the, you know, that was making the mid 20s. Sir, which is a little bit low, but it was startup environment. And then it kind of went up from there as the company got bigger, and I was able to move from sales to marketing to product management. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. And, Craig, I think you probably have heard quite a bit of people talk about SEO can even kind of exist on both sides. There's the marketing side, and then there's more of the product side. In your experience. Have you worked on kind of both sides of those? And if so, would you say you I know a lot of people like Eli Schwartz will say the money is on the product side. Just kind of curious, from your perspective, if you could chase one of those silos, Which way would you go for an SEO career? Craig Harkins  Oh, my God, I love being on the product side. I've been so I've been in both on enterprise level. And I will say being on the marketing side, you have more, you've got some more control over the ongoing content strategy and what topics you're going to write about. On the product side. You've got influence you have more influence into the site structure, page code templates, how the CMS how your content works with the content management system that your site has. So for me, the product side is great because I look at I want to make a change that impacts 10,000 pages, not build one page at a time. But that's because I'm, I'm in a mark, I work for a marketplace. Before that I worked for a brand. I worked for hotel brand. So we had multiple locations. And so you were trying to do things at scale. If I'm something like, if I'm on a publishing side, then maybe the marketing side makes more sense, because you're, you know, layering the topic strategy and building the content there. So I'd say I like the tweaking and the technical piece of content. And so product is is a great fit for me. Nick LeRoy  I think that's probably why you and I have always gotten along so well, you know, as Craig mentioned, being a part of apartments.com. And there's millions of pages, there's no situation and Craig, correct me if I'm wrong, where you're coming in and trying to optimize one single page, because that only moves the needle so much, we're looking for rules and you know, dynamic values to change so that you can make changes across all million plus pages. Yes. It's the only way to do it. And those that are listening that work with enterprise level brands are nodding their head, and some people that maybe work with some smaller sites, you're probably, you know, shuttering at the idea of so many pages, but I promise it's not nearly as crazy as it sounds, it's just more of a mindset you have to adopt. Craig Harkins  Yeah, and the other thing, too, is the impact and value to the business that you can show on on that side is huge. Like one of my, one of my directs, when he started out, he was going through like looking through the site found an issue with some internal links were breaking. And we were able to track that root cause that back to Oh, this one data system was giving us the wrong URL back. And so instead of going in and fixing one at a time, these links, were able to put through a code patch and it fixed 10,000 right away. And so that we were able to get to the root cause hit that and how it was affecting all of our templates, and so that, that type of impact. And especially when you're launching, you know, you're figuring out a way to target content that applies to multiple locations that you're operating in, you can make one change and have massive impact. Nick LeRoy  And just to kind of build off of that. And I think that's why I love the enterprise world so much is like you said it can be what is kind of considered from an SEO perspective, a small tactic as in fixing broken links. However, in this instance, if you are a website that's generating millions of visits and making millions of dollars, imagine what an 1% increase across the entire site does not only for your bottom line, but for your organic traffic as well. Craig Harkins  Yes, and that's what makes the value of a good freelance engagement to an enterprise. Easier to justify, is because if you're going to a small business like hey, this Mom and Pop florist, and you increase their revenues by 1%, that's okay, they can get one more cup of coffee. But you do that for a large marketplace or a large ecommerce site, then, you know, you've paid your contract outright there. So it's it's just kind of the scale you can work out. Now I will say when I've done some I do like when I do some freelance stuff off the side, I'll do some pro bono for some friends and stuff. But I like digging into the local to like the local SEO and the one off, because it's a very different. It's a very different game. And so that kind of keeps the skills fresh to see what's going to work on an individual location or an individual small site versus something large and the scale that I'm working on daily. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, without a doubt. And Craig, before I move on, I always like to make one analogy. I always think it's significantly harder to take a brand new site from zero to 10,000 visits than it is to take a website that's already taking a million visits and to bring that up to 1,000,000.5. Just For all the reasons that you're saying, Would you agree or disagree? Craig Harkins  I agree. But getting getting started is the the toughest part. You know, when you're entering a building a new site, or even with an existing site, using it to enter a new space, you're gonna have a ramp up period. And it's really, you've got to do a lot of activity to get that initial traffic flow going before you get all of those signals in place to start getting rewarded. Nick LeRoy  Without a doubt. Okay, I want to transition a little bit into our big conversation here, just about freelancing, and how it works within kind of an enterprise level company. As I mentioned before, you and I were fortunate enough to be able to work together, I had actually been hired from apartments.com, prior to Craig joining. So all the tips that he's giving on how to assess out, I may or may not have passed, if he interviewed me himself, he kind of got stuck. But Craig, I'd love to hear like, let's just kind of kick up like when you're looking to hire a freelancer or an agency, we'll just kind of label it outside help. What's going through your mind when you are being tasked to increase a site like apartments that calm their organic presence? Craig Harkins  Yeah. When I'm looking to bring someone bring someone in, I usually have a specific gap that I'm looking at. So when, if, early in early on@apartments.com, we were, we were pretty resource strapped. So we were looking for some more generalized help. So I need someone to I've got 100 things, I'm looking at one another set of eyeballs on this to work with, to help go through some of this backlog and, and figure out some prioritization, because I've got to be in meetings all day. And I still need to spend another eight hours going through tickets and prioritization. And, and I don't have that many hours in the day. And so, you know, that initial started out is very general, and a lot of generic work, where I'm looking for kind of one type of, of SEO or an SEO that can operate on those general like, here are the things that we've got, you know, let's spit ball the prioritization. But then we had the team build had some processes in place. And then then the work pivoted to here are my specific gaps. I have a specific problem I'm trying to solve either with content strategy, or with kind of a content workflow or with a technical analysis for rendering and PageSpeed. So at that point, which is where we are today, is I'm looking at the those different gaps and saying, Okay, I need someone that's just going to focus on this and give me some give me the recommendations so that I can bake that into our roadmap and plan. And so at that point, I kind of vet out look for people in my network, or people adjacent to my network, that I do that type of work. And that I can bring in. Nick LeRoy  And I think that is critical on both sides. I'll play the role as Freelancer now. And I'm thinking about this when I talk to prospective clients, or I'm pitching myself. And one of the things that I'm commonly doing when talking to someone like Craig is fully realizing that Craig only has 24 hours in his day, he can't squeeze that to be a second more or second less. So the ability of value add is what he's saying. It's like, how does he literally extend himself? So how do I position myself as an extension of him to help get all the things done, that he needs done in that amount of time? So I think with that, Craig, so when you're finding that person, and especially like you said, Maybe it's easier when you're looking for more about generalists, that's supporting you on everything in anything, but when things get a little bit more specific, you know, no, one, the technical side or the editorial side? How do you go about finding these contractors or an agency? Do you have a process that you typically are using? Do you like to use like your HR team and vet through interviewing, like, walk us through that a little bit? Craig Harkins  So HR team, I'm gonna use more for, you know, when we're doing when we're hiring a full time employee for freelancing for a freelancer agency. I'm starting with my network. Who do I know that has done this type of work before? This is where building those relationships at conferences and events like play pays dividends down the road. Oh, Um, so talking to the network, finding out if people have capacity to come in and, and give me a, you know, pitch me for a statement of work. Or if they can't, they can refer me to other people because I don't really want to spend the time, say, Hey, I'm looking for a freelancer get a bunch of inquiries, and then have to weed through look through case studies, do detailed interviews, I want a trusted friend in the space to recommend someone to me, because then that that's like, half the work is done for me. Because, you know, the people in my network will pre screen that for me. So I'm not going to get bad recommendations from from my direct contacts. And then it's really going through, not so much of a prove to me you know what you're doing. But it's a conversation around, hey, here's the problem I have. This is the type of recommendation I'm looking for. This is the deliverable I want. And then we have a discussion on, you know what, so you and I would have a discussion on what you could provide or how you see that deliverable shaping up? And what kind of time commitment you think it would be like how many hours a week you would need, in order to meet the deliverables that I've got. And then we would go from there. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and I absolutely love hearing that. It's network based, I think, especially for large companies like apartments.com, we hear so many stories on the agency or freelance side that you have to go through these crazy RFPs. And it's going to be, you know, Flying Cross Country to sit in front of a board of people, when in reality, like you said, they just need one person to have a good recommendation to get you in the door. And I will share a fun story, Craig, hopefully you don't mind this. But I had been brought in before Craig worked out apartments. And he because we had been connected before, actually called me to kind of say, Hey, this is the gig that I think I'm taking, I'm really excited. But I want to see what you think like you've been working with them for a while. So it was a way for him to actually use his network who coincidentally was freelancing for the company that they were desperately looking to bring in someone of his caliber. But we were able to leverage our, you know, friendship, to be able to talk about it. I think both of us hung up the phone, and we're pretty darn excited that we were gonna partner for a little while. And then obviously, you know, apartments Ico is in a great position now, because Craig is they're running everything. And they don't need to be as reliant on freelancers. Craig Harkins  Yeah, that's another. That's a great call out on how else you can use your network for you. Because in the job hunt, and in the job decision, being able to be able to have that back channel on what's it like to work with this company? Do they do they have their stuff together? Or are they going to be the crazy client that is like, well, I know that I told you to do X. But what I really need to see today is why and then your head is spinning on like, Well, wait a minute, what am I working on now? Yeah, I think that's where your network comes into play to you both for helping get you in the door, and also for vetting who you want to work with? Nick LeRoy  Absolutely, no, I think you and I had a very transparent conversation. And I think both of us from the very beginning, were like, this would be cool. We could really work together. But let's talk about XYZ. You had questions. I had questions. And you know what, and then for a while, you know, there we had a really good opportunity to work together. Craig Harkins  Yep. Now, I will say that it depends upon each team's budget and how they roll up on for an Enterprise site, how you're going to be able to get things through. So I've worked at another company where there was a pretty extensive process, like you said, on, okay, you want to bring a new person in the door, they've got to go through procurement get set up, and there's a vetting process, etc, etc. And that could take some time and it a lot of that is driven by what is the ultimate expected annual spend? Yeah, so I would say as a freelancer or a small agency coming in the door, when you're having those initial discussions, and you're putting your pitch together, get those guidelines like hey, what, what is the Signing Authority? Where do you what triggers that next review, and then you can scope out your work to me meet those needs now. Maybe they need the large engagement that's going to trigger that review and trigger the extra, you know, the extra processes. And that might be worth it. Or you may say, hey, let's break this up. Let's just give you a phase one and break it in and come in under that trigger point so that you can work off of what, you know, you're essentially hiring managers Signing Authority is, and that's going to differ from enterprise to enterprise, and even from year to year within the same enterprise. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, so two notes on that one Cregg. You may not even know this. But that's actually how I got into apartments. I was signed, and went through procurement to do a one off project. And only at that point, when I was in the system went through procurement. Could we have larger conversations about ongoing but it was because it was already vetted. And, you know, services were rendered valuable. Yep. The other thing I will say to Craig is, you know, most people listening to this podcast are probably shuttering. As soon as you say the word procurement, it might as well be the F bomb. On the side, a good procurement team is amazing. But a bad procurement team is even worse, I will say apartment's procurement team is not bad, not in my experience, at least. But I've worked with some doozies with other companies. Craig Harkins  It's it's all it all rolls back to what what their incentives are? I know some that, you know, they're, they're kind of I think apartments is more service based where they really want to help enable the business. There have been other other companies where it's kind of a, how do we keep the number of contracts low? Sure. And yeah, whoever you're talking to at the company, should have a feel for the process, and how to navigate that. And that's a sign that you kind of want to see to you, you want to see that the person you're going to be working for can can get through those gates pretty easily for you. Nick LeRoy  And without sounding like an advertising, there is quite a bit of this talked about in the book called The million dollar consultant, where they talk about making sure that your point of contact is someone that has the power, the ability to quote unquote, sign or bring something directly to procurement, as Craig is saying, versus and Craig, you probably even have situations where you have people on your team, they're they're allocated, you know, decision makers, but only up to a certain point. And then you know, they need to go somewhere else. So it's important to know who you're working with. Right. So with that, I think that is absolute Golden. Thank you, Craig, for giving us that perspective, especially at the enterprise level, where I think things are a little bit more of a mystery box than some other companies. But more importantly, so we've already talked about how you are identifying the freelancers or agencies that you want to work with, how you kind of vet them out a little bit, you know, and then what kind of that interview looks like? And heck, we even talked a little bit about procurement and how you get a contract. But now let's assume all that goes through. We're working together. And now I want to understand how do big companies leverage freelancers? And how what tips can you give these freelancers to help them best support you or any other enterprise level company? Craig Harkins  Yeah, I would say anytime that a company is bringing on either a freelancer or agency support, it's really to flex their headcount in a way that is that is more agile. So in order to get a if I have a need for SEO, and I need, my current team is overloaded, and I've got a need either for some specific expertise, or just more hours to get things done. It's going to take me months to hire that and bring in a new full time employee, it's going to be a much faster process to bring that bring that Freelancer in to supplement the work. And so, you know, as a freelancer, you're an you're an extension of the team's headcount to get things done. And so that's, you know, the big value is being able to come in and quickly get to work and start delivering. I know there in some companies, like some companies are philosophically much more aligned to if we have a need, we're going to hire for it. Other companies are very philosophically around. We're going to, we want maximum flexibility. So we're going to bring in freelancers to do all our work because we know that there are seasonal ups and downs and we Want to manage to the seasonality? And just kind of know which kind of company you're working for on? Is this going to be kind of an extended contract? Or is this going to be three months and out? When you're coming in? But does that answer what you were looking for there? Nick LeRoy  Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, that definitely helps. Just that mindset of how a freelancer can come in. Because I think to your point, especially with a large company, it's much about, I guess, there's two different roles, and we kind of played both of them together for the time we work together. One is just feet on ground, we need more people to work on everything, so things can get done. And then for people that are more senior, you know, I know, Greg, you and I had quite a few strategic conversations. So you already have a vision for your brand for your website. But I know that at your level, you don't always have people outside of your team that you can bounce ideas off the wall. So I know you and I have had some crazy ideas. And I suspect at times, that's where you see value in an agency or freelancers as well. Craig Harkins  Yeah. And, and it's kind of the joke that we always said, working in a product management organization, we would joke around either, you know, one of the big consulting firms coming in, it's like, all they end up and the joke is, well, all they end up delivering, is a PowerPoint deck. That is the same recommendations you already gave to the VP anyway, you paid a lot of money to be able to get someone else to say, but yeah, it came in for it came in from an external source. So it's not biased, and it's a strategic recommendation. Like I don't use freelancers as much for that. But there is value in that third party validation, and that external validation, and, and also in, running down, you know, all of the external sources for it, that I think is is very helpful when you're, when saved me is someone on the product side and an enterprise, when I'm building that case, to make those SEO changes, and map them into the overall product roadmap of all of the other product features that our needing dev resources. Yeah, that's it's another external validation to help build the case for the SEO for the SEO work. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, without a doubt. And I think one thing, just add clarity to it's not just necessarily say, for example, Craig and I sitting in a room and bouncing ideas off of each other part of it is, Craig already knows what a lot of these opportunities are. Remember, he's going to be sitting in these meetings with other leadership, you know, being an asset and advocating for it. So if you're coming in, and let's say you're doing a technical SEO audit, you're really arming him with data and recommendations based off of that own websites information. So that's just another way. It's not about just saying, oh, Craig wants to change the title tags across 3 million pages. It's Look, these are broken on this much pages. And since this day, it's dropped, you know, five positions on average, or something along those lines, so you can use your own data to support you, who is advocating for, you know, a shift in strategy. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Go ahead, Greg. Yeah, I Craig Harkins  was gonna say we could talk now, I thought we, we talked before offline a little bit around, you know, those those deliverables that the, you know, the Freelancer can bring in and how to deliver that so that it's most useful for someone. And so, I'd say on that. We've seen a lot of, of chatter in the space around, you know, don't just give a, you know, list of here's 100 things wrong with your site. Because then there's, like, one, it's overwhelming, like, what what am I going to deal with this? But she doesn't tell a story. And so working in a product organization, this is a, a bit of coaching I did with an employee before. We had a bunch of tickets. Here are a bunch of individual small things we want to do. And they weren't getting any movement. They weren't getting priorities. They weren't getting prioritized. It was like we've we've got them in the backlog, but Well, this product feature has priority, so we're bumping this ticket to the next sprint. What got traction was we took those tickets, we bucketed them up into a feature to tell the story of if we do this group of things, it all rolls up into one theme. And so that theme becomes a product feature within the product management and Dev organizations. And that has collectively a lot more weight behind it, that you can then get into a sprint and get executed. And you know that I think, as a, you know, for newer freelancers, if you're used to like, having having those tickets, like breaking it out is great. But group them up into themes, so that you can tell the story around why you need to do that collective amount of work. Otherwise, it becomes like changing our oil and or just we call technical debt, things that you know, you need to do, but you'll get around to at some point. And you kind of keep kicking it down the road, because there's not a big theme or story around why you need to do it now. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and that is super critical. And I think the one thing that we could layer in there, tell me if you disagree is always keeping in consideration the level of effort versus the level of impact. So like you said, that part of the the narrative. So many times, anyone who's doing an audit, I'm sure Craig does this, too, we have things like image alt text, it's not about whether it's right or wrong, I mean, our best practice as your images should have them. However, Craig will be able to know working through his product team, wow, this is going to take 100 hours for whatever reason, and we suspect the lift to be 1% with an image search. With apartments, maybe that's not the highest priority. So despite it being a best practice, it's not going to be prioritized. Or vice versa. You might have 12 tickets that are gonna require full on Sprint and pointage. But, but you don't always have that point available to you. So you have to kind of, you know, seed them as appropriate. Right. So I think that that is super important. And I think everybody should honestly rewind and listen to what Craig had said before, because this is how you're going to provide the most value as an outside resource, helping an enterprise assign only identifying these opportunities through, say, an audit or even one off analysis. But it's breaking those SEO tickets into different buckets, and helping build narratives. So someone like Craig can go to leadership and get buy in. And again, part of that being what is the level of effort versus what is the potential reward? But I think Craig, would I would love to hear more for you is kind of that last part? How do we as outside resources, help you get buy in? You know, it's like kind of evangelizing for the SEO channel as a whole? Craig Harkins  Yeah, so a couple of the areas that I find help a lot are one looking at how your client site is doing versus the competitive set. So you could say, like one thing, like PageSpeed, like that's been been the thing like, Can you can you actually one map, differences in Page Speed to any kind of decay in rankings or traffic or click through rates or engagement? But then it's a relative metric? So whether you're fast or slow, yes, you can be meeting correlate vitals are not, but how is that site doing versus their competitors? And, and how much of an appetite does the product team have to win that battle in particular, so being able to help your client in setting some metrics to measure so that once they do launch those recommendations that you have, and they push them live, that you've got something to go back to look at, and provide some more, you know, some more ammunition to your client on hey, we did this change. Here's what we saw, here's how we're now doing compared to the competitive set. And then that becomes part of that part of that internal story on, hey, I win, you know, I as a product manager, I went and got resources to have this thing done. And now we're doing better compare versus our competitors. So that's a story I can sell internally to say, the next time that I get another SEO recommendation and can put it together. It's like, oh, well, the last time Craig had a recommendation, we did it delivered and it was a positive impact. So we're gonna trust this next recommendation. A little bit more because he's already got Got a got a track record, and you build upon those. And really, as a freelancer, maybe you start with those those quick wins, like what's gonna require the least dev effort, the least lobbying to get through so that those bigger, more more audacious ideas can then come later as, as you've built up that trust and credibility? Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I really, really appreciate that you had mentioned following through, it's not only getting those resources and kind of the checkbox of Yes, we did this SEO recommendation. But being able to track what was the performance gain, because as you had said, the next time you kind of go back to get these resources, when you can use your own data to support that this was a really good use of time and resources, that's going to help you, you know, get those resources again, in a later point. The other thing that I'd love your opinion on and I know we kind of had dealt with it working together is at the enterprise level, I think perfection can sometimes be an enemy. You know, you never want to necessarily go into production with anything. You know, that isn't perfect. But there are some instances where you're working so long, so hard, so fast. 80% Yield is significant improvement. So would you would you agree with that? I mean, obviously, we never want to not have anything be perfect, but there just are situations where, you know, not every recommendation can be met to the tee. Craig Harkins  Right? And there. There are also some times where you've got to see does it doesn't really matter, like, image, alt text, it does it really, really matter. Now there are there's good accessibility reasons why we're doing work there. Maybe not, as great SEO reasons to do it, to spend a lot of time on it on something that, you know, is going to require a little bit more manual work than automation. And that's where you've got to make kind of your justifications like, like you said, getting 80% of the way there. That might be the win. Like how much how much more effort is that last 20% or 10% going to take versus how much gain you're reasonably going to get from it. And we've had to make that decision. You know, both of them. That's a that's a sprint to sprint decision, like, how much more are we going to push this? Right. And then every enterprise site has, because of the architecture and because of decisions that have been made in the past. Hundreds and hundreds of things wrong with it from a pure, you know, from a pure cleanliness, SEO perspective, especially the older sites, because they've got layers of layers of CSS and JavaScript and old code because they had to support legacy browsers and all this other stuff that you would love to get rid of. But how much time do you spend there? Nick LeRoy  Exactly, you're always dealing with a finite amount of time and money. You can only have so much, Craig Harkins  right? And you always have new things to take advantage of. So is there a new search feature? So with what's worth more cleaning up this this code that you would like to clean up? And probably the development team would love to spend some time cleaning that up? Just have a clean codebase? Or do you go after that new search feature? That's going to increase your click through rate? Nick LeRoy  Exactly. Craig Harkins  You know, I know what I know what my leadership would want me to do. Nick LeRoy  But that's a great mindset. And a great reminder for freelancers and outside support. A lot of us tend to work on quote unquote, best practices. And it's a good reminder, it's always about you don't pay the bills with best practices. Yeah, always move the needle. Craig Harkins  We're we're in SEO, because I'll say why I'm an SEO, I'm an SEO because I want to bridge that experience gap from a user starting a search, trying to figure out the answer to their problem, to delivering that content in front of them so that they can come to my site and have the solution. Every everything else is you know, just tactics to get there. So if one way of getting visibility for the user is going to be the best, you know, the most impactful one I have got in front of me if that's what needs to be prioritized and worked on and then you know, figuring in how do you To clean up everything else that you want to, you just have to prioritize that that's for the product teams to, to figure out. But most large sites have some percentage of time that they allocate to some of that technical cleanup. But you're just not going to do it all at once, you've got to be having a combination of going and acquiring more traffic or improving traffic. And then at the same time, cleaning up some of that technical debt. But you're gonna get it cleaned up faster if it has a direct improvement to the user experience. Nick LeRoy  1,000% Plus, you know, at the never ending list, we'd like to call that job security sometimes. Craig Harkins  There's always more to do. Exactly. Nick LeRoy  So Craig, starting to wrap up, I got two last questions. One, I'd love to understand Do you have any recommendations for aspiring freelancers, or people just looking to get into SEO, you know, specific books, courses, newsletters, or anything along those lines. Craig Harkins  So I love the SEO MBA. So good online course that, you know, Tom does a great job of giving examples of how you make those business cases. And how you tell that product story. So for me, for people working with me, it's it's a great way because it talks about how to make those recommendations and how to forecast and how to then report back on on impacts after the fact. So I think that's a great one. Nick LeRoy  And he was a podcast guest, so I'll make sure to link to that podcast. Craig Harkins  There you go. There you go. I'm helping your internal linking already. Really, a lot of my other stuff that I've been spending time on has been really around relationship building and team building. So I not so much looking at the other Freelancer type of work. But what I also like to do is looking at video replays from different conferences, just hearing how other SEOs talk about the problems and solutions, you can usually pick up some ways that like, Oh, here's another way to explain this. Because I think this is where, where we, as SEOs get into trouble is, we get really excited about the details. And we jump in and we start talking about, you know, the weeds of like, well, there's this canonical tag and, and the rel nofollow and and this reference and the people we're talking to their eyes glaze over. They're like, what does this have to do with my top line ecommerce revenue? So having you listening to the different coffee, you know, different conference talks on how to people explain this same problem and solution in ways that are accessible to a non technical, non technical base? Because then you can try out some of that when you're talking to you're talking to prospective clients or your current partners and see like, hey, does this help explain what we're doing a little bit better? I think anything like that, just to help you be a better communicator is going to make you deliver better as a freelancer. Nick LeRoy  I would agree with you. Again. 1,000%. Everything that you're saying is nearly exactly what I recommend to people as well. But thanks again for your time, Craig, I really appreciate you joining us today on the SEO freelancer. For those that want to connect with you or get a hold of you what's the best way to get in touch? Craig Harkins  So I'm on LinkedIn, crack Harkins, easy to find. Also, I'm at crack Harkins on Twitter, and I'm there occasionally not tweeting as much because we're in the baseball season right now. But yeah, those are kind of the two easy ways to find me on social and get in touch with me. Nick LeRoy  Fantastic. And thank you again, Craig. I really appreciate you joining us and always enjoy our conversations. Craig Harkins  Awesome. Thanks a lot, Nick. Nick LeRoy  Thank you. Bye bye. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theseofreelancer.com [https://www.theseofreelancer.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Areej AbuAli: My First Month As A Full-time Freelance SEO!

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go live Introducing Areej AbuAli In this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Areej AbuAli. Areej recently went out on her own starting her freelancing business Crawlina [https://www.crawlina.com/] in January of 2023. Areej shares her adventure both agency and in-house side and how becoming a new parent played a role in her decision to go freelance full-time. How to connect with Areej online Women in Tech SEO: womenintechseo.com/ [https://www.womenintechseo.com/] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/areejabuali/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/areejabuali/] Twitter: twitter.com/areej_abuali [https://twitter.com/areej_abuali] This Months Sponsor: BrightLocal.com BrightLocal is the all-in-one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. Its focus on local SEO gives you what other SEO platforms can't: local ranking tracking, local citation monitoring, Google Business Profile auditing, local competitor insights, and review monitoring - it’s all here. BrightLocal offers review generation campaigns, a low-cost local citation-building service, and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping-hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. The best part? It's super-affordable, with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white-label option to keep your reports professional and on-brand. Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer [http://www.brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer] and receive $75 in Citation Builder credits immediately.  Don't miss this opportunity to level up your local SEO. Head to brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer [http://www.brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer] now. If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at nick@nickleroy.com Podcast Transcription Nick LeRoy  welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick Leroy. And today I'm very excited to have our guests Areej AbuAli, who very recently went out on her own and today we're going to be talking about her freelance journey, her career to date, and also what made her take the leap. Real quick before we get into this month's interview with Areej, let's go over this month's sponsor bright local. Bright local is the all in one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. Its focus on local SEO gives you what other platforms can local rank tracking local citation monitoring Google Business Profile adding local competitor insights and review monitoring. It's all here. Bright local offers review generation campaigns a low cost local citation building service and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. You know what the best part. It's super affordable with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white label option to keep your reports professional and on brand. Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at Bright local.com/seo freelancer and receive $75 and citation builder credits immediately. Don't miss out on this opportunity to level up your local SEO, head to bright local.com/seo. Freelancer today. Thanks again to our sponsor bright local, and let's jump into this month's interview. So Rich, thank you so much for joining us today. Areej AbuAli  Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Nick. Nick LeRoy  I guess I'm super excited. You have known a Areej for several years. She's probably one of those Pinnacle y'all. And I'm using air quotes here, your online friends. You know, we've been able to work in a couple instances professionally, but it's always fun to see her in the industry. And as many of you may know, you know, she's spoken at conferences publishes quite a bit, you know, organizes women and tech SEO, which we'll get into all of that so much. But again, Areej thank you for your time today. This is gonna be a great opportunity. Areej AbuAli  Yeah, awesome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. So, uh, Areej. Let's jump in. You know, I'm kind of talking already, like, Absolutely. Everybody here knows who you are. And they probably already do. But do you mind giving us a quick recap? Yeah, who is Areej? What are you up to? How's life going? Areej AbuAli  Yeah, I think it's going quite well. I mean, this is my first official month of freelancing, which is very, very exciting. I've been doing SEO for the past decade. I initially started out agency side, I did that for a little over five years. And then I moved in house where I worked on aggregator sites, property market, and then I moved over to ecommerce. And then yeah, last year, I was on maternity leave. And I was like, You know what, that's it, I really want to do my own thing. And other than, you know, my day to day SEO, my big, big passion project is women in tech, SEO. I created that a little over three years ago. And we do all sorts of initiatives. So that's something that I enjoy working on tons. Nick LeRoy  I love it. And we're gonna definitely go into all of that separately. So all of it is just very exciting. But if you don't mind, can you give us just a little bit of history? I know you said already some of the in house, you know, agency side, but walk us through your first like, SEO job, like how did you get into SEO? And if you feel comfortable with it, like are you willing to share a lot of us laugh at what we were making for our first job? And compared to what we're able to, you know, find success with today? Areej AbuAli  Yeah, I'd be happy to I mean, I, I moved to the UK Exactly. 10 years ago, actually, this month is my 10 year anniversary. I know it's really exciting. And I did a master's degree in business it my background was computer engineering. And then somehow I kind of, you know, stumbled across this world of SEO through like, internships that I was doing while I was doing my master's degree. And the very first role I got was purely because I'm fluent in Arabic. And so it wasn't a SEO agency that were that had just won an Arabic client. And so they needed someone who was fluent in Arabic to work with that client. So it was actually a content marketing executive role. But then, after the first month, they switched me over to the technical SEO team right away. And my first salary was 20,500 pounds a year. Yeah, I think that was back in 2014. Nick LeRoy  Yeah. And people have now heard many, many times. But you know, when you take at least at the time that comparison you and I'd be making very similar Yeah, I was, I think it was $34,000 USD. Yeah. So we would have been very close by it was back in 2009. But again, this is one of my most favorite part is, you know, when we've all put the time into this industry, it's fun to look back and laugh at it. Back then I'll speak for myself only, you're just excited that you have a job and an opportunity. Yeah, so let's talk about your choice of going out on your own. I know you had already kind of told the CEO, you were pregnant with your child, you were kind of looking for other opportunities. But I'd love to better understand considering you've been in the industry, and you've kind of checked everything out the box, the in house, the agency, you've spoken at events, you've been published all the above. So why freelance like what made you say, this? Is it? I'm gonna do it? Areej AbuAli  Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I've been overthinking it for a while, maybe a little bit in the last two or three years. The last full time role I had was pretty much perfect. Like I love the company I worked with, it was an in house ecommerce role, I was setting the tech team, I loved the team, we were getting a lot of stuff done. And I think it's what you said, like I felt like I checked most of the boxes there where I knew I would probably not be able to go out and find the role that was going to be as good as that one. But then like something still felt missing. I think a big part of it is because of all the work I do for women in tech SEO, being part of a full time nine to five job made it very, very difficult for me to work on some of these other projects, except during my evenings and weekends. And I really, really needed the flexibility of just owning my own schedule and being able to go like, No, you know what, today's Monday, but that's fine. I'm going to spend all of it on WTS, for example, and then tomorrow, I can pick up client work. So I feel like that was probably the piece of the puzzle that was missing. And then yeah, the other point was, I also really wanted flexibility, like around you know, now having a family and so forth and not being kind of, you know, I think a lot of things came out of the pandemic in terms of commuting, and, you know, the the luxury of working from home and so forth. And I just felt like it did, it didn't matter how good of a full time role you had, you probably were never going to be able to have as much flexibility. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. I mean, I'm nodding my head at everything that she said, you know, a lot of people are familiar with my, my story. And unfortunately, I was let go of my gig during the pandemic, and the alternatives, you know, we're going back to work for other people, and I didn't like it. But as you said, just the flexibility and ownership of your schedule is so amazing. And before we even jumped on this podcast, you know, we were talking, you know, a resume is fairly new to this full time freelancing role. And you always tend to overextend yourself, as you're kind of figuring it out, you want to over deliver, which is normal. But the good news as I reassured her it was, it gets better. Like as you kind of figure everything out, not everything is brand new kind of back to those days that we were talking about joining the agencies, your as your entry level positions, it gets better, and not to drag on here. But I remember what you're saying not to compare my newsletter to women in tech, SEO, because you do so much more. But I remember doing the nine to five, coming home, putting my kids to bed, and then having to write it, it felt like it was such a pain in the butt because it'd be like two hours. On top of it all. Yeah, and to be able, I do the same thing you had case that like Mondays are really kind of personal project days. So I wake up, I write the SEO for lunch newsletter, I am a little bit more engaged on LinkedIn and Twitter. And then I jump into projects and you know, all the way up until Friday, you know, I try to be a lot more available to clients and stuff like that. So, again, that was a lot of talking. But it just to say I agree and I completely understand. With that said, so I know you just gave us the full list. Was there any one particular moment knowing that you were considering freelance where you were just like, Okay, this is it like this is what pushed me over? Or is it just like walk us through just kind of that that actual moment where you made the decision and even put in your notice at work? Areej AbuAli  I think probably being on maternity leave gave me some time away from work, which helped because then I could kind of sit back and reflect on you know what I wanted to do next? Whereas normally if I was doing my normal nine to five every day in and out, I wouldn't have had much time to kind of stop and think about it and think oh, you know, everything's kind of going well, why would I change it? I am Like, I'm very much into the whole, what do they call it a creature of habit? That's me. And, and I do, like stability is so important for me. So I'm very, very risk averse. So for me, it was like, you know, I had to kind of sit down, I remember I had a random evening where I spent several hours just like throwing out like a forecast, where I was like, Okay, if I get this amount of work, if I do this, if I do that, what's it going to look like in the year. And then once I had, it was almost like a life plan, which was literally just a very messy Google Sheet. But once I put that out, I was like, You know what, that's not so scary. After all, I think I can make this work. And I kind of gave myself this almost like a deadline, where I was like, give yourself the chance in 2023, just do it from January to December, and then see what happens. And you know, like, if it doesn't work out, doesn't work out. Like there are still tons of jobs out there. And hopefully, I'll be able to kind of see, see what's there. But even while I was saying that I knew in the back of my head that this, this is really what I want to do. And but probably I felt better putting down a plan and kind of documenting that for me to decide, Okay, that's it, let me You know, I really need to take the jump now. Nick LeRoy  I think that's fantastic. And I had a very similar situation, as I mentioned before, you know, I was kind of out of my, my job. But as I was talking to other people and getting some offers that weren't so great, you know, I kept talking to my wife, and she had known that I've been interested in going out on my own for years. And for me, in the US, health insurance always scared me the most, because my family has some health issues that we can't afford to have anything but very good insurance. But we did a similar thing that you did, like I sat down and kind of forecasted. Okay, here's what I was making. If I could even make half of that by, you know, six months in, like, how would that impact us? And it got to the point where my wife and I went, you know what, for six months, let's go ahead and do it. Let's set a goal. If you can make it, give yourself another six months, if you can't, then you know what, boohoo you know, you have to go try to find a six figure in house job or agency job, right? Like the opportunity was, it was there. So I completely understand that. And, you know, up until going out on my own, I would say I was not very risk averse, either. So kudos to you is what I'm trying to say. And that's fantastic. And I think that really transitions us into the next question that I'd love to get into is, you know, you had mentioned that you were pregnant, and I'm on maternity leave and making this decision. And as a father, you know, I understand that freelancing, and parenting is not easy. You know, each one has their own challenges. So I'd love to just understand, like, talk to me a little bit about freelancing and parenting, you know, what challenges have you faced from the freelance side of it, as well as like learning the ins and outs of raising a family on top of, you know, this new venture that you have? Areej AbuAli  Yeah, I mean, something I always like to talk about is, like, productive procrastination is kind of how I get anything done. Where I would, for example, have like, massive to do lists, but then I know, I have a list of 10 things to do. But there's one very important thing on there, but I ended up wasting time on the other nine, but it means that I get a lot of things done, but I don't really get the most important thing done. Now, I think what was happening like over the last few months, you have very, very limited time. And I would tweet about this a lot. Where for example, like my baby literally has two naps a day. Each nap is maximum one hour. So then it's like, okay, Areej you have two hours to get everything on your list done. And that was it. Like it's now or never. And it's kind of the same that's happening right now where she just started nursery, but she goes to nursery only three days a week. And then it's like, these three days are my three days to get absolutely everything done. And so I in a really weird way, I do think it has helped my productivity because then it's like, you know, I have no idea if I'm ever going to be able to get anything done on the other four days. But then at the same time, it's draining great. Like it's really, really exhausting. And I definitely have had to do the whole. I'm if I don't work on it today, like tonight at midnight, I'm probably not going to get the chance to work on it. So I need to pull an all nighter kind of thing, which made me feel like I was back in my school days again. So yeah, there's a little bit of everything but I, I do I mean, I work really well when I have, you know, tight timelines and I have like specific that kind of helps me become productive. So I think that's that's helped a little bit there. But uh, you know, it comes with its challenges like I wrote a LinkedIn post earlier this month where we were very sick at home. We keep getting all kinds of germs, from nursery of course and so you know, week I had like all this stuff planned out for my week. And then nothing, we didn't really get much done in any of us at home. Because, you know, we were really, really sick. And so that stuff happens. And I think I just need to become more accepting of that and have more like Plan B and Plan C in motion. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. One thing that I have found that being freelances, a lot of my clients in those type of situations, whether it just be parenting, you know, getting my kids on the bus or, you know, they're sick, they seem to be pretty flexible. Like if you're communicating and like, you know, your, your your again, just being flexible and informing people, they don't seem to care, which I think is, you know, one of the benefits of the pandemic. It's kind of humanized, a lot of us, especially with work. But I think there's a lot of us freelancers, that worry if you're not grinding, you're not meeting that exact deadline. You know, and it makes us nervous. But I think the reality is, is if you're communicating appropriately, a lot of people are actually willing to help and give you the flexibility to take care of family, which is definitely been your experience, too. Areej AbuAli  Yeah, I've already had just this month, two different meetings that I wasn't able to attend last minute, because, you know, my baby was either sick, or had to pick her up early from nursery or we had to go to an appointment. So yeah, just in the last two, three weeks, I there are two meetings that I had to cancel last minute, which is so unlike me, like I would not normally do that at all. But as you said, I think people are super understanding. And I do think a big part of it was the pandemic where you know, that kind of a lot of people's careers and work and home and everything kind of merged into one. And so it became I think it's exactly what you're saying, like people just need to be honest and communicate upfront and just be yourself. And people are always going to be understanding about this. But again, there isn't this pressure of, oh, no, you know, my boss, or, or this nine to five, or I had to go in the office today or so forth. Like at least there's this flexibility of, it's fine. If I didn't get it done today at noon, like I can get it done in the evening if I need to. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. And the reality is, if you're doing good work, the timeline is less important than the quality of the results that you're getting. Now, again, the caveat, and I'm sure you would agree to this is you have to communicate like missing a deadline. It's not okay. It's about being able to say, here's what happened, you know, this is what I'm planning on doing it, please let me know if this is going to cause significant issues. And at that point, you know, I don't think I've ever had somebody tell me, you know, this is not okay. And if that were the case, as you know, it's like, okay, you pull the all nighter, or you figure it out, because it's not waiting until the deadlines missed before you're communicating. Yep. Batteries. One thing I just want to commend you and I did this offline is one of my personal biggest regrets from my career is I worked so many hours when my children were very little, and I missed so much time. And for me, I always had, you know, justified it because I was making the income and my wife was a stay at home mom at the time. But again, looking back at now, I really miss that I missed all that. So part of the biggest benefits for me, freelancing is I'm so much more available. And I see my kids all the time. And the fact that you have, you know, you're tackling two challenges of the time. It's like you're a mother, and you're parenting, and that's hard. But you're also building this freelance business that not only is really difficult in itself, but it allows you the flexibility to be available for your kids. So no particular question there. But just want to commend you for that. I think that that's amazing. And, and that a lot of people, you know, have that opportunity. So thanks for you inspiring a lot of us. And I know there's people that are listening to this and saying, I don't know how she's doing this, but I think that your family is going to be exceptionally thankful to you for that as well. Areej AbuAli  Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for saying that. I really appreciate it. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. So let's jump into we talked a little bit about women in tech, SEO. You know, it's something that, you know, is near and dear to my heart. I think there's a lot of opportunity in this industry for you know, women to succeed and and they don't get the right opportunities. I mean, as a middle aged white man, I realized the privilege that I have in this industry and I try to be an advocate where and when I can and and part of it is pushing the women in tech SEO whether it's an open SEO for lunch sponsorship slot or a you know, tweet, but can you share with us, you know, how you start it, you know, the purpose behind it, you know, I just think it's, it's very special. So I'd love to hear more from you about that. Yeah, definitely. Areej AbuAli  I mean, a little bit over three years now. I think it's going to be our four year anniversary. dismay, which is so exciting. And you know, like very selfish reasons to have why I started it. To be honest, it was kind of a time where I wasn't feeling super inspired to being an SEO anymore. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And it was very difficult to network and meet other people and kind of just never really felt represented, like in the different conferences you went to. And so yeah, I just figured, okay, why don't we start a group of you know, women who are interested in tech SEO, doesn't matter if they're beginners or advanced. They've been doing it for a while. And we can see where it goes from there. And, yeah, it just, it grew so quickly, way, way, way quicker than I thought it would. And we have so many initiatives that are running all the time now, including, you know, our workshops and podcasts and newsletter and mentorship program and our annual festival. And it's just, it's just been great fun. And there's a little bit over 5000 of us now, which is wow. But yeah, it's you know, it's just, it's made me feel very inspired and motivated to continue being an SEO just being surrounded by all these brilliant women. And it's just, it's a safe space for us to ask as many questions as we want without feeling judged. And everyone there is like super kind and helpful to one another. And we just support each other by like amplifying all the awesome work that we do. And yeah, I really appreciate like all the support you give us, I always send you a random email here and there and be like, Oh, could you please feature, this project or this initiative? So thank you for doing that and amplifying us to your audience as well. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, of course, like I said, being aware of, you know, the benefits, and the privileges that I have, you know, I think the best thing that I can do, at least from my perspective is one being aware of it, but also being an advocate. You know, when I, you know, previously when I was leading teams, you know, any women that were joining the team, your group was one of the first things that I had recommended, it's like, this is an industry that is very amazing, but there are corners of the industry that can be very toxic. And as you had said, you know, obviously I am not in the group itself. But everybody that I have talked to has only said amazing things and what you have shared, and even how you are very aggressive to keeping the peace in your group. I've heard stories from you and other people that I've talked to about, you will make sure that if someone's causing trouble that they are either represented or removed from the group to allow for that safe area. And I just think that's amazing. And I don't think that has ever been replicated to the larger SEO space. So it's amazing to hear that, that it exists. And I'll just continue to always be an advocate for the group. Areej AbuAli  So yeah, no, it's really it's really fun. And we're, we're actually planning our first US Festival this year, which is exciting. And we're gonna hopefully launch we're more things soon about that. But yeah, I'm really, really excited about that. Nick LeRoy  Can you share a little bit so one of the tweets that I love that you had read about? You're saying, I think this is one of your events in the UK, you had said you're really terrified because you had to put a deposit down for like the smallest room in the EU. And you didn't know if 10 people would show up. And now you just booked like the largest room in the venue? Can you just share a little bit about that? Like, I just thought, yeah, Areej AbuAli  our first festival in London was in 2020, a week before lockdown. And of course, I'd started planning it like nine months in advance, and then a few weeks before it was going to run. I was like, oh, no, I really hope it doesn't get canceled. And thankfully it did not. But yeah, back then I think the smallest room they had, I had to agree a minimum of 100 people and I was like that is a lot of people, I have no idea whether I'm going to manage to get 100 people or not. And, and just like that, I think within um, within maybe, I don't know, three, four weeks, we sold the 100 tickets. And I was like, Oh no, now we have a huge waitlist and I had to go to a bigger room. But I wasn't ready to commit to more than 150 I think in that first one because I was just really scared. And this time around, we were going for a room that I think can hold up to 1000 Potentially. And what I'm not going more than like I was like I'm not going to do more than 500. Like that's my absolute max I logistically I just want to be able to breathe and not stress out. But yeah, we have. I'm not I'm not afraid of like minimum numbers anymore, which is, which is quite nice. And we have a lot of members from the US, which is why this again has been like on my to do list for ages. But I'd love to start introducing it over there as well. Nick LeRoy  So that's fantastic. And as I said there's quite a bit of women in my network and I'm always telling them to join and I've had people tell me oh my gosh, did you know that a region's come into the US together? Do it. I was like, that's amazing. Like, we need to figure out some way where you can slack the notes because like, it seems like Areej AbuAli  I'm just as terrified about the US one because it's my first. So I'm gonna I'll do my same tactic where I'll start small, the first time around until I kind of get familiar with it, and then I'll take it from there. But yeah, I love doing these festivals, I get to meet so many of the brilliant community members like in person, and it's just so nice. And it's like a nice celebration of our community. Nick LeRoy  And that's fantastic. Again, I love everything that you do with the community, and I've only heard amazing things. So thank you for putting it on. And you know, being an inspiration to the community. You know, I know a lot of us really appreciate that. So thank you. So kind of wrapping up here a little bit going back to the freelance life. Can you walk us through any recommendations you have for aspiring freelancers, whether it be like a book, a course a newsletter, individual people that follow you, I'll make sure to link or, you know, tag people that you find valuable. Areej AbuAli  I think one thing to say is like when I and that's maybe takes us back a little like when I did the whole life plan and all of that, one of the first things I did was actually like out to, you know, people who really inspire me in industry. And ask them if you know if they'd be willing to just jump on like a quick call and kind of give just kind of to hear from them firsthand and to get some advice from them. So you know, some of these people included like a leader, Hannah Smith, I chatted a lot to paddy Mugen. So yeah, quite a few people, Tori, Tori Gray from the great company. And these calls were really, really, really helpful. Because, you know, I got to kind of voice some of my concerns and hear from them some of the challenges that they had when they first started, but then also, like, feel inspired about, you know, how it can feel a bit scary initially, but then how it is down the line. I've read every single one of your SEO freelancer, emails and additions. Like I just, it's really nice to kind of hear from a lot of different, you know, folks from around the world, like how it was for them. So yeah, I think that that's, you know, part of the community is really helpful, where you can just kind of everyone is very, very helpful. And so I definitely recommend that like, reach out to people in your circles and your networks and just ask for a quick call. And they you'll be surprised by how valuable some of the advices. So yeah, that's, that's probably one of the things that I found most helpful. Nick LeRoy  And that's amazing. I had very similar experience to grant I kind of jumped into the deep end, and then talk to people. But again, when we talked about this industry, you know, there might be some rough patches or corners on it. But when you get the right people, it's amazing. I know you and I have talked offline about several things. And you know, I bounce ideas off of you bounce ideas off from other people. And so if people are willing to share, so I love that you just recommend you're reaching out building that network. It's, it's invaluable. Definitely. But I really appreciate your time and sharing your story with us. Can you share with the audience how people can get a hold of you and connect with you online? Areej AbuAli  Yeah, definitely. So my newly launched branded website coralina.com. And you can also find me on Twitter, Areej, underscore abuali, and I'm on LinkedIn, as well as regionally. So yeah, please do reach out. I'd love to hear from you. And if you're someone who is currently, you know, thinking of doing your own thing, or going freelance full time, like feel free to reach out with questions like, I'd be more than happy to give back just like others have helped me and supported me. So I'd love to do that as well. Nick LeRoy  Thank you so much. And we'll make sure that put all those links in the transcript below, and Areej, again, can't thank you enough for joining us and we will see everybody on the next episode of the SEO freelancer. bye Thanks This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theseofreelancer.com [https://www.theseofreelancer.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Nick Jordan: How I drove 1M+ impressions on LinkedIn

In this months SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Nick Jordan. Nick, is the CEO and co-founder of Workello and Content Distribution. He’s also been in freelance consulting roles and is actively working on building out his (and his teams) social media presence. In this podcast we talk about tactics and approaches he’s taken to drive over 1 million impressions on LinkedIn. How to connect with Nick Jordan online Contentdistribution.com [https://contentdistribution.com/] + Workello [https://workello.com/] Connect with Nick on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickfromseattle/] Connect with Nick on Twitter [https://twitter.com/nickfromseattle] This Months Sponsor: Sitebulb.com I am thanksful to all my sponsors. They allow me to spend time coordinating and recording these podcasts with my guests. It’s especially fun to work with companies that I’m already a big fan of, in this case Site Bulb. Sitebulb.com is one of my top SEO tools when it comes to auditing my clients websites. Not only do you get the traditional findings of running a crawl but Sitebulb does a great job of explaining the risk/reward behind each recommendation. Want to try Sitebulb? Get your 14-day free trial today [https://sitebulb.com/?SEOFreelancer]. If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at nick@nickleroy.com Podcast Transcription Nick LeRoy  welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. And today I am talking with Nick Jordan, who is going to give us a background on his SEO career freelancing experiences that he's had, as well as how he's driven over a million impressions on LinkedIn. Before we jump into this month's episode, I want to thank our sponsor site, Sitebulb. So Sitebulb is a tool that I personally use for a lot of my clients and my auditing initiatives. It's a tool that I actually consider an SEO tax that I'm willing to pay and happily pay every single year, the Sitebulb team has made it incredibly easy to use this tool, not only just to crawl the site itself, but making sure that you understand why the things that are being called out as an issue are actually an issue. So it doesn't matter if you're running a crawl on a 10 page site. Or if you're in the progress of migrating million pages over to a new domain site, Sitebulb has got your back. So if you haven't already, go ahead and go to site sitebulb.com. And download the tool, you get a 14 day free trial, and put Sitebulb to the test. It's a tool that I rely on regularly. And I think you will too. Just give it a shot. It's sitebulb.com. Thanks again, Sitebulb for sponsoring this episode. And let's jump into this month's episode with Nick Jordan. Nick Jordan  Hey, Nick, super excited to be here and share. You know, what I've learned growing. My career is is SEO consultant. And I'm really hoping your audience can walk away with some actionable tactical things I can start implementing tomorrow. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I think this is going to be a very exciting conversation here. Jumping straight in there. For those that aren't familiar with you. Can you give us a little bit of an introduction? Yeah. What's your name? Who you are? What are you up to these days? Nick Jordan  Yeah, for sure. My name is Nick Jordan, I started an SEO agency called content distribution.com. But in the beginning was just me. Three, four years later, I've launched a couple of SEO products workout.com and cluster AI, I grew my agency from one to 45 writers and editors, we published more than 10,000 pages. And we took a project from zero to 1.5 million organics a month, enabling them to raise at a $210 million valuation. But I didn't, I didn't end up there, I was asked to consult just by myself, you know, in the beginning. Nick LeRoy  And that's why I was so excited to have you on the show, it just kind of shows that, you know, freelancing can potentially be a starting point, and bringing it to where you are today. And it can be a career all on its own. And as some people know, it can also be, you know, just an additional opportunity on top of the nine to five. So I think with that, Nick, I'd love to hear from you. Like, where did you start with your SEO career? Like, you know, can you just go a little bit of a background? Nick Jordan  Yeah, you know, I would say it's it's a non traditional career, but maybe it's not so much. So actually had a whole career outside of SEO, I got into SEO, only about five or six years ago. Before that I was a I was a sales guy. And I'm from Seattle. If you look me up on social, whether it's LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook, Nick from Seattle, is is my handle. Nick LeRoy  Hopefully you don't move anytime soon, right? Nick Jordan  The AI to AI future proofed it. So I could be Nick from Seattle and Europe. I could be Nick from Seattle, in Asia, from Seattle and Miami. Nick LeRoy  I like it. So walk us through what was the first job that you got that was relevant to SEO, I know you had said you kind of started in a sales position, which I suspect gave you quite a benefit to be able to quote unquote, sell yourself and your SEO services, but walk us through a little bit. What that was like, Yeah, that's Nick Jordan  a that's very true. So being from Seattle, it doesn't matter what you do, you'll end up in tech. And so that's what happened to me is I spent 15 years or 10 years, something like that building. You know, building early stage SaaS companies, sometimes for myself, sometimes for other people. And I joined this organization, we grew to 200 employees and for years bootstrapped. And I worked at incredible scale with companies like Rackspace and GoDaddy. And I looked at my skill set, and I realized I had built an enterprise business development skill set. And as someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, I realized, well, it's not a great skill set to have because I can't build enterprise anything, can't build an enterprise product can't build enterprise support team can build an enterprise legal team. And so I was like, Man, I Gotta learn this marketing stuff, it's gonna better service me and kind of the goals and aspirations, I have to travel the world. I'm currently in Europe, where I've been living for the last couple years. And as a sales guy, you gotta live on timezone, your value stops when you, you know, hang up the phone and log off for the day. So I was like, I gotta learn marketing. And it's going to be SEO. And I, I quit my super cushy, high status tech job making 100,000 a year to slang a local SEO services for a local SEO agency that my buddy was running for a bit of a wage, because I knew that in order to sell SEO, it's a consultative sale, you have to know what you're talking about, in order to know what you're talking about, I had to learn it. So I was like, I'm gonna sell it. But that's going to drive the learning. And that's under what ultimately what ended up happening. Nick LeRoy  That's crazy. So was it literally just kind of like overnight, like you put in your notice making this cushy as you had said, $100,000 salary, and now you're, you know, bucks an hour or whatever it happens to be. Was it literally that that much of Nick Jordan  it? So I ended up burning out after four years. And so I spent six months laying on a beach. And then I went into the SEO agency talking to my buddy, I was like, I was like, Man, I'm like four months in I'm pretty bored at this point. I like I need to do something like I think it's going to be SEO like let's do it. Nick LeRoy  Well, yeah, no, that's, that's pretty cool. I've always had a lot of respect for people that have SEO as kind of a second career. You know, Marie Haynes is one individual that I always talk to you and she was a vet in a previous life and then switched? Wow, Nick Jordan  I had no idea. Yeah. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, it's really cool. Whereas like myself, you know, I had graduated from college and kind of fell into an SEO role. You know, and this was, before SEO had even been defined, you know, shoot, it's almost 15 years ago at this point. But it's just exciting to hear what everybody's stories are. Nick Jordan  You know, it wasn't from a lack of trying actually tried to get into SEO a couple times earlier in my career, and I just never saw enough results to stick with it. And it didn't really click until the third time that I tried to get into it, which is when I was working for an SEO agency, and it was so much easier, you know, being able to ask my co workers, hey, how does this all work? Instead of trying to figure it out by myself? Nick LeRoy  Definitely. So you, you quit this cushy job again, as you had said, you got a minimum wage paying local SEO, there's obviously a gap here. And we'll talk a bit more about the freelancing work that you had done. But can you walk us through a little bit more what what's kind of the in between, you know, from now running your own company to you know, the guy who kind of walks in and says, I'm gonna be an SEO today? Nick Jordan  Yeah, so let's go problem. Let's go from making minimum wage selling SEO to kind of my SEO freelancing career. So I like I, in order to like, learn stuff, you have to do it, you can't just read about it. And so, you know, when I looked at the projects the agency was working on they're all pretty, you know, I would say, boring or unambitious. But they're all local service businesses with $1,000 a month budgets, and I just wasn't, I just wasn't interested in any of the things that they were doing. And so I was like, I'm gonna take control the blog, the agency blog, and I'm gonna grow that. And that's how I'm gonna learn SEO. And I ended up growing it to 100,000 Organics a month from about 100 pages of content. Some of the keywords that we rank for were pretty funny. We outranked Instagram for Instagram support, that article received 10s of 1000s of visitors a month. We did the same with Shopify, except we were right under Shopify, for Shopify support. Didn't make any money from it, but kind of informed, like my philosophy and approach to SEO today. Nick LeRoy  Actually rank and drive traffic. Nick Jordan  Yeah, yeah. And then we our agency wanted to get into E commerce. And so I was in charge of starting a small drop shipping website. So we could kind of learn how Shopify SEO works. And it worked again, and I was like, Hey, I think I kind of know this stuff. And for various reasons, I had outgrown the agency. All leave it their way out of my way out, I was like, alright, well, if I'm going to quit this agency, and like six months, I better like like, I'm just going to start my own publishing site. And so I started this website called doggy pedia. And then that hit 100,000, organic Summon, and all the kinds of success that I saw. I want I came in and I accomplished my goal or an SEO. But then too, I was pretty sure that once I left the company, I would still know SEO, and I'd be able to kind of figure out any new challenges that came. And so I left. Nick LeRoy  I love it. I think that's amazing. I think too many of us we get stuck Back in what's considered comfortable, or you know, when you're not getting stretched anymore, it becomes a perceived Easy Paycheck. So for you to recognize that and say, Hey, I'm learning things I've shown success, I'm going to take it to the next level is huge. Nick Jordan  Yeah, you know, the reason I was so comfortable kind of stepping down from this, like, my last job sent me to Europe four times in a year, and like selling the flower shops. The reason I was so comfortable with that is because the way that I approach every opportunity that I take is, you know, whether I get Richard not I'm gonna meet the people and learn the skills to do something even higher impact next. And so when I quit that high status tech job, I was looking at the five year plan, sure, next year, and not the next three years, but where am I going to be in next five years? And so it was very, it was a very easy decision for me to make. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and I think just looking at a five year, career trajectory is hard. I mean, there's so many opportunities, especially like you said, when you take and I don't want to say this, like directly, but from a salary perspective, you take the step back, but you obviously taking the step back with the idea of the six steps moving forward. Which Yeah, very exciting, but still difficult. Yeah, you know, Nick Jordan  what's the five year plans kind of similar to SEO, like, seeds, you gotta, you gotta, you know, water them. And then hopefully, in five years, you don't get crushed by Google update. And Nick LeRoy  there's nothing more disheartening than that. But maybe we can jump into a little bit. So like you said, there's still that little bit of in but in between, you know, before you had launched, the current company that you have, you know, where you were doing more consulting. But one thing that I really enjoyed, that you had kind of positioned to me was how you were able to build, you know, a six figure revenue stream, without having a website or a team to support you. Do you want to walk the walk? Nick Jordan  Yeah, definitely. So I think in the first I don't know, is, I think it's the first year Southern 100, I generated about $114,000, before we had a website. So when I did a couple of things, when I was leaving this, this agency that I was working at that I recommend your listeners also consider. So I was like, Well, you know, this whole marketing thing, the beauty of it is that it's one to many, the sales thing I'm good at, it's one to one, I got to jump in there and have the same conversation again, and again, again, but this marketing thing is one of many. So what I started doing is I started building my brand before I left. And what that means is I went into Facebook groups like SEO signals lab and, and all the big ones. And I just started being helpful to everyone that was asking questions. And I did that same strategy on LinkedIn, I would both post content, and then I would spend a lot of time giving away as much value as I could on the newsfeed. And ultimately, I can attribute every dollar of revenue I've ever generated from consulting to building my brand on social. Nick LeRoy  That's amazing. And I've said this before, plenty of times on the podcast and most people that are familiar with me are aware of my newsletter, the SEO for launch, and, you know, kind of a different approach, but very similar to yours. It's like I was building that, that personal awareness, that brand, and trying to give back, you know, I'd written that newsletter for like, three or four years before I had even dared, like, take an advertiser or ask somebody you know, fortunately, for me, it was kind of my insurance policy for, you know, when I would eventually be let go from my job. But then I turn around and literally say, Okay, guys, I've been doing this for three, four years, I and maybe need a little bit of help. Hopefully, you don't all hate me too much. And you'd be surprised. Yeah, how many people are willing to give back so I absolutely adore the fact that, you know, you were investing in your brand. And, you know, and just being visible online, I think it gives you that second career in this instance, someone's like that third opportunity, once you are done kind of with your agency experience. Nick Jordan  It's It's pretty incredible. The leverage that you get from building a brand on social, like I said, you know, even after I launched the website, and even today, three or four years later, all my revenue still comes from social. Well, it originates on social and then I have this funnel that I'm gonna explain to you. That's pretty simple, but pretty effective. That turns all of those eyeballs into consulting dollars. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, we're definitely gonna go into that more detail as we kind of kicked off. Yeah, Nick has generated over a million impressions, you know, through his content, and as he had mentioned before, it's generated a ton of money from it, too. So it's not just eyeballs for eyeballs sake. But before we jump into that, I definitely want to just testify that LinkedIn definitely works. It's one of those things that was kind of like everybody else. I was a little bit nervous to get out there. You Oh, that's the I'm using the air quotes now, your professional environment a little bit different than Twitter or Facebook, you know, not only are your co workers going to look at it, but you know, random CMOS or presidents, you think there has to be kind of a different voice and tone in, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say in my experience, that's necessarily the case, you know, being direct thinking outside of the box, is what gets people a lot of attention. And as I've doubled down in the last couple years on LinkedIn, I've gotten quite a few of my biggest leads directly from people reaching out and saying, Hey, I saw you know, your opinion on this. And I actually agree with this. I want to hear a little bit more, it's a topic that we are addressing in house. Yeah, so it's definitely a platform that I think, you know, I don't want to say it's underrated, but maybe underutilized by a lot of professionals. Nick Jordan  Absolutely, yeah. You know, sales guys get LinkedIn recruiters get like dead, but a lot of other people don't get it is so much. And it's, you know, all the revenues attributable to LinkedIn, and Facebook, so you can't you can't sleep on it. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. Well, I think a lot of us and almost reasonably, so I think you become more active on LinkedIn, when the idea of a job change might be imminent, whether it be or not, so you start becoming, but then you jump off, or some people Nick Jordan  you know, and to be fair, like working in public is very unnatural, and it creates a lot of anxiety for me. So it's not free money. You need to work hard on building the community, and then you're gonna pay the data price and anxiety. But some people like me, and maybe you think it's a good trade off? Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. You know, one of the scariest things that I had done that has probably paid the most dividends, is I wrote a blog post, and then threw it all over social that was literally titled, from being fired, to making like, 160k in eight months. And it went out on that, like, it's not that nobody hasn't been fired before, or that we haven't had bad experiences at work that is not abnormal. But the world kind of makes it taboo to talk about it. So if you are willing to confront it, you know, it's being in that awkward position where you're gonna say, Hey, I went through this. Yeah, it was scary. But I was fortunately able to turn it around and make it a really good opportunity. And here are some things you can take away from it, like people are going to eat that up all day. It's just, it's amazing the amount of support, and that in my opinion, and Nick, maybe you will contradict this or agree when you give us some of your tips. But being authentic, versus just trying to tell people what they think they already want to hear, for me has been one of the most critical components to finding success on social media as a whole. Nick Jordan  You know, it's, you're right, it's very hard to be vulnerable on social and publicly. You know, like, it's, it's very tough. And I found that the only I can be vulnerable, but only after like, I take the L and then I bought the way back up. While I've taken the L I can't talk about it. Nick LeRoy  Nobody and I want you to I mean, I kind of do the same thing. I'll take mini ELLs, you know, lowercase ELLs, you know, like this, and it failed, and that's okay. But yeah, I was definitely not like, Hey, I got cam today. You know, for me, it was only after being out on my own and realizing that it was indeed going to be successful. Yeah, I was my cell phone for a double L Nick Jordan  for free. For real. So step step one is is take the outs, but step two is get the W and then and then show it out. And then come back. Yep. Yeah, Nick LeRoy  I think we've been dragging this on a little bit, people are going to be really interested. So you've driven over a million views. I think you had 21 point million specifically on LinkedIn this year. Can you walk us a million this year? Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. Can you walk us through what your strategy is, you know, were you setting out to get this large number and kind of backed into it? Or is this just more of a? What happens because you followed some of your best practices that you'll share with us? Nick Jordan  Yeah, I think, well, I mean, I definitely set out to get big numbers. Like when I started, I wasn't hoping to like hit 100,000 impressions or get a couple of likes. I was like, I want to, I want to I want to be one of the top gurus. You know, my mom wasn't super pumped when I told her I'm gonna be an SEO guru. But I was like, listen, Mom, I'm going for number one, and she's like, okay, sweetie, as long as you're having fun. Exactly. Nick LeRoy  Do you need help with rent this month, though? Nick Jordan  Yeah, so. So basically the strategy is you think of LinkedIn as a funnel, or basically a traffic acquisition source, maybe like the Google search results. You know what, how most people browse LinkedIn is they just sit on their newsfeed and they just scroll, and they comment and engage, and they look for things that are interesting. And so there's two things that need to happen. The first is, you need to create content, not only on your, your statuses, which is super important, but in the beginning, especially when you're fresh, the way that you're going to get attention is by being helpful on other people with a lot of visibility. So in the beginning, do like 10 times more commenting than you're doing posting. Today, now that I have the audience, I can get away with just posting and not doing a lot of engagement. But in the beginning, you just you got to put in the work you got and it has to be helpful, too. Or else it's not going to work. Now, Nick LeRoy  what's interesting, I'll just say there to disagree, Nick is, I find that when you do that the the engagement, you find that you build all pods of I don't want to call them fans. But you probably see this too. It's like you post something. And it's that small group that you have commented on, they end up being the first ones to either like or comment on yours as well. It's like almost this reciprocal relationship. Nick Jordan  That's exactly right. You just described how the LinkedIn algorithm works. LinkedIn gives you what you give it. And so the more time that you spend engaging on your feed, the more visibility LinkedIn is going to give to you. Because the you know, they're going to show your content to the people who liked your last content, and comment on your last content. And so if you can put the engagement in and people respond to you, your content will begin appearing in their feed, and they know how the game works. And so they're like, Hey, this guy boosted my posts with a comment, I'm gonna throw him a comment, kind of keep the relationship going. And you're right. And I, you know, I have, like, a lot of my like, I'd say, best friends and marketing are like people that I just like, started commenting on randomly on LinkedIn. And we're still talking, you know, four years later. Nick LeRoy  Yeah. And it's amazing. I mean, I know, that's kind of how you and I had gotten connected. It was, Oh, hey, Nick, being Victorian, you I have written something that was interesting starts with a like, you know, then you like something that's like, Oh, I'm gonna throw in my two cents, then I was commenting on my stuff. And now it's like, as soon as something goes up, it's almost like an automatic, like, not only thing, but you're trying to give that extra visibility, because you know, there's going to be a benefit for them. And it's going to come back, you know, full force. Nick Jordan  You know, I always say the nicest thing you can do to support your entrepreneurial, you know, entrepreneurial friends, it's just, you know, you don't have to buy their services, but we'll settle for a like, or a comment. Give us a little boost. newsfeed. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, one thing someone had told me the other day that I actually found very intriguing, and it's flattering to is this gentleman named Dave. He is in another group with me, he does a lot of schema markup on the SEO side. And we met for a call and he was super nice. And he already did is like he wrote a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. And it basically just said, you know, Hey, Nick took the time to jump on with me, we had a really good conversation. He's a good guy. And what was interesting, and I only found this out the other day, when I was talking to him is he does that with like individuals that he basically is targeting to build a relationship with. Because not everybody uses the recommendation function there. And so when you receive one, you have to actively read it and choose whether you're going to publish it to your profile or not. So it's just an opportunity. Now, granted, you have to be legit, like don't try to pitch somebody or services in a recommendation. But for somebody to say, you know, Nick Jordan, I really appreciate that you took the time to, you know, call me and you gave me recommendations that were valuable. Like, who doesn't want to be able to promote that on their own thing. And now you remember me as an individual who has applauded you for being awesome. Nick Jordan  I think, you know, I think it all goes back to the, you know, one of the best ways to grow your career is just give to other people. And if you give enough, eventually you'll, you're the 1% who give back will change your life, because it's like a Gary Vee quote or something. So okay, so there's a second part to this. All right. So you're creating content on your posts. You're, you know, you're posting content, you're also engaging and commenting on other people's comments. But the very next step is you need to actually like, you know, you don't stop there. So if you go to my LinkedIn profile, it's linkedin.com/in/nick. from Seattle, or if you just search Nick from Seattle or Nick Jordan, you'll find me. You'll see that my headline is zero to 1.5 million organics a month, in 24 months, and then flash and then my company name workout. And what this does is first of all, I'm getting all this visibility. LinkedIn putting me everywhere I'm appearing on everyone's newsfeed, whether it's a post or a comment. But then they like see, like the craziest number, maybe one of the craziest numbers I've ever seen in SEO. You know, not everyone is friends with the SEO director at NerdWallet. So, zero to 1.5 million or gigs a month is great for most people. And they're like, What hack, and then they'll click my profile. Great, I treat my profile like a landing page. If you look at my like my headline image, it's like a big fat graph of zero to 1.5 million. And then it says, like, no backlinks, no technical BS, like this great content. And then, and then I use the LinkedIn feature like the featured media, and it's like, Hey, here's the case study on zero to 1.5 million. And then when they go to the My, like company, the, you know, my work experience on my profile, I also attach media there. And so everywhere that they're looking on my profile, I'm like, Hey, go to my website and check out this case study. And so then they click through, and then they what we call it indoctrination content. And the reason we call it that is because by the end, by the time someone's done reading it, they're like, this is the only way to approach SEO, this is the only guy I can hire to do it. And so it's 5000 words. And it's very tactical, it's very actionable. It's, it's, I give away 99% of the stuff. And throughout the content, I have email captures, and I have links. And I have my YouTube channel. And so people originate on Facebook, or they originate on LinkedIn, or Twitter, but then they get to the website, they indoctrinate themselves, and then they end up following me on every platform that I'm on. And so it doesn't matter if the algorithm on LinkedIn doesn't show them my content today, because Facebook will show it to them today, or YouTube will show it to them today. And I'm kind of I'm all of a sudden, I'm on the president. Nick LeRoy  I like everything that you had said, and especially the idea of capturing that audience across multiple, you know, owned in all kinds of column rented spaces, you know, LinkedIn, with you, as we saw with Facebook, it's like your organic reach is like nothing these days. So it really, but, you know, being able to capture people on YouTube and LinkedIn and Twitter and you know, I love email, too. I mean, now it's easier to get somebody's social security number that is their email. So anytime you could do that, you know, that's a great opportunity. So I think that's absolutely fantastic. And that simply to your point, having a captivating headline, getting people to click into your profile, and then feeding them what they already want, because they're intrigued by that headline. Nick Jordan  Yeah, yeah. And then pushing them to all your other channels. So you can't lose them if one of the platforms goes Nick LeRoy  haywire. Yeah, no, and that's fantastic. I've had to a little bit lesser extent, I recently in the last six months had added like kohner of Seo jobs.com. And when I see people publishing, help wanted ads, or new job descriptions on LinkedIn, a lot of times, I'll go in there and ask them, you know, hey, do you want like a free listing, you know, or an ad for that, check it out on my LinkedIn or like go through, and they may take me up on the free one that time, but then they'll come back and do a paid spot the next time. So it's a really good opportunity to help, while also secretly kind of being promotional. Because anytime they take me up on the free one, I'll go back to that conversation and be like, Oh, hey, and here it is in the comments. So cool. Nick Jordan  I like it. It's a long term game, you know, like, I've had people that have viewed my content for years before finally booking a call with me. And by the time they get to that call, they're like, so warmed up, and they feel like they know me. And they feel like they can trust me, because I didn't just have one successful project. I've had a bunch over these four years. And so they've kind of seen me grow and progress and never kind of stop all and, and leave the industry. And so by the time they reach out, there's so much trust. I remember when I first started consulting, the one of the first deals I close, he wired me $5,000, within 24 hours of DMing, and Facebook, and I had no idea who he was. But he knew he had been following me for like a year and a half at that point. And so it didn't seem quick to him. But it seemed very clicked to me. Nick LeRoy  And that's the best way. And I think this kind of goes back to what you were saying about building that personal brand and visibility. Because you know, especially with your sales background, this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier, when you are starting a conversation from scratch. It's difficult, like nobody really wants to be sold to ever. So if you can go in and it's more I don't want to call like buddy, buddy, but it's like you've already just kind of broken down that barrier. And it's more like Hey Nick, just talk to me like what is indeed the issue that you have, what are you trying to solve? And then you can come to brainstorm collectively on like what the solution is. And naturally, if your solution happens to match the services that you offer, like you said, people are ready, then you're not hard selling them. Nick Jordan  Absolutely. And when you're creating content, people get to know your approach to SEO. And so when he jumped on the phone, it's a lot more. All right, well, what are you working on then? Alright, well, let me start, like from when, you know, Google and Stanford's like dormitory kind of history of like, here's how I got to where I'm at. People just, they know how you work. And they just want to know how you can apply for their project. And that saves you a lot of time. And it increases your close rate and, you know, increases the deal sizes that you get access to. Nick LeRoy  Without a doubt, I can tell normally, within five minutes of conversation with somebody who's interested in my services, you know, whether it's going to workout or not. And mostly it starts with either I was referred to you by x, or I saw your newsletter, which I know that you're going to be good. Like, if it's a good fit, we very likely we're gonna close us, versus if I get the Okay, now, tell me a little bit about yourself and your services. It's like, you know, you're starting from absolute scratch. Nick Jordan  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you're right, the conversations where people haven't read my case study on zero to 1.5 million always go way worse. Because like, I do have to spend all this time just like, explaining why everything that they know about SEO is probably wrong. And why am I like, Nick LeRoy  exactly without telling them directly? That it's wrong? Nick Jordan  Yeah, there's just so much to say it's, it's helpful if they already know most of it by the time they show up. Nick LeRoy  Right. So like, I have a bunch of LinkedIn questions to get your opinions. But I don't want to interject. Do you have additional tips outside of that? Or can I go straight into my questions? Nick Jordan  No, I think I think I'd say the last tip I have is that as a freelancer, you know, unless you're like Kevin and Digg, or Steve Tov, and you're just coming off a really hot grand on a really hot campaign, chances are, you're starting at the bottom, you get access to the worst opportunities, the worst clients, the worst budgets. And a lot of people get stuck there. You know, I know some people who started SEO the same time as me who are still servicing, you know, those $1,000 A month flower shops. And I think that the reason that I'm not is because I had a very purposeful approach to my career as an SEO consultant. And essentially, you know, going back to that thing that I said earlier, every project that every opportunity I take on needs to, if it doesn't make me rich, and it can't retire me, then it needs to, you know, enable me to learn the skills and meet the people to do something even higher impact max. And that's, you know, how you should treat project work till, you know, in the beginning, you need to take on whatever projects you can get, because you need to pay the bills, but if, you know, your capacity is limited, and if you're filled with unambitious projects, you're really not going to get the case studies that you need to move up market. And what I found is that it's very hard to build a living on $1,000 A month projects, people can do it, I can't, I just I can't even have significant operational excellence. And as a new SEO consultant, you probably don't have any operational excellence, Nick LeRoy  right. And you're trying to set proper expectations. So it's not about crushing and driving the 150,000 visits per month, it's about almost trying to set the almost the opposite, it's like at $1,000, this is fake engagement. Therefore, you should only expect 100 visits or whatever the equivalent is. So it's like you're not delivering quality results per se, but trying to match the expectations to the budget. Nick Jordan  The thing is, yeah, you have to match the expectations to the budget. But the thing is, is, you know, SEO, the case study takes a year at about and so as the year goes by, and you don't have this case study that can take you to the next level, like you didn't really make any momentum in your career. And so, you know, take on the project for the short term cash flow, because you need money to pay the bills, but then stop before you're tapped out. So you have capacity to take on more ambitious projects, you have to earn the right to move up market by succeeding at the projects you have access to at your current level. And so like, whatever it takes, you need to get the graph that's gonna allow you to get $2,500 a month, $5,000 a month, $15,000 a month clients. And it's gonna take a couple years to be able to get that kind of pricing power is assuming you're consistently moving up market. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and without a doubt, it's absolutely every single time a situation where the rich get richer. You start with your success at that $1,000 rate turns into 2000 and then before you know it, you're closing your pitches. strictly because they'll say, oh, who else? Have you worked? And if and if you were gonna sit there and say, Oh, it's Shopify and Adidas and Nike, but not like, they don't even need to see your, your graphs, you know, they, you know, Norwich, those type of things, but it's definitely one of those situations before. And, you know, I can attest to exactly what you had said, you know, I came from agency world where as a director role, my rates were north of 350 $400 an hour. And when I went out on my own, you know, I had some personal branding, but I was unwilling to use previous agency experience and results to sell myself. So I had to start, I literally took the $1,000 And it's like, oh, okay, look, but I built this. And then it was, yeah, I did that. And then yeah, it's like, before you know, it, I was so excited, like, chasing the logos was super exciting for me, because it's like, all you need is to be able to get one good brand that you can do some really good stuff with. And your opportunities explode at that point. Nick Jordan  It's so funny. Well, it's so I don't know if it's fight. Well, it's funny to me, but probably not to a lot of people. But it's so funny that the better at SEO you get the easier projects you get to work on, you know, like, I feel is way easier with massive budgets on super high authority projects. That's they hire the best SEOs. So Nick LeRoy  I tell people all the time that I have so much respect for individuals that do SEO or small businesses, because they are probably better at that than I am with these largest because to your point, went from zero to 100,000 visits is infinitely harder than going from a million visits to 5 million visits. Nick Jordan  Yeah, yeah. It's just you just have less budget. Like, there's just there's less stuff to work with. And Nick LeRoy  exactly what do you mean, you don't have a content team of 30 people to write today? Nick Jordan  Exactly. Nick LeRoy  So Nick, let me run a couple LinkedIn specific questions. These are things that I tend to believe, but I can't say that I have anything to validate. These are best practices, specifically when it comes to posting. So I'm going to split fire a couple of tactics, and you tell me kind of thumbs up or thumbs down on whether it's good for the algorithm, okay. Nick Jordan  Okay. By the way, I want to throw, throw this out there. I got a million visitors this year. But last year, at the end of the last year, I started making my executive team build their social profiles to and one of them got a million visitors this year using the everything that we talked about on this call. Nick LeRoy  But that's even better. That's like, again, in my agency experience there was there's always fun to get those wins. But there's nothing more exciting than somebody that you're coaching to learn and watching them win. Because that's how you can continue to scale outside of just your name or your success. Nick Jordan  That's exactly right. I want to I don't want to be the only Rainmaker in the organization. Nick LeRoy  Exactly. Alright, so going back to these hard hitting questions that because I guess I'm curious, what's your thought on linking outside of LinkedIn, in your blog posts, or sorry, in your LinkedIn posts, Nick Jordan  never do it LinkedIn or Crusher reach LinkedIn is goal is to show you more LinkedIn ads. And LinkedIn can't do that. You click my link to my website. So don't ever post an external link. Nick LeRoy  If I wear my tinfoil hat and think I'm circumventing the the system and say, click in the comments to see Link, do you think that circumvents it, or? Nick Jordan  I think I think it used to, and I don't think it does it anymore. I think it doesn't last but if I was going to drop a link, here's what I do. If I was going to drop a link, I want the post to get a lot of engagement first, because then it kind of has some momentum before you know before the link stops. So get the momentum, get the comments and then maybe go back and update the post, add the link and then let everybody know you also added the link. Nick LeRoy  And you so you just stole my next question. If you publish something and you start seeing traction or don't, how often do you want to go back and edit it like is editing it and potentially even modify how it views before you hit the the ellipsis to drop down? Nick Jordan  So I think I'm concerned about trends and how the content is performing in general and less about any given post and so, like, I will very rarely ever go back and edit just because, you know, I posted 365 Day days or the last 365 So like any given post isn't so important to my kind of presence. Nick LeRoy  Right? I actually really liked that one because admittedly I sometimes can get caught up on the because I think for people like us that have read quite a few posts. You have a pretty good idea of what's going to show and then the what will display after somebody can click the ellipsis but every once awhile you hit publish and you're like oh shoot my first tip you know is showing above the fold. Which isn't necessary. Nick Jordan  If I mess up the ellipses thing where like I like reveal, like the the hook, like instead of making them click the ellipses said I'll go back and delete it and like, but I know that will from what I understand if you added up how shortly after posting it, LinkedIn about Facebook actually reduce the reach of that. So I would just go ahead and delete it and then repost it. So that's Nick LeRoy  a good tip right there. Because I admittedly have been doing editing. So I think I will try outright deleting and reposting and those ones Nick Jordan  that it's fuzzy for me, I'm not like 100%. But that's kind of just what I've seen with Yeah. Nick LeRoy  And admittedly, like I said, these are just the hard hitting questions that I personally have for you. And we're not going to hold you accountable. But it's here other people, especially like I said, you and I see each other's materials on LinkedIn. So we obviously know what's going on and what works. But it's fun to people, you know how you think about this? So I'm not going to I'll do maybe one or two more of these questions, but what's your thoughts on attaching an image? And does size matter? And does that have an impact on reach? Nick Jordan  Yeah, I think it goes down to a user engagement metric. So if the media can drive better, you know, click throughs comments, likes, shares, lepsy clicks, then it's good. You know, I think like didn't Well, occasionally, when they want to push a certain feature, they're also give those features more reach. So there's a period of time, I don't know, six months, where LinkedIn was like, we need more polls. And so anytime you made a poll, it didn't just give you so much more reach than any other post type. And I get like, 20,000 impressions. And then the next day with my regular posts, I get like, 5000. Nick LeRoy  Right. No, and that makes sense, too. And I think that does kind of show that you've got to continue to be aware of what all the features are what's kind of working, you know, even you know, when I see something in my feed that's got, you know, 100 comments or 100 likes, I'm immediately kind of reverse engineering at trying to understand what are they writing about? And is it the content or is that the interactions? Yeah. Okay, two last questions, and then we'll, we'll move on to some of your recommendations for the listeners. Okay, here's one I've always been curious about. If you're having a post that is having success? Well, I'll use the word viral loosely. Do you think there's negative comments? Or is there any negative to posting a new post while that one is like going viral? Nick Jordan  So I think that there's like, frequency Kathy camp post 20 times a day, like, eventually there's diminishing returns. My co founder, Boyd, who is the one who got the million impressions, he actually beat me this year. He experimented with three posts per day for about a month, maybe two months, maybe three months, just recently, and it really drove up his his reach initially. But then it fell off a cliff. So he went back down to one a day. Nick LeRoy  Wow, I love that. I think, again, you're beating a dead horse at this point. But it's like, just continue to watch and monitor your statistics. Nick Jordan  Last, exactly what it is. Nick LeRoy  So last question for you. When you do get responses or questions, obviously, when somebody is asking you a question, it makes sense to respond to them. That's just, you know, being nice. And that's part of social. But when people sit there go like, Oh, great tip, Nick, do you think benefit to you responding to that, you know, oh, hey, thanks for thanking me for my tip, you know, as in the frequency of interaction on it. I don't want to play like super detailed, but I'm just again, curious, your thoughts? Nick Jordan  No, I love it. So you know, my headline is there to 1.5 million organics a month. My goal is to LinkedIn marketer is to get that headline as many places on the feed as possible. And so I like at this point three years in, not all my comments are super helpful anymore. Because I can kind of write on my brand. And so a lot of my comments are just like emojis like three rocket ships or like a heart or like, I'll do huge with a bunch of caps. Because I'm excited about everything. Just to get like, again the headline on people's newsfeeds so they click through the profile and kind of kick off this funnel. So I think it's, I would definitely recommend at the minimum just replying with like a heart. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I like that. Don't overthink it. Nick Jordan  Yeah, I want to I want to touch base on a couple different things are a couple of thoughts I have on the algorithm before we move on, so one of them is, you know, earlier I said LinkedIn gives you what you give it. The more engagement you give your newsfeed the more engagement you'll get back. What I've seen is that you can take a break for about a month before your engagement starts to dip. So you know I spent a bunch of time and effort building building momentum. I went on PTO, and I scheduled a bunch of posts using cobbler and those dripped out and they continue to crash. But eventually I hit a point where I could, I can see the amount of reach that I'm getting declining, declining and declining, it's actually the lowest it's been in a couple of years, just because I stopped putting in the effort into the newsfeed and engaging with other people's content. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, that's a good reminder, again, I've even seen it, you know, you go out for a week or two, and it's like, all of a sudden, you're gone. So it's a reminder to always be there, always kind of keep feeding that fire. Nick Jordan  Yeah, the last thing is, there's actually there's two more things. So the first is, you know, I don't do any outbound sales. You know, when I connect with someone, I don't, I don't pitch them. But I do have a CrunchBase subscription. And I'm constantly basically adding founders of VC backed companies who just raise money in the last X days, that's my target audience, if you should do it, the same for your target audience, find a lead source and just connect with those people maybe use LinkedIn itself, and you just connect with other people commenting on the same status as you're commenting on. But, you know, continue to not only should you be engaging, but you should be expanding your network to. But as you're expanding, you're not pitching because cold pitching is one of the easiest ways for someone to never look at your content again. It's really, you know, it's really just like SEO, your SEO career is a long term game. So you know, the person you connect with today, they're gonna give you money three years from now, that's like, that's fine. Nick LeRoy  It is fine. I agree with you, the long game is where the money is. Nick Jordan  Alright, last thing is, you know, going back to the type of content that's engaging, it's always, you know, the most interesting b2b content has a strong opinion, I come from personal experience. And so, in order to create effective content, you kind of have to have effective accomplishments, or at least share the journey on your way to accumulating these effective accomplishments. If you're out there on LinkedIn, posting that and voice search is going to be relevant and 2023 are that, you know, the difference between SEO and PPC and just basically common knowledge about the industry that people have already said, you know, you're not going to no one's gonna engage with your content. So, so you have to have some sort of empathy for who your reader is. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I think I think that's huge, you know, I do try and encourage people to just start by posting, because I think there's a hurdle simply to get into the habit of posting. So I do encourage a little bit of the elementary stuff, because it's not always brand new to everybody. But to your point, if it's gonna be a tactic that you want to rely on for quite a bit of time, if not forever, you got to get deeper. And I think that goes to just be in the vulnerable, whether it's me getting fired to you making, you know, 100,000 sessions, in a month, like, you gotta you gotta go there. Absolutely. So it's so starting to wrap up here, neck, one thing that I love to ask all my guests, I just recommendations that you have for anybody who, who is an aspiring freelancer, or may want to do things that we're talking about today. You know, this could even be with the LinkedIn tactics, but do you have like courses or tools, or anything in particular that you would recommend? Um, Nick Jordan  you know, just follow up people in the space that are crushing it, Steve talk is crushing it, Kevin, and DAG, Eli Schwartz, boy in Mark, my business partner, I have good content. And he just kind of just fill your feed with people that you want to emulate. And eventually the robot fine. Yeah. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, no. And that's so true. I think any opportunity you have just to talk to people, you know, I've interviewed Steve, you know, I've talked to Kevin, quite a bit, Eli, I've mentioned many times, giving away a couple signed copies of his books on my newsletter right now. You know, and building those type of engagements are huge. And those are the type of people that will come full circle and, you know, help you with leads or referrals, or, you know, we all regularly like and comment on each other's comments to which you know, yeah, just really helps. Yeah, nice. Well, Nick, I really appreciate your time. I think LinkedIn, as we talked about is really underutilized in all these tips. And, you know, kind of quick answers you provide are super helpful for people that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to contact you? And I'll make sure to include all of this in the transcript in the post too. Nick Jordan  Yeah, great. So if you're on Facebook, or like Dan or YouTube, sorry, Facebook like did Nick from Seattle YouTube content distribution. My startup workout.com helps you hire writers and on my website, content distribution.com. For a lot of minutes, too many resources. I gotta consolidate We have all sorts of like tactical actionable guides on how to do crazy fat graphs. We give it all away. So hopefully the links will be in the description because I'm confused myself. Nick LeRoy  No prob like it's not this will absolutely be in there. And neck. Like I said, Thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to the next episode of the SEO freelancer. Nick Jordan  Had a great time. Thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theseofreelancer.com [https://www.theseofreelancer.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Sara Taher: How I Balance Freelance Work W/ My 9-5 Job

Get notified when any new episodes of TheSEOFreelancer podcast go live Introducing Sara Taher Sara has been doing SEO for 8+ years. She started out by building an online magazine that she built from scratch to over 90k sessions and getting local media attention. Her interest in entrepreneurship only grew from there. Sara was excepted into Ycombinator and further doubled down in her SEO career in both in-house and agency roles (and freelance projects). Sara’s Resource Recommendations * Listen to The SEO Freelancer podcast * Find smart people to network with - both in-person and online (LinkedIn is great) * Build a small group that you can trust and meet with regularly. this can end up being your best source of referrals and or simply run ideas past them. How to connect with Sara Taher online Sara’s official website [https://www.sara-taher.com/] Connect with Sara on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-seo-specialist/] Connect with Sara on Twitter [https://twitter.com/SaraTaherSEO] This Months Sponsor: SEOChatter.com Do you want to jump into SEO freelancing?But not sure if you’re good enough to make it work?At SEOChatter.com you can get the expert training you need to succeed for free.SEO Chatter is one of the fastest-growing sites in our industry that teaches every aspect of SEO. You'll find hundreds of free guides on keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, and more to help you maximize any website's rankings and traffic.Visit SEOChatter.com [https://seochatter.com/] to see it for yourself. And click the subscribe button to get your free SEO training gift. If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at nick@nickleroy.com Podcast Transcription Nick LeRoy  welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. My name is Nick Leroy, and I am your host. And today I'm very excited to have Sarah ta her with me. She's going to be talking a bit about what it's like to do freelancing on the side in addition to a nine to five SEO job. Before we jump into this month's episode, I want to do a quick shout out to this month's sponsor SeoChatter.com. Do you want to jump into SEO freelancing, but not sure you're good enough to make it work? At Seo chatter.com You can get the expert training you need to succeed for free. SEO Chatter is one of the fastest growing sites in our industry that teaches every aspect of SEO. You'll find hundreds of free guides on keyword research on page optimization, link building, and more to help you maximize your website's rankings and traffic. Visit Seo chatter.com to see for yourself and click subscribe button to get your free SEO Training gift. Got Seo chatter.com today. Thank you again to this month's sponsor, SEO chatter. Now let's jump into this month's episode. Thank you, Sarah, for joining us today. Sara Taher  Thank you for having me today. Here, Nick. Nick LeRoy  Yes, absolutely. So for those that aren't familiar with you, are you willing to share a little bit about yourself? Obviously, we know your name. We know you're in SEO, but give us a little background about your who is Sarah? Sara Taher  Okay, so I've been doing SEO for eight years now. I stumbled upon it accidentally, I launched an online magazine, I was managing a team of editors and we were creating great content. And it was like okay, so how do we get more people to read it. That's where I started to learn and you know, take boot camps and so on. And within a year, I took it from zero to 90,000 visitors per month. And a lot of things happened as well. Like the it became popular in my community. The I was interviewed by the local radio, the biggest it was an Arabic so the biggest one of the biggest Arab Arabic content portals starting to start to repost our content on the website, which was like really, really cool back then. Some of the people who contributed to the website, were invited to TED talks, for example, again in so it was like, pretty cool, right? I was like, wow, that's really fun. And then that wasn't Egypt, I moved to Dubai. I was, I was in love with SEO. But I was also interested in entrepreneurship and startups. And when I say startups, I mean, like, technical startups with an innovative component. So again, like I launched a tech startup, I was managing a team of developers in Ukraine, and I was able to take it to grow it to a, as a, in a seed stage startup, very reasonably with SEO. I was doing basically everything else other than development. So it was like a lot. And I was able to get accepted to Y Combinator, which is like the world's best startup accelerator. They had an online startup school launched that year. So it was like, wow, that's my chance. And I got into it. And I started, it started to grow, really. But I ran out of funds, and I wasn't able to raise funds, and I was too shy to ask people to pay for the service. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that was that. So I moved from that I had a lot of SEO experience in my pocket. So I, I loved it. So I moved into an in house role in Dubai, it was the biggest travel agents in the Middle East. It's like Expedia, which was pretty cool for me to get into that. And I to this day, I am so grateful for that experience. I had a lot of great managers that helped me grow there and understand a lot of things and dynamics, how SEO sits with other and works with other teams and so on. As well as being able to connect with enough developers and understands a lot of technical stuff that were not commonly talked about back then, like programmatic pages, for example, right? So I moved from I moved to Canada. I freelanced a bit and then I started to work at an agency and then in house and then I moved back to agency, which is where I am today. Nick LeRoy  So that's, that's a lot of experience. Beginning and I'll just say a comparison. You know, here you are building a website that is driving what do you say 90,000 visits when you? Yeah, my first website outside of leroy.com was was best holistic dog food.net. And I didn't make a single penny off of it. So it just shows how we all start from somewhere but some of us have a little bit more success than others. So Sara Taher  maybe I was lucky. Maybe I was just lucky. You know? Nick LeRoy  There is no luck. Hard work is always valuable. I think I just chased the money, whereas you chased a passion. Sara Taher  Yeah. I think, literally, I had a problem monetizing anything. I, I would, I think, and that was a part of a struggle in my freelancing journey. So back when I was working in house in my first role, I also freelanced and worked part time within a local SEO agency there. And that was good for me, because I didn't have to deal directly with the clients and ask them for money. Like this is a skill I had to grow into literally. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, that consulting aspect of it is such a unique skill set. I mean, learning SEO is hard enough. You know, there's a lot of things that are constantly changing, as you myself, and everybody on this podcast already knows. But the people element of it the communication, I think, truly is one of the components that turns us from being a good SEO to a great SEO. But if you don't, let's jump a little bit. So you've covered a little bit about your first job. So do you want to talk just a little bit more about how did you and we heard about your past, but how did you get this job? Did you apply kind of with the experience sharing, you know, the success you had with the site? Yeah, how long were you there for? And then everybody's favorite question, if you don't mind sharing what you were earning at the time. Sara Taher  Okay, so I was able to get the job because of what I've done, you know, in my startup, and previously in my, the magazine write it, it was like really differentiated me a lot, compared to other candidates who just a lot of them with started in SEO, they were in the role that somehow, you know, doing social media and some SEO was, so it was differentiate me when I applied. I stayed there for a year before moving to Canada, and I was earning so in UAE money, it's 10k, which is, it was it was good back then. That was okay. For a junior position. Sure. Yeah. 10k would be like, I think back then it was around three U. K, USD, per month, Nick LeRoy  per month. All right. Yeah, we could certainly live off of that. You know, I know, we've been talking about various guests. And it's interesting when it has come down from everything from making. You know, I think Christina was saying that she was making the Aquila like 500 bucks a month to, you know, we have people like Steve Toth or you know, making, you know, 40 grand a month. Yeah, it just all over the place. Sara Taher  I think I was lucky because in Dubai people, at least back then when I was there, people tend to have bigger salaries, then, you know, because that's people go to Gulf countries to make savings. So that's probably why it was like that. But when I was freelancing for the agency there, I was getting like for 20 hours per week. So total 80 hours per month, I was getting paid around 500 or $600 per month for that work. So Nick LeRoy  and that's a very good transition. So naturally, one of the reasons I was very interested in having Sara on the podcast is she still has a nine to five job. But she freelances In addition, a lot of my guests previously have been freelance SEOs for a couple of years now are just kind of starting out on the journey, but they're 100% dedicated to it. And I think the opportunity to discuss how freelance can continue to augment our our earnings and learning opportunities is super important. So if you don't mind, Sara, will you share with us a little bit? What encouraged you to freelance in addition to you know, that first job I think you're saying it sounds like you were making some decent money at the time? Was it strictly money? Was it learning, I'd love to hear a little bit more. Sara Taher  I wanted to learn as much and do as much as I can. And I wanted to see how other people are doing SEO as well. Right? So this was like a very good opportunity for me for that. For that because the money wasn't like I was I had a decent salary and the money I was getting paid from the agency wasn't that much. And it was actually a lot of work because I worked like one hour driving and because back then we used to go to the office to work full time. So one hour driving in the morning, and then nine to six, not nine to five and then one hour back and then you have to do your freelancing and I literally Some nights I would and I have my family as well. Right? So literally, sometimes I would sleep or sleep on my laptop literally I would be like, my head would be dropping and and the money was like was not enough motivation for me to do that. But I wanted to, I wanted to do it because I wanted to learn as much as I can. And I wanted to see what others are doing and be able to get feedback, right? Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and I think that's, that's one thing, it's not that everybody should have to be, you know, doing the 8090 100 hour, you know, months. But it seems like we don't see that quite as often I kind of did the same type of thing. You know, it was work, you know, 4050 hours during the week, I came home, and it was like launching a website, taking out a project. But I think it was very similar to what you were mentioning, it's much more about learning. And for me, it was almost fear of like, what don't I know? Yeah, so I was always same reason. But I think this actually brings us to a really good conversation, I can share some of my thoughts, but I'd love to hear from you. How do you handle the conversation? Or is there one about freelancing on the side? When you have a nine to five SEO job? Is that something that you've had conversations with your bosses about? Or did you kind of do it on the sly, like, walk us through a little bit your experience? Sara Taher  I definitely every time I apply for a job, I definitely discuss that and make it clear. And I've seen situations where people say we're not comfortable with that. And, and I've seen people will say we don't mind that. So, right. And it's funny when people say they're not comfortable with that. Because I mean, in their mind, they're afraid that this is gonna jeopardize the work the full time job. But I mean, if you're being honest with them, and you're disclosing it, you're not hiding anything. And they should see that you're a responsible person, but they don't see that. So I mean, and and this is where you need to make a decision. I mean, the best path is just be clear about it, because I'm really, you know, I'm on LinkedIn all over the place. And I know me talk about clients, like, I do name them, obviously. But I may mention that I have a current client or something around that. So the best bathroom is always to talk about it and be transparent with it. So. And I've seen also situations where companies include that in their contract that you may work as much as you want, outside their hours and not on people like or not on businesses that are competing with the current clients, which is fair enough as well. So yeah, so like my current agency in the in the contract, it does include talking about working outside, having your own consulting work, right. So yeah, Nick LeRoy  when you say when, when that's in the contract, it's saying that that's okay. Like they approve of it. Yeah, Sara Taher  as long as there is those, you know, you're not working for a competitor or having this conflict of interest or those situations, as long as you're not in one of those situations, you're good. Nick LeRoy  Absolutely. And I think that's kind of been my experience as well, you know, there's naturally a non compete, you don't want to work for the competitors to your day clients. And you don't want to put yourself in a situation where you're ruffling any feathers at work, I would say and Sara would love for your opinion as well, one thing that I did not do a good job early on in my career when I worked at the agency, but it was better. You know, more recently, and obviously now that I'm freelance full time is making sure that you do separate, like your technology and your tech stacks. Because there are some companies that will get very upset if you're using your work computer to be sending emails, even if it's outside of your work hours, or if they have a SEMrush account and you're using it. You know, I think that again, in that full transparency, if you're going to freelance, it's really trying to separate it so that you can be very intentional in both efforts and not have them, you know, reflect upon one another or leverage resources etc. Sara Taher  Yeah, I mean, for me, I have separate laptops, obviously, like the company's laptop companies tools are theirs, mine, I have my own Screaming Frog license, my own sem rush, and so on. And I mean, it saves a lot. And if like, for me, in my mind, if this conversation ever pops up, you have you can show your you have your own license, you have your own stuff, and you know, I I like to have this, like separation and have it helps you have if if that discussion ever pops up you have the evidence to support that you're not doing anything wrong, but I mean, at the end of the day again, I generally speaking, I do feel that employees should trust their employees. And I mean, if you disclose that This means that you're being responsible and, you know, taking the necessary steps to make sure that they don't impact each other. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, without a doubt. And I can say, as a hiring manager, most people by now know that I was on the agency side for 10 plus years. And on the latter half of that I had hired quite a few people. And anytime that I saw that somebody was interested, or currently had freelanced, or built their own websites, or just basically were even building like a personal like persona, like I was 90% interested in those candidates, like right off the bat, like as long as you're good with, like, a culture fit like that, to me, excites me, because there's something to be said about, you can be really good at your job, nine to five, come in, come out. But if you're actively trying to learn outside of work, like I can't force you to do that as like a team lead. But if you're gonna do that to yourself, so that you can either get more experience make a little bit extra money, that inherently is going to help you with your nine to five. So I wish more people if they're not would actually embrace this, obviously keep in consideration what we had talked about before with non competes and technology. But I think that is more just general respect for one another. Sara Taher  Yeah, I mean, I think we do need to change the conversation literally about having a side gig, in addition to your full time job, but it should be normal, it should be seen as something positive. It should not be like, and I actually, you know, when you get go into an interview, this is actually one way I do check. What the way people respond to that, because I would like to work in a place where people trust you right off the bat from day one. I. So, it for me, it's also like a way to interview them as much as they're interviewing me. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Yep. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and I think that what you had said, is super important, the idea of interviewing them, I mean, similar to what I would do, you know, with my clients, you know, I'm interviewing them as much as they are. But, you know, going in, especially now, with the SEO market being as hot as it is, and nearly any SEO can get any job they want, you know, go in and ask these type of questions. And it's not about being a bully, but it's making sure that you're set up to succeed with them, and vice versa. Yeah, I remember taking calls, you know, sir, as, as you kind of alluded to, as well, things would be going really, really good. And then, you know, they ask you some of these questions. And naturally, I would bring up some side clients. And I remember one individuals, specifically it was for an agency had said, oh, so I see that you do freelancing? Yeah, I just want to let you know that we have a strict no freelancing policy here. And I was just kind of gutted by that. I just told them, I was like, honestly, this is kind of a deal breaker. Like, for me, I had always used freelancing as the ability to make and I'm using air quotes here, your extra money, this is what I spoiled my kids with, you know, get bought the candies all all trips. You know, it was never something I relied on. But I was unwilling to put myself in a situation where I was 100% dependent on a salary. So I just hope that, you know, other people that are being in that situation, to your points here are having a broader conversation about why is it that you're not encouraging this? Sara Taher  Yeah, I feel they just maybe they never freelance themselves. So they you have doubts on how you're going to be managing that or I feel it's a matter of trust. And it's something it's not comfortable for me personally, to go into a role knowing that they wouldn't trust me if I wanted to have a side project. And again, when we talk about transparency, again, even with your freelance clients, if you have another freelance project that comes up that would have like some, like I had a makeup client, and it's for woman it for 50 plus women, and then I had another makeup client reach out and I had to disclose that to my first client. I told him, Okay, guys, this business, they want me to work with them. Is that okay with you or not? So they checked outside, it's a different different target audience. So they were okay. But, I mean, it's not just for a full time job. It's also even with your freelancing clients, you need some time, like if you get in those situations, I mean, we have invested so much in our careers and put out poured our heart into learning SEO, I would not jeopardize that for an extra client. Do you know? Yeah, like I really don't care. I'd rather lose declined, then have someone say, Oh, you tricked us and you have another client and you've been like, you know, this is like a conflict of interest. I would never do that. And myself and I mean, every single good se Oh, that invested so much time and effort into this would not? Would not, I cannot imagine someone wasting all of this over, you know, a client that you can get another one later, you know? Nick LeRoy  No, absolutely. I think it kind of goes back to personal branding, which we'll talk about, you know, we only have one name associated with us. And it takes years and years and years to build trust and expertise. But I mean, you can make one decision in a split second, and it can ruin it overnight. Yeah, yeah. It's not worth cashing it in for a quick buck, just for that. Sara Taher  I mean, you work on a website for a long time before you start seeing any results. And then you ask them to give you like your viewer recommendations, I'm not gonna waste all of these, you know, efforts just for, I don't know, a consultation client or, and yeah, I mean, that's, and that's, that's one time I discussed this, actually, with another SEO, like a really an expert SEO and even in this mindset, it does impact a lot of the work you do. And even when, when I was working in house, and you start getting pushed away from you know, the typical, like, you're not being involved as you should be. One time, I just told them guys, no good, good SEO is gonna sit on the bench and watch, that's not gonna happen, you know, like, you definitely hired the wrong person, I'm not going to just sit there and watch you do a migration. That's, that's not gonna happen, you know. So I, for me, like freelancing is it's a lot of things, but one of them is it's I genuinely like what I do. And I wouldn't jeopardize that. Nick LeRoy  I think your analogy of sitting on the bench is so true. I've mentioned this, I think before on the on the past to on the latter end of my agency career, you know, when I was kind of at the director level, you find that as you scale up in these positions, the amount of SEO you do goes down. And to the point where I was sitting in meetings for, you know, 678 hours a day, and I wasn't doing it was delegating day in and day out. And, and trust me, I mean, if I don't have to do manual redirect mappings ever again, I'll probably be okay with that. But you miss, you know, doing the work. And when I went out freelance full time, I was surprised at how much I actually missed it. Like, I knew I missed part of it. But I liked getting my hands dirty, I liked doing more than just talking about best practices and talking about strategies. So I completely understand that. And I think that's potentially one reason why someone may want to consider freelance as well, in addition to learning more, and potentially making some extra money, but again, as you kind of are climbing a corporate ladder, historically, that means you were doing less, so if you love getting your hands dirty, and being deep in those crawls. Your Freelancing is just an opportunity to talk about or to discuss. Sara Taher  Yeah, and I mean, even when you're and I mean, even if you're still getting your hands dirty, hands dirty to an extent that in an agency, there's still some restrictions on and, and pressure on pleasing the client in a way. And you don't have sometimes you don't have the saying that, like the client wants this, maybe that's not what best for them, they want that we're doing that, you know, you don't have that, like had have much say in certain situations. But when you have your own clients, you do have to say like, and maybe that's why I actually I also feel, having my full time role and having clients on the side gives me that opportunity or make it easier for me to not worry about pleasing the clients versus telling them what they should be doing. Right. So it's a lot of things. Yeah. Nick LeRoy  Yeah. And I think we're kind of gonna blend a little bit personal projects versus freelance projects. But I think you would probably agree to me if not, what you can learn and what you can test on, say your own websites isn't necessarily something we're always comfortable doing on a client's website. So we have to push ourselves to be able to learn so we know what we shouldn't do as much as we should do for, you know, our nine to five like agency clients. Sara Taher  Yeah, definitely. I remember one time a few years ago, I got a manual action on one of my websites right now. And now I learned what not to do. Right. Nick LeRoy  Right. And so it's terrifying. Again, something like that, but it's also terrifying. I mean, you can only think of you probably think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna lose my job. How am I gonna pay my bills? Five, whereas now you're just like, What the heck happened? Like, I'm going down the rabbit hole today. Sara Taher  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, it's Having this combination and having also personal personal projects are really important for any good SEO or anyone who wants to be an SEO with good SEO to develop, you have to have this ground zero where you, you know, try things and make changes and you're just, you know, whatever. I'll just see what happens. It does help a lot. Yeah. Nick LeRoy  So knowing that you've done all the I mean, you've done everything you've been agency you've been it has, you've done the freelance, you've had your own projects, I'm going to ask a pointed questions that I'm sure a lot of people are thinking right now. So Sara, have you given consideration to going freelance full time? And if you have, or haven't, can you share a little bit more like what your thinking is? Sara Taher  So I thought about it, I, I just don't see myself doing it. And here's why. And I know it works for people great. And that during the times that I was when I was shifting from one country to the other, and I freelanced fully full time. It's awesome. It's like you have all the flexibility. Like I like that right? What about hearing Nick LeRoy  fruit? Talks about what a bad we did have a whole nother episode just about. Sara Taher  It's awesome, right. But few things I noticed. First of all, you're pretty lonely. And even if you build a team, it's very easy that you become the expert in the room, you're the boss. Even if no matter how friendly and open you are to discussions, people will always prioritize making it pleasing you in a way or another over having like those hot debates. So I just don't want to be. And it's not that I don't want to lead an SEO team. But I don't want to be like the the owner of the business or owner of an agency in a way that because I've also since I've also worked in small agencies before and I've seen this situation, and I it's not, I don't feel this is a setup I want to be in like I don't want to be the expert, the the, it's good to be the expert, but I want other voices as well to challenge what I say and show me when I'm wrong. So these two things do impact, like, make make it not as attractive to me. And then you have the stress of making sure your sales funnel is always full, making sure you know your clients are happy and so on. And I just feel like I'm the type of person who would like to just focus on doing SEO without all these other things. So yeah, that's why at least for now, I don't see myself doing it full time. Maybe that will change. Sure. But not Nick LeRoy  everything can change in a day. I mean, as been very vocal, you know, I've always liked the idea of freelancing. I never had the guts to actually do it full time. And then I got fired. And it's like, I started going through the interview process, got some really junky offers and sat through a sixth round interview for a job I really wanted and then didn't get it. And you know, basically had to get so frustrated to the point where I was like, That's it, I can do this better. But I think you truly if you were a good employee, which it sounds like you are, I was never a very good employee. I was always hard to manage. But there can be a best of both worlds. I Sara Taher  think working I'm actually I've been actually laid off before so yeah, I'm I'm hard to manage as well. Nick LeRoy  Both of us. Sara Taher  I mean, I would I would say the thing is with people who have if you have this freelancing mindset even if you're working full time or if you have that it means there's a lot of other traits in your personality you're in and and sometimes it's actually means you really love what you do and that's why you know, you took so this does not necessarily align with a lot of from my experience and interviewing for jobs and so on. Some people will not hire you just because they're intimidated by you so or maybe they would you be laid off just because your coworkers are not comfortable around you because they just intimidated they just feel like you know it I've seen that I don't want to dig into that a lot but sometimes you're just making people uncomfortable just because who you who how much you care and how much you love something and you're so obsessed with it and you know they they're not on the same level and they just so they feel that you're gonna like when the corporate race or something and that's that's not what what was on your mind and then they start getting in your way and yeah, things happen. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and you know, and no one can see this because this is audio but I've never been you know, shaking my head up and down. on so much, and what and like you said, we certainly don't have to go into any more. But I think a lot of what I allude that to is just corporate politics and politics exists, whether it's a very large company or a very small company. And what I alluded to not being the best employee at times, I think it's because I never was really good at the games. Yeah, that's. Sara Taher  It's just yeah, I totally agree. I'm listening to this book for the eight rules of power. And it's ridiculous. It talks about politics in a way or another. And it's ridiculous how many people in history when like, literally were killed, or because people would not were intimidated by them just just just because there were better or look, apparently outshined. Others were one way for one reason or the other, literally killed. So yeah, we're lucky to live. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, and you and I certainly, you know, don't want to compare the those extreme situations. And here you go, you should freelance. But I think what it does show is that freelancing can sometimes be an outlet for people that sometimes maybe feel a little bit limited within their company, but maybe don't have the want the need, or even the interest in running a company. So I knew Sir, this is gonna be a great topic, and why I was so excited to have you on this podcast. So thank you for going into a lot of those details. Sara Taher  You're welcome. I'm happy to talk about it. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, I think one thing that will be super helpful, you know, a little bit of transitioning is, you know, you have done a great job and, you know, public speaking, and kind of building up your, your personal brand. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you're on public speaking, being on like this podcast, like, how is that impacted, you know, the success behind your nine to five career as well as like your freelance work. Sara Taher  So building my personal brand generally helped me many times, get to the first round of interviews, or sometimes even the second, right, it did take me through the door, you have a lot to showcase, I if I'm interested in role I can connect with like the hiring manager, or the marketing director, for example, and start a conversation and they can see like, what's, you know, my profile my, my podcasts, or webinars and articles as well. So it does help me get through the door, but nest and give an established, because they can see how confident or how confident you are in your skills and what you can talk about and so on. So does get you in, to pass in that in that area, then there is the fit, as you know, as we discussed, maybe they're not interested in freelancing, you freelancing and so on. So did help me in that, it from from that standpoint, another thing for my clients, I noticed every time, so I published four articles so far, to One Search Engine Land and to on Search Engine Journal, I'd like to publish more, but my time is sort of limited anyway. So every time I publish, I at least get some one person reaching out for consultation or retainer, at least one person. And I mean, that's the power of personal brand, right. So I, the reason I started investing in my personal brand, so much is I was so invested in SEO and I was giving my all to the companies I worked for, and I almost never felt appreciated. In fact, it was crazy, though, like the the things I literally would have people reaching out for me, there was one point in my career where I would get clients. And instead of taking them for myself, I would give them to the agency. And I was still not appreciated, which was the people who were appreciated were the people who are good at playing games, and that sort of thing. So that's why when I said okay, I am still doing my best at my job because I care, but I also need to invest in myself. And I never that's the best decision I ever made in my life so far. The only thing is it there's doing SEO is one skill. And then there's so many things that you need to grow into to be able to have a personal brand, and I'm not there yet, but I hope i i get there sometime. So yeah, yeah. Well, Nick LeRoy  we're all building on that. I think again, you guys can't see this. But I mean, my head's hitting the ceiling and hitting the floor. This constant Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. Because I think you know, this was very much the the situation that I was in when I was working agency side and doing freelancing on the side agency full time but freelancing on the side. You know, there is a lot of if you don't play the games, or maybe the politics are strong or you just aren't feeling like you're, you know, a perfect fit, you know, and then you're doing this extra effort and you feel like you're kind of rewarding the company where you don't feel 100% validated. It's hard. But I think the personal branding the writing, is really an opportunity, from my perspective has always been almost like insurance, you know, I looked at as if, and thank goodness, I did this, but it's like, if a day where I was like, go or, you know, removed from a situation, where do I go? And, you know, without going too into detail, well, heck, I'll just go into so like, last time I was, you know, I've been like, Oh, my job twice. The first time I was like, Go was terrifying. I lost my mind, I had no clue what I was gonna do. And then thank goodness, because of, you know, the work that I had put into the SEO for lunch newsletter, you know, I've written for Search Engine Land that, you know, follow a lot of people on Twitter and have this network, I was able to get my new job in 10 days, I literally was sitting in the new seat 10 days later. Now, I'd be like, go from that job to at the end because of COVID. However, you know, it's just another situation where it's like, I feel like, it's good to be loyal to your company. But you need to be loyal to yourself first. Because if there's ever a situation where they have to pick between their business and you, they're going to pick the business, just like you should pick yourself over the business given that situation as well. So and rant, but I feel like that's it's really important. I think that further validates kind of what you were saying about, you know, investing into your public speaking and personal brand. Yeah, I Sara Taher  mean, the first time it was let go, that also was on my mind that, you know, I was like, so stupid, giving them to clients, I thought they would appreciate that and and that never happened. And, and I was also recently let go from an agency. And I there was no reason actually, like, on Friday, I was getting on boarded for with a client, I had a client meeting went well, oh, well, this is like it was an existing client. So and I was new, I was just a new hire. And I met the client Monday, all good Tuesday, layoff. What happened on Monday is that they lost some PPC clients. And then I was like, the newest hire probably, and I think it was the one of the highest paid maybe on the team. So last, oh, yeah. I was not happy, to be honest. And, and, you know, I put a rule for myself that I will never, ever join a company with less than 50 people like the less population or employees, there isn't a company, they tend to be very responsible with hiring and letting people go. Nick LeRoy  Right? Yeah. And I think there's a whole nother conversation about that. And you're Ryan, anyone's like, I would even love to have a third head in this conversation, because I'm sure, from someone like you and I come from one position. You know, we obviously have some strong opinions. And I'm sure from a leadership position or an owner of an agency, it comes from a different side as well. But, you know, it's it's very interesting. It's very hairy, you know, and part of it, I this is honestly, part of the reason why I personally, as of today have no interest in starting an agency, I just, that's not where I want to spend my time. I like having the business associated with being a consultant. That is fun. But it all kind of revolves around me and impacts me and it's not taking food off of other people's plates. Sara Taher  I see that I know. Yeah, I agree with it. It's just for me, as I said, I need that feeling of security. Maybe I know it's false. But Nick LeRoy  hey, you know what, I was the first one to say, you know, I wrote the blog posts that a lot of people probably have read here about, you know, the false dichotomy of job security in a nine to five job, but the reality is, is in the right situation, you know, there are companies that are trying their best to be loyal and support, you know, their, their support staff, you know, and they're trying to and, you know, businesses hard. I think we especially saw that with COVID. But I think, freelancing on this, I think if there's anything that we're taking away from this is freelancing on the side, it allows you to just have more opportunity, you know, given you know what, someone who maybe doesn't have that? Sara Taher  Definitely, yeah, definitely. And I use the income I get from that freelancing and taking courses if I need it, and buying go, like I bought two dropshipping websites to experiment with them last year. That sort of thing, right. Yeah. Because I mean, for me, I have a family and I need to make sure that I'm not touching that sort of because, like, I'm always on my phone. Why didn't you do me? You know, what are you doing? No worries. Don't worry. Just Sara Taher  one more small project, don't worry. Like, it's not like I'm buying Amazon or buying domains. And once you buy a domain, there's the whole project coming out of it. So Nick LeRoy  oh, so I feel like talking about freelancing, there's a little bit of a chicken and egg, you know, obviously, you got to have the skill sets to be able to deliver. But you have to be able to kind of demonstrate it for people to be interested in you. And I kind of put that together with like a personal brand. And I know, you have a pretty, you know, big following. You're especially strong on LinkedIn, can you give us some tips, you know, if there's somebody that you know, let's just assume they're already and all star and SEO, they have this nine to five job, they're happy, but they want something a little bit more. But nobody outside of their clients, you know, at this agency or their in house Job knows about them? What recommendations would you give to start building that personal brand? Sara Taher  Yeah, I would, first of all, I would tell them never copy anyone. It's not going to work because people want to connect with you as a person. I mean, if you copy the best performing posts from everyone, this is your not your that people will not see a person at the end of the day, like they will engage with your posts, you get engagements, but who are you? Because when I get people connecting with me, or people asking me questions, I do feel they know me, they've read, like, read few of my opinions, my personal opinions before and they're discussing them. But if you're copying posts that work, how would you discuss something that does not come out of your own experience? Like it's, it's not going to be really genuine. So don't copy anyone. Keep trying to find your voice, right? I kept trying different approaches. And then what worked for me is I write about something I'm working on at the problem or a challenge I came across. So that worked for me, because apparently it resonated with a lot of people. They're working on stuff and they come across similar things. And from there, I was like, Okay, what, what if I start SEO riddles, and I started that hashtag repost, head scratching, or why not sure. What's the right word? captures that people are like, okay, yeah, we never thought about it that way before. So you keep and if you look, even if when you go on LinkedIn, on Twitter, like I've recently stumbled upon Christina Zanku, talking about that, when she started, she was just giving a summary of Google's John John Miller's videos, she was just summarizing them and posting them on Twitter. So it can be something very simple, simple, doesn't have to be complicated, you're just, you know, making information more accessible to people. But if someone like comes today, and tries to start, for example, newsletter about latest and greatest in SEO, well, they're competing with Elida. And, you know, it's, I don't see there's a lot of potential there, for example. So be yourself, definitely keep trying to find your voice and find what you can bring that that people will connect with, right. And that's when you meet those people in real life or in events, they'll be talking to you about the things you've posted, that this is their image, the image, they have a view in their mind, and it's only gonna, like, when you build a personal brand you want people to, to remember you and connect with you, right? And the only way you do that is just finding what is working for you and then resonates with people. Nick LeRoy  And I love that if I think I could sum up a lot of that in even one word, I would just say like, be authentic, like authenticity is huge. And I think you really captured one thing that I believe strongly and it's like, just put yourself out there like you, it's very vulnerable to go out there. Because I guarantee you and I hate this, if I could protect everybody from it, I would, you're going to hit a troll before you will hit a fan. There's going to be like I I tweet and I talk on LinkedIn, a lot about freelancing and something that I'm really passionate about. And as Sara and I had just talked about, like when you have some of the experiences that it sounds like we've had in some our nine to five roles, you know, it really makes you want to be an advocate for the topic, but I am regularly told that I glorify SEO or freelancing and that I don't talk about the bad things and you know that, you know, maybe I'm making things up. But really, it just comes down to put yourself out there anything that you assume somebody knows, you can't assume that because there's always gonna be somebody who's thinking about that just says too afraid to speak up. Sara Taher  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Nick LeRoy  So So on that note, one thing that I get is, especially with some younger individuals I've been talking to lately, you know, I'll sit there and say like, we'll be at an event. And I'm like, You should throw on LinkedIn, you know, because they'll always look at like, My followers or something. And they'll say, Oh, I'd like to do that. And I'll go over to them and be like, Hey, that was like a really good nugget in that presentation, you should tweet that out or throw it on LinkedIn. And they look so puzzled. Like, they just have no clue where to even start, like, what did you do to kind of just, I guess, just, it's that start line? Like, what did you do just to start going? Sara Taher  I just, you know, just do it, don't overthink it, do it and learn it as you do it. That's, that's the only way it can be done literally. Because if you keep planning and analyzing and overthinking, you will delay your start and may not start at all, then you can just think about, okay, how would I make this in like a short post, I would summarize or highlight that and they keep they post one time they see, okay, was this good or not, maybe next time, they you know, change the format a bit, and so on. But my advice is just to start executing don't overthink it. And so far, I've seen a lot of people that are like, a lot of people are nice, and will encourage you in your own network, right. And I like, even for me, like I've been trying to write this ebook for, like, 1000 years now. And I just said, don't know how to start and then actually took the day off to do this podcast with you. And to that, okay, I'm just gonna sit there and start, I'm just gonna write and whatever happens, you know, what's the worst thing that can happen? At least I'll know where, where's the challenges or why it cannot start. So just do it. Nick LeRoy  I think that's fantastic. And honestly, there's like Nike. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking they shouldn't have to sponsor this show for that. Just do it. And the only other thing that I could recommend is honestly, like, throw up a splash page, like, like, if you can buy your domain, you know, Nick leroy.com? Yeah, Sara, Dash taher.com. You know, put a picture of your face who you are in a contact form? Because you'd be surprised that you know, who's gonna reach out? Yeah, it was just on LinkedIn this morning. I got to know what that was, like, I liked one of your messages followed to your website, and I got to dig what you're doing. You know, let's talk and I have a call later today. Yeah, so it's like, just do it, you know, get up there, you know, just, you know, shoot your shot. So, so let's, let's move on a little bit more into what recommendations do you have for anyone that aspires to freelance and again, it doesn't have to be full time make up your whole salary, even if they want to do on the side? Job, particularly like a book newsletter, any courses that you've taken that you just think are, you know, really good for somebody to look into? Sara Taher  Yeah, first of all, this podcast, they have to listen. That's the first thing. I would say also. Yes, so you don't necessarily need to wait for people to reach out to you. You may look, for example, for freelancing gigs, job posts on LinkedIn, for example, you may start to approach people just you know, be ready to answer their questions. Because they'll ask, okay, what what's your How does it work? What, what's the fees? Or what's the budget for that? So they have those questions, and you need to have those sort of sorted out. Because you don't want to give the impression that you don't know what you're doing. So that another thing I recently met another in house SEO, that's also freelancing on the side. And I was surprised when they told me they have four clients, because that's exactly the number of clients I can only that that's the maximum number of clients, like retainer clients that I can work with for months on the side on top of my without going being crazy or losing my mind that so keep that in mind and that you only can have four clients. Not necessarily that I mean, for me that this is a specific number of clients. So feel free to be picky. And I mean, it's not easy getting clients when you're starting, obviously, and even sometimes even now, it can be challenging. It's not always easy. There's a lot of great SEOs out there as well. But it's it's better to be picky and to work with people you know that you're interested in working with them. There's there they actually are ready to execute. And so you'll get some results that you can showcase, because that's one of the mistakes I did a while back. I He took on clients that I liked. I liked the businesses. But as we worked, I started to realize they are not ready to execute and recommendations started piling up. And I literally just had to tell them guys, in my mind, I'm sorry, I cannot continue taking your money. Because I mean, you're not ready to execute. Let's connect later when you're ready. So as I said, Because you have a limited, you don't want to overwhelm yourself and have no life at all. So be picky. Even if you don't have a lot of clients. Right from the start, make sure you're working with the right people that will help you have those case studies or something to showcase. It's it's not. So it's not just about the money if you really want to grow your freelance, it's also about having those stories to tell. Right? Right. So yeah, that those are two things. And I would say also, like I built, I started a small meetup monthly meet up with other SEOs. Some of them, one of them is in house. One is an agency owner, and then two are freelancing. And three are freelancing. Yeah. And we meet to discuss things and challenges and find yourself a small tribe like this, right? You need people to talk about any challenges you're facing. And you'll be surprised how much support you'll get. I personally forwarded a client, I did not have capacity to to one of the people in that group, right and find your friends or creative group of SEO friends that you meet with regularly, it will help you a lot. Nick LeRoy  Yeah, you know, that last tip is phenomenal. I mean, honestly, that's very much how I have gotten some of my best clients, it's other individuals or agency owners that I know and have a relationship with, and they can't take it on. Or they may have a non compete, you know, with another client. And you know what, I'm a big proponent of never just saying, No, it's always no, but like, no, but I know somebody who I think might be a good fit, and I trust. So I think that's a huge tip. And I'm really glad that you made that recommendation. Sara Taher  And yeah, one more thing, you don't need to wait for clients or find clients who want may want to start on your own affiliate website, or maybe, you know, buy a $500 existing affiliate website, and you have like, it's not like a fresh domain, it has some work done there. And you can try to make it grow. And that would be a small side gig till, and it would still help you to probably have a tiny bit of income, but at least you have stories to tell. As I said, Yeah. Nick LeRoy  And you know, what the best part is about affiliate sites or ad revenue sites is if they don't work, you have nobody but yourself to say why they don't work. Whereas when you come from an agency side, or even on the freelance side, as Sara had said, sometimes people just aren't ready. They don't buy into it. You know, there's budget constraints, there's always a reason why it doesn't work. But the best part of an affiliate site is when it works, it's really validating that you know, your stuff. But when it doesn't work, you got to give two big old thumbs to yourself and say that as long as that work, Sara Taher  yeah, and that's the stuff you've been sending to your clients, right. This is what they will be telling themselves. So this is what I've been telling my clients to do. And it's obviously it's not enough, right. So I literally, if what someone wants to start today, the easiest way is just an affiliate website. And don't overthink it. Just start you know. Yeah. Yeah, Nick LeRoy  maybe you don't start with payday loans. But you do you prove me wrong. And come drive by me and your new Lamborghini. I'll be the first one to be drooling. Well, thank you, sir. I really appreciate you joining us today. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. For anybody that wants to find you online connect with you reach out, can you tell us the best way? Yeah, Sara Taher  they can either reach out through my website, Zara hyphen, doll hair.com or LinkedIn. I'm easy to find on hashtag SEO riddles, or just search for Serato here and hopefully I'll pop up. Nick LeRoy  Fantastic. And I'll make sure to put all those links below in the show transcript. But Sara, thank you again so much for joining us. Again, all these notes are going to be available as well as this recording on the SEO freelancer.com Sara Taher  Thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theseofreelancer.com [https://www.theseofreelancer.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]