SEO Strategies for Freelance Writers
Whether it's SEO projects or putting a strategy together for a client, SEO for your freelance writer website, or understanding SEO at a deeper level to advise your clients and future content, there's several different paths we need to be aware of in our freelance writing business.
This week's livestream is going over SEO research for projects and efficient use of time, SEO courses and level of knowledge, SEO levels of options you can offer clients, and SEO strategy for your freelance writer website.
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SEO Strategies for Freelance Writers
There's a ton of different SEO strategies that freelance writers can use to fix their website, to work on client projects, to work on their individual content. And that's what we're going over today. But today, yes. So Katie Berry, there is a live happening today. I'm late because Barry's having a really rough day today.
So, um, if you've been around the livestream for a little bit, you know that Beau is 16 and a half. He has been having a lot of eye issues, so, um, he's still having a really rough day today, so I'm late because we were kind of figuring out what we should do with Barry. Um, yeah, so Ev so everybody, the, yeah, so the live's still happening.
It's just last week I was sick and then this week, um, Barry's not here right now, but he's having a really rough day. Um, and we were trying to figure out what to do about his eye problems that he's been having. So it's like, It's a lot. So he's an old dog. He's, uh, he's trying his best, but he is, he's having a really rough day today.
So, um, that's why we're a little late today, but we're gonna get going with our SEO strategies. We're gonna go all through all the stuff. And, um, so let's see. So we're gonna make sure that we go through a bunch of different things when it comes to projects, when it comes to your own writing, when it comes to, um, different things that you do for projects and how you use your time.
I think that's a kind of a really important way for us to kind of piece together the different SEO things. So, uh, let's do number one. So let's go through number one here. So, uh, thank you, Katie. Yeah, it's, it's just been a really rough ride with, with Bo. You know, he is, had a lot of, like, he has eye ulcers or he has 'em in one eye and he has like growths on his other eye.
And so, um, We're just, you know, we're taking it day by day with him, and today is not a good day, and it's also a really rough day for him. So, doing our best. All right. Um, so let's talk about this one. So we're talking about SEO research, so our projects and our use of time. So this is a thing that you are going to be doing sometimes for clients.
So when we are, um, working on SEO for clients, there's different types of stuff that we'll end up doing. So sometimes we'll end up doing, um, we'll end up doing SEO in terms of just the keywords. And this is like the most common thing. This is something that a lot of writers end up thinking that their clients want them to give them the world, they want them to do all things seo.
That when someone says on a job post or so when you start talking to a client that they're wanting you to, um, do all the SEO stuff. But one thing that I think it's missed a lot is there's a lot of companies now that just have an SEO strategist. On board, or they have a freelancer just like you who does SEO strategy, right?
And then what ends up happening is your job is to incorporate some keywords, or your job is to follow, um, kind of the outline that they give you in the brief. So basically they're giving you the brief and saying, here are the headers to use, right? And the, and the headers they're giving you are all, uh, SEO optimized or the way that the piece is organized, right?
The way that they have a flow of information is all SEO optimized already. And then you're writing to that format with those headers in the headline. And then you're also writing with the keywords they're giving you, whether they're long tail, short tail, whatever. So that's most of the time what you're getting.
Most of the time, if you have a great client, you're getting something that is your, um, your SEO keywords. Like they just say, Hey, use these. And that's from either the, on like the, the, uh, on team SEO strategist or another SEO strategist that they had, who's a freelancer who came in and set their strategy for them.
Or they end up giving you a brief with like all the stuff in it. Uh, the other thing is that when you're doing these SEO projects, if you are doing SEO strategy, like there's a big difference between doing SEO writing and SEO strategy. So one of the things that you would add if you were doing the writing, kind of mixing with strategy, um, is that we, uh, we can do different levels of it.
So we can go do some SEO keyword research and I like Uber suggest by Neil Patel, that's the best tool. It's my favorite. It's really cost effective versus other tools. They're constantly updating it. Uh, and you can buy a lifetime subscription and then you never have to pay for it a again. So I love that cuz a lot of SEO tools are very expensive and a lot of like SEO o tools are not as in depth, even if they're not as expensive.
So I, like Uber suggest you can do some keyword research and you can do, um, you can grab a bunch of ideas, you can cross reference their competitors within Uber. Suggest like put their websites in there. They'll at their content, their top rigging content, um, and you can pull keywords from there. You can also use keywords everywhere.
So on my, um, when I open up Google, every time I'm searching for something, I get both keywords everywhere, which gives me long tail, short tail keywords, ranking information, as well as Uber suggest. So I really like those because every time I search for something, I'm always getting SEO information and, and, um, I am looking at how I can kind of like, like I can search through Google and see what's kind of coming up, but I can also use Uber suggest to cross reference things.
Hey Vicky, I like the wave. Um, we're kind of looking at our, our options there, and we're only gonna do this as part of the project. It should be a paid part of the project. Not that you just like bake the cost into a blog post. And it's like the blog post costs the same as the regular blog post. When you're doing this type of research, it takes a while.
Like it could take several hours to kind of cross reference what the competitors are ranking for, where your keyword opportunities are. Um, whether it's easy or hard to rank for certain words, what's the cost per click? And the cost per click is, it'll say cpc, cost per click cpc. And that basically means that, um, it how much it costs for like an ad, right?
So if you were to run ads for that keyword, or if you were going to do some kind of like, um, like that's how much it costs to get someone to click on it basically if you were running ads. So the higher the cost per click, usually the more competitive that phrase is. Um, So when you're doing this research, that's kind of part of it, right?
You can either get the brief, that's one phase where you already have the stuff too. You can get something where someone wants you to do some keyword research. Um, but something I do wanna say with the keyword research is like the success or failure of your post is not just based on that keyword research.
Keyword research is like a really nice icing piece on top of your copy that's already high quality cake. So your keyword research, a lot of people panic cuz they think that the keywords are the only success of that post. Like a lot of times I talk to writers and they're like, well, I'm really scared of this SEO research cause like, what if I get it wrong?
It's like, it's a bunch of internet words where you're trying to please robots. You're way better off pleasing the humans with your quality content. The SEO is like adding to it. The SEO is just a little adding, uh, piece. And with all of these tools, I'm gonna tell you about some other ones with all these tools.
Um, you can usually do it, uh, like it's not, it's not super complicated when you're looking at comparisons of what words they think they want or what types of phrases make sense versus their competitors, all that stuff. Um, hold on one second. Hold on.
Okay. Sorry. Uh, lots going on today. Lots going on. Okay, so the other thing that we wanna talk about are different tools beyond Uber c Jess. So I. Put tools like Uber suggest Moz, ah, refs, uh, clear scope, all kind, well, clear scopes in a different group I guess, but any tool that you're using to search for keyword that goes in that initial group.
And then the other thing too is that, um, you are looking into tools that optimize the actual copy. So you can do keyword research that way, the first way where you're kind of researching, uh, different keywords and you're cross-referencing them. Um, and then the other way is to use a tool that's like optimizing per piece you write.
So if you're using a tool like phrase.io f r, yeah, f r a s se.io or clear scope, clear scope's, like a billion dollars a month. But phrase io last time I checked was 50 bucks a month. There's other tools like that too. But basically you're putting, you write the article, then you put it into phrase.io or clear scope and it tells you what to fix.
So it says you should try a headline like this, or you should try these key terms. Or it gives you like a letter grade of how well it'll rank. So if you have a C plus, you know you need, you need to get an A plus. It tells you how many words it should be. Um, it gives you a lot of information per article, so you can optimize per article if that's something that makes more sense.
So that's something you could do for clients. Um, but these tools are working in different ways and they're really kind of efficient. We don't wanna kind of go off the deep end where like everything is so robotic, like we don't wanna go so far overboard, um, for certain things. And the other thing that I think is really important here is this is what I've found most of the time.
Most of the time. I think this is something that writers miss If you're doing a good job. Those keywords should already be in your article. This is something that I've done keyword research for content strategy clients and for regular, uh, content marketing clients. Like most of the time when they're like, let's include these keywords, or you end up doing keyword research, those words were already naturally in your copy.
That's the thing that people miss a lot is they're like, oh, these keywords are magic. Like we have to include them or else no one will find the article. No, these should be natural things. That's that you would be talking about while you're, while someone's looking for the, the article, right? Like the topic and the natural way you would explain it.
So a lot of times you get keywords or long tail phrases where you're like, of course that would be in there. Like, uh, like in order to explain this topic, we would have to say that. So that's the other thing to remember about SEO is like, it's not about these magic words. It's not about like getting all the magic words and it's not about like, um, Pleasing all the robots.
It's also about understanding that a lot of times those are natural things, like questions or phrases that come up when people are talking about a topic or when they're searching for a topic. Okay? Uh, Vicki says, can I include SEO in my list of capabilities without attracting editors and managers who want mill like work?
Yes. So I used to have it in my list of stuff for a long time, and the way that you're doing it is that you're not just listing seo o this is the thing is like if you just put it in a bulleted list where you're like, seo, that's too random. We have to put context around it. So Vicky, when you're putting SEO in there, you explain what you do, explain that you're researching keywords or that you're, you, you know, you're happy to work with, right?
Like when working with you, you're happy to work with your client's team, uh, on a brief that already has structure, you know, SEO structure, and you explain the process. So you explain what I just said. Like, you go look for keywords, you cross reference things, um, or you're using a tool like you're happy to use whatever tool they're working with, and you can list a couple if you want, saying like, yeah, I'm happy to use phrase.ao.
Or if you're more comfortable with clear scope, like I'm happy to work through our content, um, in that platform to optimize it, you know, the best we can for seo. So if you explain the process that attracts green light clients and repels red light content mill clients, so your red light content mill clients are often just like doing exactly what I started talking about at the beginning, like, is this like seo?
It has to be robots. You have to do all this stuff. And they, they lay a lot of the blame and a lot of the responsibility on you, your potential clients that are green light clients. If you explain the process that I just said, right? Research, cross reference, check with competitors, check the cost per click or.
Come up with a matrix or follow the brief that they give you, or, um, you're happy to put it into a tool, right? Like phrase doo or, or clear scope or something like that. Um, to optimize it, right? That attracts people who are like on a different level. A lot of times what ends up happening with content mill, content mill work is, um, content milk, content mill work, um, is that you are putting something in the copy that's basically talking about like the robotic parts of seo.
Like you're like, I will put in as many keyword phrases as you want. Or you'll say something like, everything will be perfectly SEO optimized for the first page. That's not what you wanna say. Like, that's what attracts content mil people, cuz they wanna get on the first page in like the cheapest, shittiest way possible.
They're not understanding that the priority is human first quality content, and then SEO o is the icing. Okay. So if you describe that, if you describe the process, the SEO key word finding process, or the SEO optimization process per article or per post or per whatever, um, that kind of helps you transition to people who are thinking that way.
Like, we wanna align with green light clients who are thinking about the process of SEO o not the content mill clients that are like, throw all the keywords in there, it's all of your fault if it doesn't work. Like that kind of stuff. Okay. Um, the last thing I wanna say here is about time. So when you're doing this research, it should take you a few hours.
Like if you're using a cross-referencing tool, like Uber suggests, it should probably take you like one to three hours. We don't wanna go overboard, and I know people will disagree with me on that, but if you're doing one article or like you're doing one piece of content, I think that you shouldn't be spending more time on SEO than actually crafting the copy.
Okay? There's a lot of times where people are like, oh, I only spent two hours doing the article, but it took me eight hours to do the seo. It's like, you're, nope, nope, we're missing the point. Remember, this is a really important thing. Gather the reference material. Go look through Uber, suggest, learn how to use that tool, cross reference, and you can even ask your clients, who are your competitors?
I need to know that for seo so we can pull out the right competitive advantages, like the right keywords we can rank for. Um, so I can check, you know, different, um, different graphs that they have in Uber Suggest. But yeah, like you ha you shouldn't be spending more time on SEO than your actual quality content.
And we're, and the thing to keep in the back of your mind, these things should be naturally occurring. Okay? They should be like precious metals, okay? It's not, it's not rocket science. That's why everybody is doing seo. It's not hard, okay? I get it like that. Everybody wants to get on the first page of Google.
Everybody wants to get on the pa first page of Google, okay? We're all competing for like 10 slots, right? So that's the competitive part. Not so much like the perfect SEO optimization, right? So you have to remember, these things should be naturally occurring, like precious metals, or they should be naturally occurring like, like regular resources, right?
Um, like limestone in the dirt in certain areas. Like here in Texas, it should be something where when you're, when you gather a list of keywords and it should be somewhere, be like, Two to three keywords is probably what you're shooting for if you wanna be spicy. And it's a very long article. Three to five.
That's, that's what I think. So look, we're only looking for a very small number of words, and they should be naturally occurring every time, every time I've gotten keywords. Pretty much, pretty much. There's every once in a while it, it hasn't been this way, but most of the time when I get a list of keywords from a client or we talk, I talk to the SEO strategist, or I get, um, sometimes you get these big spreadsheets from the SEO strategist about keywords and phrases and what to include and how to do all the stuff.
So even when I get those big spreadsheets, it's like, of course I'm gonna be writing that. Like, of course, like these should be naturally occurring things. Sometimes they're questions, right? Sometimes the key words or the phrases, uh, long tail phrases are, Are questions, which of course you would be asking in the piece.
Like, well, what if, what is this? Like, what are we talking about here? Um, I think that this is something that writers miss. If you're doing a good job, these seo o keywords should be naturally occurring in your copy already. So it should be a pretty, like if someone gives you SEO o keyword to include in your work, it should be pretty natural to like bake them in.
Uh, it should be something that is a question or a phrase or, uh, something that someone would already be talking about and amongst themselves on this topic. Okay, so that's the first piece. How are we doing? We've kind of been having a rough week overall. So just as an update, since Charlie's here, uh, Charlie's been, Charlie has a lot of allergies, um, she's like, when it gets to be spring here in Austin, uh, Charlie ends up like she both rubs herself all over the plants that she's allergic to and rubs herself in the grass that she's allergic to.
And then she eats it. So she eats a lot of leaves. I don't know. Um, if you ever go to Snorkel Peanut, I haven't posted on there in a long time, but there's a video of her eating leaves. Like she will just naturally eat leaves. I've never seen a dog do it, but she goes around our whole yard and she will pluck off leaf after leaf, like one at a time, not a clump.
She will take individual leaves off. So not only is she allergic to all like the allergen, you know, all the stuff that's in the air during spring, but then she consumes it. So she's been having a lot of allergy issues. So she doesn't have her collar her on today cause she had to get a bath. And, uh, she's been shaking her head a bunch, so we've been having, and I was sick, you know, I'm still kind of getting over the sickness, so we've been having kind of a rough ride over here just to give everybody an update cuz I know sometimes I get notes from people asking like, are they like, I hope your pups are okay.
So giving an update, Charlie's been kind of having a rough time cuz her ears have been bugging her because like I said, she has allergies. So if you, if you see her shaking her head, that's usually like her, you know, she used to get really bad ear infections until we kind of realized that she needed to have a lot of baths.
Like our vet told her to give us a bath once a week, which we now pretty much try to do it every other week, which has worked pretty well. But yeah, so everybody's kind of having like a rough. A rough situation over here. Let's talk about two. So let's talk about courses and your level of knowledge. So when you're doing seo, I love HubSpot.
I love it. I'm sure there's lots of other courses that you can take, but SEO through HubSpot really helps you get a grasp on a lot of stuff with that. Like, here's the thing, it will give you so much knowledge that you will never use, that you will like forget stuff. Like you will forget stuff and your clients won't even know that stuff.
But the point is that you have learned it. And then if you needed to go back and refresh, the refresh process is fast. So even if you were, excuse me, even if you were, um, even if you were, um, Oh man, that thought just lost myself. Oh, even if you forgot it, even if you forgot it, um, you can come back. You can come back and refresh really quickly.
That's why I love the course, is like there. I probably use half, I probably, maybe not even half. I probably use 30 to 40% of what is in the HubSpot SEO course with my clients. But the deal is I have learned a ton of stuff, especially about repurposing content. That's something that I think I didn't know a lot about and I took this course years ago, so I'm sure it's way better now.
Um, but when I took it, there was a whole bunch of stuff about repurposing content, and this is how I learned the flywheel approach approach to content, and the flywheel approach to content is how I help my content strategy clients. So it teaches you about content pillars. It teaches you a lot of ways.
Not just SEO o keywords, but the entire strategy kind of behind SEO o and knowing that you can advise your clients better. And you start realizing that like, SEO keywords are like a bucket of sprinkles, but this stuff that you're doing for the strategy or the way that you're preparing the content is like the whole ice cream cone, right?
So I definitely recommend seo. The, it's free, it's totally free from HubSpot. They give you a little sticker if you want to put it on your profile in, on LinkedIn or your website saying you're HubSpot certified, whatever. Uh, not a big, I don't think it's a big deal. I really, um, there was a time where I had clients who really liked that I was content marketing certified, but they didn't really care about the SEO stuff.
They cared about content marketing. So, um, SEO courses, I really love HubSpot. That's the one I recommend the most. Um, I'm sure there's others like I. Like I said, I also love Uber suggests that Neil Patel, but I don't know if he has like a course on seo. He might, but I read his stuff all the time. So course HubSpot for SEO and Content Marketing two.
Neil Patel, I love his stuff. Read it all the time. He gives you tons of information. That's a good way to kind of take a mini course every time you read his blog post. So he join his email list, get all the information, he gives you lots of stuff. There's lots of tools too and videos to teach you how to use Uber suggest.
Um, I think those things are really important and increasing your level of knowledge is helping you troubleshoot for clients. So when you have a client that comes to you and they're like hell bent on specific SEO stuff, instead of panicking and saying like, oh my God, this is the only result, this is the only thing they care about.
You've already taken the course and you've already learned from reading Neil Patel's stuff that you're like, I get that my client is worried about 20%, but we need to kind of focus on the 80%. So there's a lot of things that we can kind of advise our clients and help reduce panic, create better content, and help educate our client to like move forward properly.
So these are things I think we want to help our clients understand that it's not just about keywords like it most of the time if you have a client that's just obsessed with keywords and they don't care about anything else, they're not your client. They're a red light client, they don't get it. They're on the wrong bus.
Okay? Hmm. We're double Virginia Tech today, I just realized I have my Virginia Tech mug and my Virginia Tech shirt on. Also, I did not go to the College of Engineering. This is an old shirt from my dad from 1978 or 79. Somewhere in there. It's either 70. Yeah, it's like 1978 or 79. Okay, so when we're kind of with, with our level of knowledge, we're able to help our clients at a deeper level.
We're able to kind of remove panic. We're able to educate them on what really matters with content, with certainty, right? So when we have this knowledge, and it's not just knowledge of the tools, and it's not just knowledge of the research, it's knowledge of like, how do we actually put the puzzle together?
And when you see the whole puzzle, right? When you see the content pillars and how that works with the flywheel approach and how that works with SEO keywords and how search engines actually work, then it's really easy to see that that keywords are the sprinkles and there's so much more to content than just the keywords.
So I think that that piece there is really critical for me. When I started, um, when I started increasing my knowledge of SEO as like the strategy and understanding how content marketing, content strategy and SEO worked together as a whole salad, that helped me understand who was my client and who wasn't.
And it also helped me understand the role of SEO o keywords and the role of SEO strategy and the role of an SEO strategist versus a content strategist. Um, and I think those pieces are really important. Like a lot of people, uh, like when I talk to some writers and they're like, I wanna be like, I wanna say I'm an SEO writer.
For me that's like redundant. Like we're supposed to already be doing that. So a lot of times that's coming from someone reading a lot of job posts where they see that someone says the job title is SEO writer. You should not be doing that. Stop applying to job ads. I have plenty of videos on here. How to find good clients and how to make money.
Go do that. Stop getting on the platforms. That's where they're coming from. They're coming from a place of job ads or platforms or listings. Like, there's plenty of really great freelance listings, but we're not looking for people that are like, I have to have an SEO writer, blah, blah, blah. Like they, they have this big long post about that.
Um, I think that we are, um, we're, we should come to the table with the understanding that our clients are probably gonna ask about seo. So saying that you're an SEO focused writer, to me, sometimes feels redundant. If I'm gonna offer a high level white glove kind of service, that's a different thing. So when I get writers that come to me and just say, like, I wanna just say I'm an SEO writer, and then I'll just do all the SEO to get 'em on the first page of Google.
Nope. Nope. Cuz you can't guarantee placement on the first PLA page of Google. You can't, like, you can't guarantee that. Like that. That's. The algorithm's always changing. You could probably guarantee it for like a day or maybe a little while, like a month, but it guaranteeing it forever or g like, right, because that, that's always changing.
So when we're kind of going through these things, right, having, um, having our, like, how do I wanna say this, like,
having our deep kind of understanding of the process makes it so that when we explain that on our LinkedIn profile, that gets the right types of clients. So giving that white glove service of what are we actually doing? It's not just like SEO keywords, first page of Google. We're just getting that off the table we're saying.
SEO strategy, or we're saying SEO optimize articles by doing a b abc or that you will see d e F results, right? So we are not just like, there's a big gap between putting in keywords and saying that you can help someone get to the first page of Google and explaining the process of SEO research, SEO strategy, or things that you would do to help your clients with different tools.
Those are two different levels of clients. Okay? So what we wanna do is explain the process and we don't, like if you do SEO strategy, that's a very different thing than saying like you're doing SEO writing, like we're all doing that. Like if you're writing for a business, that's pretty much all you're doing.
And this a lot of times is just for blog posts, right? Or articles or thought leadership. We're, we, very rarely are SEO optimizing a case study or a white paper or a guide or something that's downloadable, right? This is something that I think a lot of writers forget too, is they're so focused on just seo.
They forget SEO is just for articles, just for like things that are published regularly. They forget that there's lots of other types of content that we create as, as freelance writers and as content marketing writers that is not heavily focused on SEO at all. Yes. If we write a landing page, we might in, you know, SEO optimize that or figure out some keywords or do some stuff in there.
But it's not, the focus of the landing page is not, excuse me, is not to seo optimize it. So you have to remember, a lot of times when we're talking about seo, it's like this repetitive content, right? And a lot of times as freelance writers, we start with the repetitive content, right? We. We start doing that repetition.
We get our retainers, we get blog posts, we're kind of chugging along. And you usually get to a place where you're like, I want a different type of work. You know, I don't wanna just do a hundred thousand blog posts, I wanna do some reported articles, I wanna do some thought leadership guides, case studies, landing pages, email marketing, like a bunch of different things.
So SEO is, is a, is a very different part of the chunk of funnel of content that we can do, right? So remember that too, like SEO is mostly for articles and repetitive stuff, right? So there's a lot of other content that we can do, and this is kind of part of the SEO course, right? You kind of understand that life cycle, um, and the growth opportunity is there.
But then as you mature as a writer, you learn that there's so much more than these little s e o things that the Seo o things are attracting. Kind of like lower end work. Because it's like repetitive stuff, but you get to a point, and I most people get to this point, it doesn't mean you never do blog posts again.
It doesn't mean you don't do a ton of articles, but it means that you add more work to your repertoire. So you end up doing, like I said, case studies, guides, downloadables, right? Which could downloadables or anything that a subscriber would get, right? They subscribe, they get the download, uh, infographics or, um, drip campaigns, right?
Email drip campaigns, or you end up doing landing pages or webinar decks and scripts or content strategy or messaging and positioning, right? None of the, there's like some stuff in there that has to do with seo, but you have to remember the scale of work. Like there's like 20% of work that is like super SEO focused and then there's like a big pile of 80% of other stuff to do.
Okay. And I think that's important to know as well. Katie says, thank you for still doing this in the midst of all you're going through. You're welcome Katie, and thank you for the kind words. I appreciate that we're doing our best over here. We're doing our best. What do you think, Charlie? What would you like to say?
Would you like to say anything to the people? She's like, just give me the snacks, lady. She's like, I'm only here for snug time and snack time. All right, Charlotte, you wanna show everybody your skills? Oh, I thought you were gonna catch it. Okay, ready? Go back to your hava hole. Okay. Go back to your hava hole.
You ready? Oh, no. That was a bad toss. You wanna try again? Oh my gosh. Charlie's usually like on point. That must have meant that I gave her bad tosses. Charlie, it's behind you. It's over there, snor. It's behind you. It's over there. Good girl. There it is. Good girl. Good job. All right, Charlie, you wanna do a couple tricks before we get to our next thing?
Run. Whoop, whoop. Good job. All right, Charlie. All right, Charlie, let's show 'em. Can you do a round for them? Nope. Can you go around? Come on around. That's down. That's not around. Like around. Come on around. Good girl. Good girl. That actually helped me the other day. I only taught her around because she has trouble in small spaces.
Like she, uh, she has a really rough time. Like she, when she feels squeezed in, she panics. So I taught her to go around so that she could get out of small spaces by just turning around. And that helped me the other day and I taught her around so that she could navigate better. You my high five. Good job.
All right. Around, come on around. Good girl. Good job. Good job, superstar. Good job superstar. All right, so let's get to three. Oh, I already put up three. Nice. Good job. Me. All right, let's go to three. So our third thing here is that we wanna talk about our levels of options that we can offer clients. So this is something I actually go over pretty in depth.
I have this whole video that I give my freelance writer, wealth Lab students about the types of projects, um, that you can do for clients. And I think that it's important to remember this kind of scale of work. So you have the first piece, right? The first piece is just putting the keywords in there, right?
What we talked about, the brief. It's like they give you a brief, you put it in. Two is that you do the research, right? You just find two to five keywords. You do some research, you submit some spreadsheets, and then you put it in your work. And then three is when you start doing kind of a mix of con uh, uh, SEO strategy and kind of content strategy in a way.
So you're kind of looking at their content pillars and their main points. Yeah, it is, it is a circus right now. Um, you're looking at their content strategy that they either had done or their content pillars or how they're approaching their content. And their content pillars are just the topics that they focus on.
So content pillars, you should have three to five of 'em. Uh, it would be like the types of the top, the overarching topics that you focus on within your content marketing. So they give you their content pillars and you're kind of doing a mix of a little bit of SEO strategy, like. Hey, here's what I'm looking at, not just keywords, but the SEO strategy and their content marketing or their content strategy plan.
And you're kind of mushing those together in a bit. Uh, and that's actually kind of a big project. And then your biggest project is like you're doing all the SEO strategy, all the stuff for the website, for the blog, for all the stuff. Uh, and you can also mix in content strategy. So we have these kind of four different tiers of projects and a lot of times freelance writers spend their tier, their time in tier one.
So unless you decide to specialize in SEO strategy or content strategy, you hardly will ever get to projects three and four. Project two is pretty common when you start getting clients that want more help from you, like they're green light clients who see your value and they're like, Hey, can you help me put a strategy together?
Rather than just like, put these keywords in a blog post or do some basic research, like, can you help me a little bit more, like, do a little bit more in-depth research or help me a little bit kind of understand the landscape there. And most of the time, like I would have to say a majority of my work, like a ma big majority, I don't know, like 70% of the time someone gives you a brief and gives you the keywords or 70% of the time they just give you the keywords and phrases and say like, we already had SEO strategy done.
Here you go. This is why we work with green light clients. They have their shit together. If you're, this is like a really big step, I think for a lot of writers to get to is understanding. That going up the totem pole means those people have their shit together. The reason that I like working with certain levels of startups is cuz they have to have their shit together to keep getting funding, right?
You can't, there's a lot of companies that go through Seed or Pree or Series A and they don't get to series B, C, D, whatever. So you have to remember, in order to, for that business to grow, in order for a startup to get funding, in order for a company to make the Fortune 500 or the Inc 5,000, they have to have their shit together to grow, right?
That means it's a lot easier sometimes to work with them on content and on seo. Can you go back to your hobo hole? Thank you. Um. And that means that you're going for a higher quality client, which means you can get paid more for giving right advice in helping them with seo. So we're having these four different levels of SEO projects, but I don't think, like, I think the thing to remember is like there's a big gap between three and four, right?
So one and two are pretty basic. They're things that we kind of do on repeat. They're kind of regular stuff that, like after you do a bunch of repetitive blog posts and someone gives you a brief and you kind of understand seo, you can pretty easily transition to project two where you're giving more advice and you can show them like legitimate results, or you can show them changes through spreadsheets.
You're like, if we do this, here's what's gonna happen. Or you can kind of give them a, a map, right? So that helps you charge more. Then you don't have to take as many projects and, excuse me, I'm like really hiccupy today. Um, you could charge more for those projects. You can decide if you wanna do more SEO heavy stuff and get into strategy, right?
But I think these kinds of things are really important to understand, like the level of projects, right? Remember, a lot of SEO stuff is focused on repetitive blog, posty article, thought leadership content. Good job, Charlie. She caught it. That was a better toss. Um, and you wanna try again? Let's do it one more time.
Let's see if we can get it on camera for you to catch it. Ready? Good job, superstar. All right. Um, we can kind of see the breakdown of projects. So you should have that in your mind. You should have it in your mind that there's this breakdown of projects that you can do, and that SEO strategy is like multiple steps beyond that, right?
Um, and I think that when we're kind of thinking about our client work, like we should be moving on, we should be up-leveling as we go through our, our, our work. And a lot of times I see freelance writers who just write blog posts for like five to six years. Like they don't. They don't pursue other stuff.
They don't step outside their comfort zone. They don't go after different types of clients. They don't try different projects, and then they feel stuck at a certain income level, or they feel stuck with blog posts or they feel like they wanna quit. And it's mostly just that they have to get outta their comfort zone and try these different things.
So if you see kind of the tiered approach, the 1, 2, 3, 4, basically of types of projects that we do for clients and you, you're growing your knowledge so that you can educate clients, you can see the depth of stuff that goes in there. You can see, like most of the time you're gonna be in like level one or level two, and that, like, you would have to market yourself as an SEO strategist most of the time, or a content strategist to do those bigger types of projects.
Uh, but I, most of the time, like if you're talking to a client and they are, um, they're talking about how they wanna get on the first page of Google or what you're gonna do to get on the first page or like. You know, not improving web traffic, right? That's the thing. Most of the time, SEO is for improving web traffic, right?
And yes, getting on the first page of Google can be part of improving that web traffic. But that doesn't necessarily mean like that. You're not on the first page of Google for like another phrase you don't know about. Right? So if I hear someone talking about that, um, or someone asks me about that, like, I have articles that are on the first page of Google, but that's also like, it's complicated and, and I feel like it's kind of red flaggy to start a, your relationship.
Basically saying like, you have to get me on the first page of Google, or, or you're not good at seo, which everybody's trying to get on the first page on the planet. Creating content, everyone creating content on the planet is trying to get on the first page of Google. That's who you're competing against.
That's nut town, right? Like a client asking you for that. There's millions of people doing that. Like, right. So this is why I have to give the reminder that the SEO keywords are just one piece of the puzzle. There's a lot more to getting on the first page of Google. Okay. So those tiers are, I think are important.
And then our last thing here is number four. All right, number four. Number four, if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about, um, growing your freelance writing business or building a freelance writing business, you adore subscribe. I never remember where the button is.
If it's like my right hand over here, there's like a red button somewhere. Or is it here? I don't know. There's a button, but we're gonna talk about four after we give Charlie a snack. Charlie, you look super cute today. You look very clean and shiny. Oh man. I think we're all just having a rough day today.
Cause usually Charlie's like on the ball, maybe I'm, maybe I'm having a rough day giving you poor tosses. Sorry bean. But you look super cute and I like your interested ears. Your radar ear is super active. Good girl. Let's talk about four. Our last thing here. Um, our last thing is like when we're doing our SEO strategy for our freelance writer website, when we're doing our SEO strategy for our freelance writer website, this is a different beast.
Okay, so the, let me give you the number one tip that I have for your freelance writer website. Put your new clips in the minute you get a clip, put that shit on your website, okay? Every time. And this was this, I don't know if it's still the case, I haven't checked in a while, but my website was on the first page of Google for Austin, freelance writer, um, like Austin, content Marketing writer or, uh, Austin Free.
Yeah, Austin Freelance writer, Austin Content marketing writer, or Austin Freelance Content marketing writer. Uh, real estate writer. Um, I don't think it was Travel writer, but it might have been food writer. So my website was on the first page for multiple different terms, and I was not working on SEO because I was working on adding clips.
The newness in your website is really important. The second tier part of that is writing really good copy. Google Spiders are crawling all over your website looking for good copy because my website had really good copy. Not a thousand SEO terms. And I was updating it regularly by putting clips in there I got on the first page.
Okay. Those are my SEO things that are, I think are the most important. Every time you get a clip, upload it immediately. The other thing that you're getting with clips is back links. You are now linking out to another reputable site most of the time, right? It's usually like a bigger site than yours. Right?
So then you get that SEO juice cuz you have a lot of back links cuz your, your portfolio, when you have these clips in there, you're giving a link out so then you get that juice. It's really important. Um, yeah. So Vicky says, except if you don't like your new clips. Yeah. Put things in there that you would wanna get hired for.
Again, if someone changed your work to the point where you feel like it's not representative of what you would give a new client, or if someone published something where you're not proud of it or some you don't wanna do that work anymore, don't publish it. But yes, every time you get a clip, you're proud of.
Which should be most of your clips. Um, or every time you get a clip of something that you wanna do more of that type of work, that means you need to publish it. So those are important. Upload your clips, make sure you have back links. If you can't link out to your clip, upload a pdf. Uh, this is what I do in Squarespace.
Um, and then make sure that you have good copy on your website. Like obviously this goes without saying, right? And I get this question a lot. What SEO terms should I put on my freelance writer website? Freelance writer, right? Like that. There are things that you would be saying regularly, like, I'm an Austin based freelance writer.
That's one thing for Austin, freelance writer, SEO O doesn't have to be all together anymore. So if you say Austin word, freelance writer, that still counts for seo, right? Or if I say like a freelance writer in Austin, that counts too. Or if I like natural things you would say in your copy, like, as a freelance writer, I help my clients do these types of projects.
Now, someone can Google case study, freelance writer, and those terms are quotes enough together, your site can come up. Remember, these things are like, like think about the location that you're in, that you do freelance writing, freelance copywriting, freelance content marketing, writing, freelance content strategy, um, freelance SEO strategy, whatever that is, that stuff would naturally be on your site if you write good copy that is directed at your clients.
Talking about the, the what makes you different, how you do a good job, um, how you help your clients get results, the types of projects you do where you live, right? Your location that will help people find you. Like, it's not rocket science. Like I didn't go through my website and SEO optimize it. Um, I do, I picked, like, that's the thing that makes, that drives me nuts sometimes is like I'm, if I go do research, the words that would come up right when I, when I did that were the same words I would've used in my copy.
You should be saying that you should be using different words for freelance writer. You shouldn't just repeat freelance writing 65 times. You should use freelance writer, freelance content marketing writer, freelance content strategist. If you do that, freelance SEO strategist. If you do that, then include the types of projects that you do in the copy.
This is a mistake a lot of people make, is when they make a website, they wanna make a lot of images and they're like, look, I made this beautiful image of the projects I do. Great, but that doesn't help you rank. It's not in the copy, it's in the image, right? And yes, you can write all texts and you can write meta descriptions and blah, blah, blah, but you're better off just putting it naturally in the copy.
For example, in A C T A. I hear you mean, I hear you. Um, you put it in the cta like, Hey, if you need help with content strategy, case studies and guides, um, you know, reach out to me. Um, you know, like, do a good cta, right? Like, if you need help with blah, blah, blah, um, you know, I'm a freelance writer who can help you get more web traffic leads and sales, right?
So we're all putting those things together so they all sing, they all sing really well, and we're gonna update our website every three to six months. That doesn't mean overhaul the copy. That means update the copy if it needs to be. And most of the time it's tweaks, like you learn something from working with new clients, or they mention new pain points, or they, you work on a new project type and then you update that copy.
So not only are we updating our portfolio all the time, which really helps with Google, Google likes newness, oh, sorry Charlie, that was a bad throw check. Um, not only are we updating for Google Spiders to crawl our new stuff all the time cuz we're adding our portfolio, our portfolio has back links to other places that rank well most of the time.
Right. And if we don't have back links, we're at least updating with a pdf. So it's seeing the newness two, we're making sure our copy is really, really great and talks to our clients' pain points and talks to the things. Um, That we would help our clients do and the things that make us unique, right? And then we're also including things that should naturally be there, like multiple different titles that you would have as a freelance writer.
You're not just a freelance writer, you are a freelance writer, freelance content marketer, con content marketing writer, freelance copywriter. And then if you do that too, like freelance, um, content strategists and freelance SEO strategists if you do that. But these should be kind of interchangeable terms that we're using.
We don't wanna repeat stuff a thousand times, but it should be refreshed as well. These are important things. Um, a lot of times I get, like, I had clients ask me like, how did you get your website on the first page of Google? Like, what did you do for seo? Like, you must be really good at seo. And I was like, no, no.
I do the basic ass stuff that needs to be done and I do a good job writing my copy. Like, that's, that's what you need to do. Right. Those are things that are really important. Like your website looks good in the eyes of Google by having quality content where you're constantly updating and you're adding things of value and you're doing a good job explaining what you do, right?
This is why I think it's so weird when I see freelance writer websites that have no copy. They're like a couple of paragraphs and then like a list of services, and then they're like, everything costs this much. Like they're not using their website to explain stuff like we're writers. We should have websites that explain things.
You should have a lot of copy on your website. That's the goal, right? The more copy on your website, and I'm not saying go nuts, don't write a novel, but I am saying you need to describe a bunch of really important things so that your clients hire you and see that you're the right person for them. And then the second tier thing is, yes, your website will rank better and you're doing a good job of explaining what you do right and the things you're helping with, the projects you work on and who you are.
Those are all really important. Okay. Those are the main things I wanted to get through for seo. But I think what we can kind of see here is that SEO spans a bunch of different things, doesn't it? It's not just SEO for freelance writers in projects that we do or the types of things we, we help clients with or the background or the learning that we do.
It's also for our own website. So we're doing a bunch of different types of projects. And the other thing I always recommend people do mess with your website. If you're trying to, if you take a, an SEO course or if you learn some stuff about SEO and you wanna do mess with like a test project, use your website.
This is something that a lot of people are like, I don't have a client. Okay, you have a website, go do that. And if you don't have a website, go put one up. Go write the copy. I think that's a really important testing ground because then you can put Uber suggest on your website and you can just pick a different writer in your area and compare them and Uber suggests and see like what's go, like what are the differences.
Or, um, you can end up like putting a bunch of uh, things in Google Analytics, right? You can have Google Analytics set up for your website so you can start getting familiar with Google Analytics in case your client is asking you to do that for a project. There are lots of things we can do with our own website before we ever get to a client project and a lot of writers wanna shy away from the website.
I see you Bean. A lot of writers wanna shy away from the website cuz it's like too much work or it's like too much copy. No, it's critical and really important not only to have your website and update it with your clips, all that good stuff, but also use it as a testing ground so that you can help clients.
Like it's a great place for you to play in the sandbox before someone asks you to build a sandcastle, right? It's really important. Yes. Charlotte says do it. Charlotte says, do it. You go be good girl. So any chance that you get as a writer to play in the sandbox before you build a sandcastle for your clients.
Do it. Remember, those good clients want you to be able to kind of help them a lot more. Like, we don't wanna be like, always kind of imagine it this way. Like we, we spend a, a short period of time in our freelance writing life being, um, the pelican where we just take a whole fish and we just wall down our gullet, right?
So there's a, where our, where our client is like the whole fish and they're just like, here's all the stuff. Just go do it. Like we be, we're an order taker for a while in our freelance writing career, but eventually we end up being the mom bird who goes out and chews up all the food and figures it out and then gives it to our clients.
I'm not gonna say the other thing, but like, we are the mama bird that goes out and find digs around, finds the food, chews it up, gives it to our, to our clients so that they can digest it easily, right? First you start out as the pelican and you get everything at once and you just, you're an order taker for a while.
You kind of learn the trade, right? You learn how to do the blog post. You learn how to do your job. And then you kind of get more experience and then over time you become like, right, you become the mama bird. And then after that you basically become like, like a hawk or like an eagle where you're, you are like a precise hunter.
You're like, I know what to do. I know what I'm looking for. Like if I see movement from 60 feet above the ground of this wrap that's running around, I know exactly how to dive to get it right. I know we're making bird analogies today. I don't know why, but this is where we are. So, um, kind of think of it that way.
You're moving from like a pelican eating a whole fish. Like not even chewing it, just saying like, cool, gimme the work. I'll just, I'll just do it. Then you're moving to like the mama bird who's like chewing things up and making it digestible for your clients. Then you're like the precise hunter that's like, I know exactly what you're talking about.
I know how to help you. I know how to give you the advice and I know how to get you results. Like, I know how this works, right? So if you think about that kind of transition, that's the change too of like, first we're kind of doing the copy and we're just taking the Seo o keywords. Then maybe we're kind of doing a little SEO strategy or a little content strategy, and, um, we're doing a little bit more research, and then we're actually giving someone, setting the roadmap of content strategy or SEO strategy for someone.
Birds aren't real. Birds are totally real. What do you mean birds aren't real? Uh, Charlotte's, well, Charlotte's not really like a bird. Charlotte chases a lot of birds. I'm ready. Good job. Charlotte ate a couple butterflies. That's when the saddest thing, Charlotte just watching her run after the, or one of them she ran after and ate the butterfly.
And then the second butterfly, it just flew in front of her face and she just ate it. I know. She's like giving me a dirty look. She's like, why would you tell everyone that? How embarrassing. You're not embarrassed or not embarrassed or cuny. You're cuny. All right. Charlotte says that she hopes all your SEO stuff works out.
So those are the things I think are really important. Um, if you feel like this was helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business or freelance writing business, you adore, subscribe. Um, what was I gonna say? Oh, I did wanna mention a couple things.
Um, for those that asked about runway, which I don't, um, hold on. Let's make this one. Um, So for those that asked about runway, runway is available, uh, now all the time. So if you wanna sign up for runway now you can do that. So it's a quick five day course. Um, it takes you through all the major pillars that you need to complete in your freelance writing business.
It will be held live again in August. Yeah, August. Yeah. It'll be held live again in August. But right now, if you wanted to get started with freelance writing, or you wanna level up, right? You wanna launch or level up your freelance writing business Runway is available. Um, you just go to mandy ellis.com/runway to pick it up and it's five days.
You get the material, it's dripped out every day. So the first ti day that you sign up, you get Monday's material, you get day one material, and then you get every, uh, it'll drip every single day. Um, so you can grab runway, um, five day fast track class if you choose. And you can get my pricing guide. That was another thing.
So, Mandy ellis.com/pricing guide. It's my free pricing guide for freelance writers and for content strategists, um, that has all different types of projects. I update it regularly. I know you're spicy. Do you wanna come up and say hello? Do you wanna come say hello to everybody? No. You just wanna sit like a tiny little bandit.
Okay. But it's free. You can grab it and you'll also get both. Uh, you'll know what our topic is for the live stream ahead of everybody else, and you will get my weekly tips and tricks email. So in addition to these live streams, I send out an email every single Monday with tips and tricks. Uh, so if you sign up for my pricing guide, it's free.
You will get that. Um, Albert says, when I started my freelance writing my freelance career in the early to mid nineties, wait, oh, I started my freelance writing freelance career in the early to mid nineties, so I never had a website. What I see though is that writers post. 2000. Okay, so the year 2000. So writers after the year 2000 have to have an effective online presence.
Um, I guess that includes SEO and copy. Yeah. So the effective online presence part is really important. This is why, like if I have a, a student who says they're not ready to build out their website yet, you at least have to have LinkedIn. You gotta have LinkedIn, but you have to have good copy on there as well.
Cuz LinkedIn is already kind of like SEO, juiced cuz it's a platform. Go back to your hava hole. So SEO is already kind of put into LinkedIn cuz it's a huge platform. So you at least have to have LinkedIn. But this is also a place to house. Like it's our place on the internet. So your website or your LinkedIn profile, your LinkedIn profile is, uh, you only have so many words, but your website is like your place to show your clients like that you have the good stuff.
Plus there's a lot of people who don't know how to find freelance writers, so they just literally just Google like. Freelance writer Austin, or freelance writer Denver. And you wanna make sure that your stuff is showing up for different, um, like for different places, and that you have your own online presence, your own website, where you can say whatever you need to say to your clients, right?
So SEO is kind of, um, like I said, most of the stuff is naturally occurring if you're writing your website, but your website is also important to house your portfolio. Like there's a lot of other choices that people have, right? In selecting a freelance writer or, um, in you, if you're able to explain like how you help, why you're unique, what you're bringing to the table, how you help your clients get results, um, how you help your clients get to like the next level.
That's all stuff we put on our website that makes people hire us, right? And that they wanna work with us. So the thing like I, I oftentimes like. I, you gotta have the website. Like e even if you don't build it out first, even if you build out LinkedIn first, eventually you have to have the website because you're just missing too many opportunities.
Like if you don't have a website, you're just missing out on so much stuff, like, so many people searching or looking for someone like you or an opportunity to expand different things that you do within your website, right? Like expand your project projects or house things like LinkedIn doesn't let you, um, house all the different types of clips.
Like it doesn't let you do a whole bunch of extra stuff. So we have to have the website like that I think is a really important piece. And I have met writers, um, I have met writers who, like, I've had students. Who are like in high school. So this is the range. I've had students who are in high school and I've had students who are over 80 years old.
So I've had a big range of students and I've had people who have retired who started writing, or I had people who are like of all ages and they have that online presence is really important for having people find you and for people to connect with you and hire you and all that stuff. Really important.
Okey dokey. So I hope this was helpful. Um, thank you guys for the kind words. Sorry I was, I was a bit late. It was, uh, it's been just chaotic kind of around here, just with all the stuff. So, um, we're hoping that that Beau feels better. We'll, we'll have to see. He's still, like I said, he's 16 and a half. He's had a lot of rough health problems recently and we'll just have to see how it goes.
This little helper right here is trying to be a superstar. You wanna give him high five? Yeah. Good job. Um, so we're, we're trying our best and uh, hopefully everything works out. But I hope everybody has a good Friday and a good weekend, and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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