How to Become a Successful Independent or Freelance SEO Consultant

Welcome to a new, very special edition of Crawling Mondays. This one is certainly special because it will, I hope, answer many of the questions that many of you have been asking me lately about how to become an independent SEO consultant or an SEO freelance. I have invited a couple of SEOs that are great friends too, who have become independent SEO consultants in the last couple of years. On one hand, I have Silvia Martín. Silvia, she's based in the UK. She's a Spanish SEO though. She's multilingual. super talented and skilled, and she had developed her career also in different agencies and she's now independent. And then on the other hand, I have Roddy Clarke. He's based in Australia, but he has clients all over the world too. And he also had quite a bit of experience in the agency life before becoming an independent SEO. So thank you for joining, Silvia and Roddy.

Thank you for inviting us.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited. I've got my Crawling Mondays sticker in hand here, ready to go.

That is amazing. I remember, I remember giving it to you like 3 years ago in Sydney.

It was a while ago. Yeah.

Awesome to see you. Thank you very much. So let's start the conversation, right? Like the main question that I get asked is like, when is the right time to become an independent SEO or an SEO freelancer? People After like a couple of years, 3 years, a few years of agency life and then in-house life too, they say, I need a change. Having a lot more flexibility, being their own bosses. I would like to ask about your own experience and when do you think might be the right time to take the leap?

Yeah.

So I guess from my experience, my background has been in agency SEO. So I worked at 3 different agencies over 6 years. I guess from my perspective, I think a good time to think about making a transition to being an independent consultant might be at a point where you feel like you've reached a ceiling potentially working at an agency. So maybe you mastered the client work, you've been through all those different experiences that you need to deal with working at an agency, you're working with the bigger clients in the agency. And maybe the next step as a— from a progression standpoint might be to start managing other staff. And that often takes you away from the SEO work itself. So that, that could be a good time for a lot of people to think about going off on their own, being an independent. I think also something else that could be good to keep in mind with that transition and knowing when the right time is, is testing the waters as well before actually making the leap because it can be very intense running your own business if it is such a shock by going from being employed to then just being completely on your own. So I think depending on your employment contract, it's good to take on some projects, doing some work for family or friends' companies to just see if it's the right thing for you before making that step.

Excellent. I do agree that what you mentioned, right? Like, especially this is quite a common experience, feeling that you have reached a certain point, right? That you feel that you can grow more or that you have different interests than the one that your position as an employee allows you to develop. It's important to mention something, that becoming your own boss, becoming independent, becoming a freelancer, becoming a business owner, it's not necessarily for everybody. Right? You need to have certain types of skills, not only being good at what you do, in this case SEO, or being a good SEO specialist, but also having the skills developed in order to keep your clients happy and manage the projects, right? Like how to sell, how to communicate, how to promote yourself, how to handle the invoicing, also the business side of things and the financial side of things. If you're thinking of becoming an independent consultant, you need to acknowledge that you will become a mini So it's important that you also are ready, not only from an SEO experience perspective and you know how to handle clients. So having agency experience definitely helps, not only having been in-house, but also being willing to learn about these other skills and to manage this additional type of work that you will have as an independent consultant indeed.

Yeah, no, I think that that's a really good moment also, a valid moment, but I think it will depend on each person. So for me, there's no like one good moment. So for example, I was reading online, I was seeing that most of the people when they become freelancers, they have like the main reasons is like flexibility, or they want to be their own boss, or they want to be able to work remotely, or even if it's not remotely, to choose from where they are working. So I think that there's people that maybe they are in the early stages of their career. but already they are ready to make the jump because it's the same, you know, it's like, you know, you don't need to be like super skilled and experienced to do it. You just need to be like willing to do it. And it takes a lot of effort, it does. But I think that there's also a possibility for, you know, people that is recently new, like several months in the SEO industry, and they just want to work remotely because of lifestyle, because of different things, and they will also develop their career as a freelance consultant, right? So I think that there's also other options.

100%. Yes, it's important because there are people who have developed first their careers in agencies, in-house, and I can see that it certainly helps to have this sort of experience and backgrounds, but it might not necessarily even be necessary if you have also the willingness to learn fast too and flexibility, and you are certainly focused and know that Like being an employee and stuck at an office, uh, will not necessarily make you happy because of your own preferences and characteristics. You will really thrive in a much more like flexible environment that you can only give you for yourself. That takes us to the next question. When you're assessing the option to become independent, the pros and cons. There are certainly pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages. Everything in life is a trade-off.

Of course.

So what would you say are the main advantages and disadvantages that you have experienced when becoming an independent SEO?

I think that the main one is the income, maybe, you know, that you don't have like a steady income. So there's a lot of people that, you know, this risk is too high for them, you know, that's why they limit themselves and maybe they don't go freelancing. So I guess that to avoid that, you need to, before starting, you need to have like some savings or know that you can survive several months because at the beginning, it's quite difficult to get the clients. You're used maybe to the corporate life when you have the same amount of salary every month. So here it's more rewarding. You can have like higher salaries sometimes, but it's not every month. So you need to know how to deal with that. And also in advantages, you know, the flexibility is really good or choosing your own projects. That's really good because when you're at an agency, you can't, you can't choose your work or deadlines or nothing. Here you're in control. So that's really, really good. That's one of the pros. Working remotely for me also is another one of the great things that it has.

So indeed, like I will say that the big pro is flexibility in everything. You're able to choose projects, you're able to choose your clients, which when you are working, for example, in an agency, you're sometimes you don't have a call. And we all know that even if you do good validation work, sometimes things don't work out. And it's much more difficult when that doesn't depend on you. And flexibility from where you can work, where you will be located, your schedule too. And then on the other hand, the The big con that you just mentioned is that there's not certainty on the money side of things, right? So I do believe that there are certain ways. So for sure, like what you mentioned already, like when you just start, it will be great to have a little bit of at least 6 months of money of what your old salary was saved will be a good thing. Just to not feel pressure also to get any client at the beginning, because I think that sometimes we take bad clients at the beginning, clients that are not necessarily a good fit because you feel pressured to have clients at the beginning and start invoicing. And then on the other hand, what brought you, what you mentioned before about starting with clients when you're still an employee to test the waters, to identify if actually you're feeling comfortable handling clients all for yourself as a side project while you're still working full-time at another agency or at an in-house at a company. I started doing this a little bit when I became independent. It didn't only allow me to test the waters, but also it allows you to start building a little bit of your brand as a consultant, as an independent consultant, so people know that you're doing this type of work, you are available or might be available, and help you to start building this sort of portfolio of projects that you can showcase later on, on your website. Also, it incentivizes you to start building your personal brand. That certainly helps when becoming independent, building your website, blogging more about it, what you know, to start attracting clients and getting visibility even before you become independent. This will in any case help you, support you, and compound over time, even if you decide or end up deciding to stay as an employee. But if you do become independent, it will definitely help further on this side of promotion, sales, visibility to get clients.

I guess from my perspective, like, it's a pretty easy sell moving to freelancing or consulting. Like, when you talk about it with people, it just sounds like the ultimate lifestyle. Like, you're just a solo employee of your own business. You have no one to report to. You take on the work that you want to do. So I think it's easy enough to talk about the advantages, but from my, my perspective, yeah, just building off what Sylvia said about the no guaranteed income each month like you would have on a salary working for a company, like that's a— that's always a tricky one. And even now being a consultant, like your income can change a lot from month to month. Depending on the sorts of projects that you have and just how things ride out. I guess you learn from those experiences and try to figure out what the right equilibrium is for you as a consultant. One thing is taking on longer-term projects and also your shorter-term projects, which are really well suited for being a consultant. Another disadvantage that does come to mind is the business owner kind of perspective of feeling like you always need to be on to a certain extent. I think that was something that I had to more so develop when I was transitioning from working in an agency. I knew that was an important element of it. So when I was working an agency role doing stuff outside of hours, that kind of puts you in that mindset of, I guess, pretending that you have all of those pressures. Like You might not necessarily need the money at that point in time, but if you can kind of mimic that sort of environment before you get put into it, it really does change your perspective on how you look at different things from a business standpoint.

Yeah. I have to say something. This is funny that you mentioned because, well, again, it depends a lot on the characteristic of the person. That is why I will highly advise, if you're thinking about this, to test the waters a little bit before, because for some reason it's like, And it's okay, by the way, it's more than okay to, after 6 PM or 5 PM, or when your workday finishes, to want to completely shut down and that's it. Unfortunately, when you're a business owner or a freelance, this becomes a little bit trickier and can certainly become a con. Of course, you can manage this. There are ways to manage this. This doesn't mean that, and it's not advisable also, that you're working at midnight every day. Not at all. But of course, sometimes because you're the main responsible for things, you will need to be a little bit flexible also, right? So you need to have flexibility from that standpoint too. And unfortunately that can be a detriment for many and it's more than okay, but it's important that we acknowledge that this exists. And then regarding the big con, and I believe, and you're completely correct, whenever I have talked about becoming independent with many people, the main concern, the big concern is the pay, right? That is not steady. I have to say something. You can end up making, especially in SEO, much more money as an independent consultant, as a freelance, than as an employee on one hand. But yes, it's not steady money sometimes, but there are ways to avoid this. So for example, at the beginning, we mentioned before how you should have a little bit of money saved beforehand to avoid the pressure to having the need to close clients that might not be a good fit at the beginning. Then on the other hand, it's very important to understand the type of projects that are the good fit for you and the ones that will be beneficial for you from your expertise and also money-wise, and how you build a good position from a branding perspective to attract those types of projects. And then although they had another very big, not error or mistake, but something that doesn't help having like a peace of mind money-wise, and I see again and again a lot of SEO consultants Do is what you mentioned also before, Brody, is something that I try to avoid, having one-off projects. It's much better to have ongoing retainers as agencies, right? Because these are the type of projects that will confirm that in the next 6 months you have this type of paid allocated. And for SEOs, I have to say, unlike copywriters or developers or other type of professions, it makes complete sense and it's actually beneficial for many other reasons, not only because of the paid, of course, to have these sort of projects because realistically, if the client wants an audit, they think it's because they need to fix something and they have challenges rankings and with organic traffic and conversion. But realistically, what they don't realize is that it's not about only you identifying the issues, but making sure also and giving the right support for these issues to be fixed. And for that, it is most of the times very reasonable that you support through this time to make sure that this happens. You also identify and monitor that the effects of the implementations are the expected ones, et cetera, et cetera. So it really makes sense that in 99% of those projects that you end up engaging with, there's also this sort of additional follow-up for which, yes, a retainer will be there and that will eliminate this need to be selling all the time. And I do believe that a lot of people think, oh, freelance, I won't need to be selling all the time like an agency. No, the agency needs to pay a lot of people and they also will always want to keep growing and growing. That is not a problem that you will have as a freelancer. And it's important to understand how much time and resources you have allocated for clients. And you say, okay, I can handle maximum 5 clients or 6 clients at a time, maximum, depending on the type of project. And then you know that to make it beneficial for you, the minimum type of project that we will take on will cost this, and this will be the price. So you know very well that even if you have a couple or 3 projects at a time, you're more than okay. You don't need to be always at maximum capacity. You don't need to be selling all the time. And at least you have 3, 4 projects at a time, and these are steady ongoing projects, you will be more than fine. To give this vision to the people who are still assessing, because they are concerned about, oh my God, I will need to be preparing proposals every single month. No, no. You do this once every 4 months, every 3 months, every 6 months ideally, right? Because you will have a retainer. You have this relationship with clients. Mm-hmm. Also, it's important to say that once you do good work with a client, they will also come back or refer to you for other projects, to friends, to other companies they are involved with, et cetera, et cetera. So it compounds over time. It will become much more easy, right? Like the projects will come, they will be a much better fit. So indeed, it gets better with time. What is important is that you are consistent, which I have to say that is one of the main errors that I see freelancers doing, right? Like they see that there's this possibility to become freelance, and after the first couple of months, they are offered a job and then leaving freelance life. And then, sorry, but if you don't give reliability to your potential clients, how can they trust the projects to you? The next topic that I actually wanted to ask is regarding like those top steps or building blocks that you think that are fundamental to be a successful independent SEO consultant? So I know that a lot of people get obsessed at the beginning with the business side of things or how to invoice, how to do this, and they get overwhelmed and sometimes they don't even go ahead because of this. So what would you say are those steps that you will highly recommend people to do when they become independent?

When you start a business, one thing that's good to keep in mind was That a lot of the times the business model has been proven previously. So I guess keeping in mind that there are people in the SEO community who are successful consultants and do share their knowledge quite widely. So if you watch what they do, like Aleyda, who's just been sharing some awesome information here, and also Glen Gabe. The 2 people that I've been watching closely in the lead-up to becoming a consultant. There's a lot that you can learn from just watching what people do and what they post on Twitter, like the articles that they write, and you can speed up the process dramatically in that way. In terms of like the day-to-day kind of business operations of a consultant, I remember Stephen Kenwright from Rise at 7 posted a really interesting tweet on Twitter recently that resonated with me. He wrote the best way to be successful in business is— I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, say that you're a specialist in X area and you do services for brands that are Y and Z. The next step is to post every day on Twitter and LinkedIn of examples of you doing X. And I was like, that's exactly what I've been trying to do for the past couple of years and it's worked out for me. And I feel like that is such a simple answer to how to run a business, but that is it really.

Position yourself, to position your personal brand. So people know actually what you do, what you can help people do, and actually like eliminate any, let's say, concern about you not being able to do the actual work because you're showing that you're getting already results. So that is definitely— this is a great tip for sure, Brody.

Yeah, so I will say that, yeah, as Brody was suggesting, like do your research, you know, before starting. So for me, I'm a curious person, so even before thinking about becoming freelancing, Whenever I was talking to someone that was freelancing, I was asking them about, you know, their experience, everything. So that's really good to reach out to people and ask. And like that, you can have like an idea what it is like and if it will fit in your lifestyle or your skills or personality. So that's really important. You need also to do more research about like the company, right? So are you going to set up a company? Are you going to be like a freelance? all the legal requirements. So talk to an accountant. So all these things also you need to think about them. And then networking is really great. So because it's that, yeah, your contacts, they will maybe help you with referrals or the same asking advice. All of this is really important. Being active in social media, as Brodie was saying, showing some of your work or tips or just sharing something that is valuable is good. And The best is happy customers, right? So if you have someone that you work with and then they can refer you or they can give you more work, as Aleyda was saying, that's also really important.

I will highly advise that if even if you're thinking about this, not even sure, you just want to test the waters, that you start building a personal brand. You set your own website, your personal website, so people can search and research you and see And see what is your expertise and experience, where you showcase your work, what you can do. You can do it even by sharing. Sometimes the problems that we have with SEO and a problem that I certainly have with clients and NDAs is that we cannot disclose data, right? But we can certainly show that we know our stuff with guides and how-tos, right? Sharing all those, what has worked for us in the past in a way that we don't necessarily say even names, certainly helps. To get your name out there, to build an audience, to also establish your brand as the person to get help for X. So you position yourself and when you say that you're finally ready, you're independent, you get the right clients, you get the right referrals. I will also highly recommend, as Sylvia was saying, like it's not necessarily really complicated, just go to an accountant that— So the You can get the advice early on, on what is the best way to set your business, if it is as a freelancer, as a small business, or what type of legal scheme is better for you to invoice, to have like clear templates and references on how you will invoice every month and what you need to keep, what are the paperwork that you will need to do. So you have peace of mind right from the start. It might seem very daunting, but it's not. You need to get the right advice from From an accountant that this is what they do for a living. Even if you need to pay a bit, you do it and you let the person who actually knows about it handle this paperwork, because otherwise it can be a burden. Because I want to maximize the time that I focus on clients rather than handling this extra paperwork. To start wrapping up a little bit the conversation, are there any particular tools, resources, functionalities that you would like to recommend to the audience? to use when becoming an independent consultant? Something that has helped you that is not so obvious that you think that SEOs can use?

I think one thing that stands out for me is, so my biggest ongoing expense is SEO software. And that was one of the things that was a bit surprising when I started to test the waters with being a consultant is how expensive some tools are. Now I spend, I think it's $350 a month just on Semrush, and that's to get their API access for Data Studio. But then I've got Ahrefs and Sitebulb, and I also have Whitespark. So there's all these ongoing expenses. One other expense that I have is my coworking space. So I pay around, it's about $800 Australian per month just for a permanent desk. In a space is a reasonable distance from my home, but I feel like that's a very important part of how I operate because then I can leave home and go work in the coworking space. But yeah, I think the coworking space setup as a consultant is a great path to go down if you want to start with a floating desk setup, which is super cheap. You can go in a couple of days a week and make the most of all the different resources they have there.

And the networking can be good also.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Getting more this vibe of an office or having people around, especially at the beginning, it can be a little bit rough by being at home all the time.

The only other tool I can really recommend is one I've, I've been going on about a little bit in this conversation, is just Twitter. Just having that as a community. I feel like that has been a nice transition from working in agency to then being part of a Twitter community. It's not always in person, but there is a lot of knowledge sharing and communication with some awesome people on there. So I feel like that's a great community to be a part of as a consultant.

I do think also that communities, they help a lot, especially because it's that you work for yourself, you're alone, So you have like support and yeah, they enrich you. So for example, for women, I highly recommend Women in Tech SEO. As you might know, Aleyda, it's really, really great. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of groups, Slack, all the things. They have workshops and you can ask for advice. So communities are great. Also, yeah, I just recently joined here in UK being freelancer. This is more like not SEO-focused, But it's also good, as Aleyda was saying, because it's good to reach out to other freelancers, right? Because we are going to have like the same kind of struggles and also you can maybe like find people to work with also. So it's really, really good that. So I'm just starting with that. They even have a book club. I'm just signing up for that. There's also like a lot of templates and things that you can do online. For example, there's Dubsado, I think is the platform. It's a US platform. And you have like a lot of like quotes, templates, proposals. So even if you say, oh, I don't have this agency experience, I don't know how to do presentation, or I don't know how to do this or that, online you have all the resources. So it's that if you are willing to do it, you will find a way and you can ask people for advice.

I love, Silvia, what you have mentioned because a lot of people get a little bit overwhelmed. How do I like the proposal template or the agreement template? Or the invoice template. And literally there are so many templates, free templates online that you can research. And these are good. I mean, you actually, after a while, you take this to the actual accountant or legal advisor that you may have. And they say, oh, this actually is good. You just need to personalize this with extra laws from your particular country, but additional notes, but it's good. Just double-check that these are consistent. And I'm also sure that you will be able, if you ask out there in Twitter, as Bradley says also, or Women in Tech SEO, many SEO groups that are out there, people willing to help and willing to refer. I know that whenever I am asked, I'm happy to help. I have to say that for me, especially when, well, when you start growing up the business, et cetera, having a good system for your invoices, that connects with your bank, with your credit cards, that has an app, etc., that facilitates the day-to-day or the paperwork that you don't want to spend a lot of time on, and something that your accountant can access very quickly too, and easily too. Then another very important thing is to understand that there is a business side of things and a personal side of things. I use this app Expensify, especially whenever I was traveling to conferences, etc., to keep the track of what I spend, all the tickets, et cetera. And it's important that you acknowledge this, that of course there are things that you invoice for yourself as a person, and then another for the business of yourself as a consultant. To set this boundary is very important, not only from a financial aspect, but also from day-to-day with clients too. It's important to keep your business in containment and don't allow the business side of things to eat you. it your day-to-day, because this tends to happen whenever you're a business owner, of course, but it's far, far easier to get that line not clear when you're independent, because you're your business too. So it's important to set those boundaries very, very clear. I want to ask you for a last tip before finishing today's episode, something that you think that we haven't covered, something that you think that can be also interesting, useful for anybody who's thinking to become an independent consultant?

Okay. No, I wanted to say before, so I want to just use this opportunity to say it, that I think that also this being a freelancer is a process. So it's not the same, the needs that you have when you're starting, when you are like 2 or 3 years there, or when you're starting to scale. But for example, for me that I'm in, you know, my first year of freelancing, I think that is really important like to keep my expenses really low. as low as I can. Even, for example, the tools that Brody was saying, I try to spend as minimum as I can. At the beginning, I was tempted to buy a lot of these things, but then you have these expensive costs every month that I didn't want to start with. So, so yeah, so it will depend on your journey and where you are in your journey, you know, all of these different decisions that you have. And is that— don't think that you need, for example, the coworking is really great to have it. But for example, for me right now, Because I'm starting, I try to minimize the expenses again. Think about the full process as a journey. I think that, yeah, don't get overwhelmed. You know, you will go little by little.

I love this, especially that I have to say that a lot of people who think about it as a big risk, right? If for some reason it doesn't work out, or after 6 months you say, okay, this wasn't for me. The worst that can literally happen is that you stop doing it and come back as an employee. And thankfully we're in an industry where there are a lot of jobs. Being hired at the moment. A lot of them are also remote.

I think one thing that I would like to absolutely pass on to different consultants who are making the move is the transitional approach that you can do from working at an agency and how you can work that out in a way which limits your risk and also is basically a gradual transition to being a consultant. So when I transitioned from being working at an agency, when I was at the agency, I think I had 5 clients and they were some of the biggest clients of the agency. And with my biggest client working at the agency, I did a pitch to my manager saying, okay, I'm going to be leaving to do my own thing. I won't be an employee anymore, but I'd be happy to continue managing this one big client. And that's an interesting pitch for a business owner because for one, for that big client that is so important for them and so important for their revenue, there's little change there. So you're continuing to do the work for some time. And for yourself, it's obviously good for the revenue standpoint. But there's a lot of different ways that you can structure that. Some consultants who've tried to do similar, but they've done it on an hourly basis, but you just don't want to get stuck in that trap of just taking on agency work because that doesn't help you build your own business.

100%. What I have seen also broadly is former in-house SEO consultants that become independent and they keep that former company they work for as a client, right? So they will allocate the time that they tend to allocate usual clients. So it's important that especially at the beginning, we want to start bringing clients early on, but it's very, very important to understand if there's a good fit. If you have a client that is bigger, you don't get the risk of depending on a single well client, but you also diversify and have at least 3, I will say. Not a client that will eat more than 50% of your time, because the problem with that is when that client goes, that will hurt, really, really hurt financially. And then too risky to lose for you. So you will have This sort of like employee syndrome with this client. Try to have a good balance of number of projects and clients to avoid this risk, because that can only end up limiting you. So thank you. Thank you. I hope that all of these tips help you. If you have any doubts or questions still, please make sure to leave them in the comments below or to reach to any of us over Twitter. We're pretty active on Twitter. So thank you. Thank you very much, Brody. And thank you, Silvia. It was fantastic to, to talk to you. And if you like this video, like the video. If you want to see more videos like this, remember to subscribe to the channel and see you in the next episode of Crawling Mondays. Bye-bye.

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