Articles
A freelance SEO specialist can
By Carsten Bjerregaard, Marketingcapacity.dk (Link to the article. Copying/publishing without agreement is not allowed)
The job of an SEO specialist is to drive as much relevant traffic - or as many visitors, if you will - to your website as possible. Within the budget that has been allocated. It's his or her job to ensure that both users and search engines like Google, Bing and others can find you. When it's relevant to them and therefore to your business. It's a technical discipline that requires the person to have their finger on the pulse of what's going on.
What is SEO?
SEO, as you know, comes from Search Engine Optimization. This means that as a company, you adapt to (make yourself attractive to) technology that searches for something on the Internet on behalf of people. Basically, it requires understanding that search engines work at multiple speeds.
Firstly, the machines index the pages found on the web - for example, Google has programs called crawlers (Googlebots) that emulate users and test all websites for E-A-T: Expertise authority and trustworthiness. In other words: How up-to-date is the site, how heavy is the content, how many people support it and what is the truth value of the information provided on the site?
The work of an SEO specialist can be divided into different main tasks:
The technology
- Is the technology working as it should? Does the site load fast enough? Do links work or are there dead ends? Is there too much duplicate content or anything else that makes for a poor user experience? Google and other search engines have an interest in providing good user experiences, so user experience is what their algorithms and crawlers are tuned for. If your website performs well technically, it will be indexed to be prioritized higher in search results than a site that performs poorly.
Keyword optimization
- What are users searching for? What exact words are they using? Which words might they use without realizing it? And are we ourselves good enough to bid on those words? Here, the SEO specialist must be able to use the various analysis systems and have a psychological understanding of target groups. This requires both technological and empathic skills.
Content development
- It is not the SEO specialist who develops content (not always anyway), but the SEO specialist has a role in advising those who are developing content. They must be able to provide both general guidelines and feedback on the content that has been created.
Authority building
- Among other things, this is called link building. Simply put, this task is about getting others to perceive our website as an authority. But how can a search engine like Google determine if a page is perceived as an authority? Well, it can see how many people visit the given page (SEMRush Ranking Factor) - and especially how many people link to it. If many people link (refer to a given page), they must attach importance to it. And then it's an authority. So an SEO specialist must also be able to find ways to build external links. For example, by swapping links. It can also be building links between different departments or companies within the same group.
It is usually in these areas that the SEO specialist works. Either permanently or on an ad hoc basis. Few companies need a full-time SEO specialist, which is why skilled freelance SEO specialists are in high demand.
What else is an SEO specialist called?
They are also referred to as SEO consultants or SEO experts. And one thing is for sure: you need to spend a lot of time on this discipline if you want to deliver value. Because it's an area that's evolving at a very fast pace.
How does the SEO specialist create value?
The scarce factor in marketing is 'customers'. There are enough products and there is enough media. But the competition for customers is fierce - and as the internet has evolved, competition has gone global. SEO specialists can help you get the best customers there are: customers who come (almost) by themselves.
Customers who find a business themselves are all other things being equal:
- Cheaper to attract
- Easier to convert
What should an SEO specialist know?
It's a bit of a pandora's box to look into the skills of the SEO specialist. But let's start with the personal attributes:
- Analytical thinking - SEO optimization is first and foremost a study in effect/cause
- Imagination - an SEO specialist must be able to guess how customers think and how search engines must therefore be set up (retrograde calculation of the algorithms)
- Collaboration skills - an SEO specialist is not a one-man-band. Even if he has to do the analysis work himself, his findings need to be implemented. So he must be able to communicate his insights and suggestions to those who need to develop, change and improve things
If we look at professional competencies, it gets more complicated. Let's just take PBN. Private Blogging Networks, which are a series of connected websites that push content with links to the customer's website. This is an area of expertise in itself. One of the reasons is that - if you buy authority through PBNs - it is important that the connection is not obvious to the search engine. Otherwise, it won't work. And search engines will certainly get better and better at decoding these kinds of tricks.
Other things an SEO specialist or specialist should know - and preferably have experience with - are
- Google Search Console
- Google Ads
- Above the fold
- Internal and external links
- Alt texts
- Local SEO, Onpage SEO, Technical SEO
- Google My Business
- Duplicate content
- Over 200 factors
- Speed and load time
- Domains
- White Hat SEO (i.e. all legal ways to improve your search engine results (as opposed to Black Hat)
- Meta descriptions
- Title tags
- CMS systems like WordPress
- Yoast SEO (it's a wordpress plug-in that helps you with SEO optimization)
- Backlinks
- Ahrefs (the world's most widely used SAS tool for SEO optimization)
- SearchMetrics
- Majestic SEO (incoming link assessment tool)
- SERP - is an abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page, the page on which users see their search results. The page where you want to be - and the higher the better
- Backlinko, which is a blog about SEO started by Brian Dean. Another guru that some great SEO experts will take inspiration from is bestselling author Neil Patel
- Mobile First Index
- UX - user experience
- Core Web Vitals, which are Google's rules for when a website performs. Google measures 3 specific dimensions of speed and user interaction: 1) Largest contentful paint (LCP), 2) First Input Delay (FID), 3 Comulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- Cookies and security
- Browsers
... to take some of the most common techniques, tools and concepts.
Why a freelance SEO specialist?
In the past, most people might have thought of freelancers for one-off projects. However, many companies have now realized the benefits of working with freelancers on a long-term basis:
- You can cover needs that don't justify a permanent position
- In periods when you don't need it, you don't pay for the skill
- In a long-term relationship, the freelancer gets to know the company almost as well as a permanent employee
- Compared to buying the desired skill set from an agency - such as an advertising agency - working with freelancers is usually much cheaper
- You have the flexibility to rethink the overall competency profile of the person responsible for an area
- More and more really talented people prefer to work freelance
- A freelancer can still look at your business 'from the outside' - which is a valuable thing when thinking about creative
- Freelancers can bring fresh, outside inspiration to your business
How do you find a good freelance SEO specialist?
Finding the right freelancer can be difficult. And above all, it can take a long time. Because there are many freelancers within the same field, and even if they boast the same skills, there can be a big difference when it comes to the way they work and the work they deliver. When you ask Marketingcapacity.dk to help you find a freelancer to work with, the process is simple:
- You describe your needs to us (either in writing or verbally - we'll confirm in an email)
- We screen the thousands of profiles on Marketingcapacity.dk and, if necessary, the market through our channels
- We nominate a list of candidates and talk to them according to your needs
- You will be presented with 3 candidates that seem to meet your needs
- During the 3 meetings (at your location or digitally) you can ask questions and see examples of their work
- You choose the freelancer you would like to start working with
- We set it up in our systems with time tracking etc. so you have an overview and full control
In other words: After describing your needs, simply set aside 2 hours to meet with 3 hand-picked and screened candidates. That's your guarantee of a good result with reasonable effort.
