Category: Online Marketing

Complete Guide In Becoming A Freelance SEO Consultant
Freelance SEO Consultant. My first (ever) consultancy work is related to search engine optimization. Happened around 6 years back and back then, SEO was much simplier. The client that engaged with me wanted me to increase website ranking by doing black hat SEO for his business which back then, was easy to do. I remember fire-ing up ScrapeBox, loaded some custom scripts I did and boom – it was the easiest $200 (work from home gig) I ever got for 12 months. For the record, the client knew exactly what I was doing and he has no issues with it.

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Want to start a freelance SEO consultancy but afraid of failure? Read this guide: 3 Reasons Why You Are Not Starting A SEO Freelance Career (And How To Solve Them)

From my first freelance consulting gig, I started to fall in love with SEO and soon, I was messing my head around GSA SER, Ultimate Demo, Magic Submitter, Money Robot, FCR Networker, XRumer and recently, RankerX. I have tried literally every SEO tool in the market and spend thousands of dollars doing so (and happily).

After some years, let me tell you think. The ecosystem for SEO had changed over the years, but the basic remains the same. Quality comes first – no matter it is for backlinks, keyword research, publishing content on blogs or even guest postings.

I’ve learned a lot being a freelance SEO consultant and I hope that you will find these tips useful.

1. Keyword research is king

If you want to become a freelance SEO consultant, you got to be a master in keyword research. You may have the best SEO link building tool but if you are not good in keyword research, you are not going to be able to rank any keywords or terms.

Must read: The best keyword research tool and steps to do keyword research fast.

What is keyword research?

Before that, it is important to go into details as in what keyword research really is. In this case, keyword research is a process where you find the best keywords to rank for your (or your client’s) website. A good keyword research is not about finding the most popular keyword but instead, to find keywords with high search volume, medium to low competition and has high conversion power.

So, how do you conduct proper keyword research? Here are some steps to follow:
- Define a niche or main keyword (just one)
- From the main keyword, list down 5 to 10 related/seed keywords
- Use tools such as KWFinder to find related keywords from the seed keywords (along with competition, search volume etc.)
I use KWFinder for keyword research and this is one tool I recommend to everyone who wants to become a freelance SEO consultant. Try KWFinder for free here.

As you can see below, I am able to determine different keywords with opportunities to rank on first page of Google.

KWFinder is an affordable and efficient SEO tool for freelancers

While KWFinder is good at keyword research, it is worthy to mention Ahrefs as it is one of the most used keyword research tool by SEO consultants. Here’s how it looks like on the backend.

Ahrefs keyword research feature is more in depth

Every freelance SEO consultant should focus in learning the basics of keyword research. Always remember that SEO tools are only there to help in your daily SEO work. Therefore, the foundation in SEO (such as keyword research) is extremely vital for your success.

2. Checking on competitors

Want to run a successful SEO consultancy project? Take time to understand your competitors and what they are ranking for is critical.

This is another long step but is extremely important if you can to become a freelance SEO consultant.

There are many tools you can use to spy on your competitors and for this example, I’ll use SERPChecker by KWFinder (read the review here).

SERPChecker gives you detailed information on the top 10 results

Why this spying on your competitors important for every freelance SEO consultant?

The answer is simple. You want to know exactly what’s working for them (and you replicate the actions from there). More on this below.

Now that you have a list of the top 10 websites that are ranking for a specific keyword. Head over to Screaming Frog to get more details of the page.

Screaming Frog is a free SEO tool for freelance SEO consultants

Screaming Frog is not only used by freelancers, small and large digital marketing agencies also use it as it is really effective.

Aside from Screaming Frog, Ahrefs is also one of the top favorites for many professional SEO consultants around the world because it is extremely powerful and accurate (yes, more accurate and feature rich compared to Screaming Frog).

Ahrefs SEO tool allow freelance SEO consultants to spy on competitors more effectively

3. Analyze your own website (or websites of your clients’)

No, you are not jumping into creating link building (at least for now). The third step is to analyze your website or websites of your clients’.

Generally speaking, it is really easy to rank a website and if the website is not ranking well on Google result pages, then something is really wrong. It is your job as a freelance SEO consultant to figure that out and you can figure it out by doing a full SEO audit.

Wait, what? An SEO audit instead?

Yes, I admit that SEO audit is time consuming and takes up a lot of resources. However, if you want to start ranking your client’s website to the first page of Google, this is beyond important. This is also why SEO consultants earn big bucks from a single SEO project!

How to do a full SEO audit?
- Conduct an extensive keyword analysis (if you have done this in step 1, you can skip this now)
- Search business in Google and other search engines (local SEO)
- Scan the Google+ Local Page to access page health
- Clipboard CheckAudit the company website or blog for duplicate content (now we are talking)
- Clipboard CheckBuild a citation check for link building opportunities
- Clipboard CheckConduct a backlink/penalty analysis
Do you know how long it takes to complete all the tasks above? 45 minutes.

Do you know how much you can charge for a full SEO audit? At least $200.

Now, are you still having cold feet of becoming a freelance SEO consultant?

4. Presenting your findings

By now, you should know exactly what’s lacking to rank on the first page of Google. This is where you showcase your expertise as a freelance SEO consultant.

With the three steps you had taken above, you can now meet up with the client and share the findings with confidence.

Hard work + data + action = Win

Doing keyword research, analyzing and reporting are tedious jobs. Therefore, go out there and showcase your reports to the clients. With the amount of work you had done, they will be impressed to say the very least. Of course, the only thing you need now is confidence in yourself (even if this is your first SEO project)!

5. Take action

Being a freelance SEO consultant is not just about sharing your findings and analysis. You need to help clients to rank their website on the first page of Google.

Right after sharing your proposal or action plans, you need to kick start and get to work. In this case, you got to have a plan or SEO framework.

What is an SEO framework?
- An SEO framework tells you exactly what to do, and when to do
- It gives you a good understanding on what to expect
- It gives you timeline for completing an SEO project
I wanted to make this freelance SEO guide as complete as possible. Therefore, for a limited time only, I’m opening up the Pandora’s box for you and sharing with you one of my most effective advanced link building strategy (white hat SEO) which you can download for free.

This is how much time you had left before I stop sharing this SEO framework.

Disclaimer: Do note that I have NEVER and WILL NOT share this advanced link building strategy on any of my blog. Therefore, grab a copy of it before I turn it off!

6. Keep track of the results (daily)

Last but not least, being a freelance SEO consultant requires daily tracking of the results. Through past experiences, we all know that what works yesterday will not work today. And, what works today might not work for tomorrow.

Tweaks are constantly required when it comes to SEO and search optimization. For starters, keep track of the results based on your actions.

After sometime, you will notice certain patterns which will lead to higher ranking, higher conversion and ultimately, more traffic.

There are many ways (and tools) you can use to track and record the progress. For me, my favorite is still Evernote as it allows me to jot down everything. While Evernote Premium is a great asset for a freelance SEO consultant like me, Evernote Basic (which is free) is sufficient for many.

Create an Evernote account here.

When it comes to tracking SEO performance, it is not that easy to be honest. As search engine algorithm changes every day, it can be really challenging to track each project (especially when you have more than 10 SEO projects at the same time).

For keyword tracking, my favorite tools are SEMrush and SERPstat.

This is what it looks like using SEMrush.

SEMrush offers detailed keyword monitoring

This is what it looks like using SERPstat.

SERPstat is also a great SEO tool to monitor keywords ranking

Summary: The Complete Guide In Becoming A Freelance SEO Consultant

With today’s technology, everyone can become a freelance SEO consultant but only a few can be really good. Being the best as an SEO consultant allows you to earn thousands of dollars for every project (while feeling good and satisfied about it).

Before I end, I hope that you find this guide in becoming a freelance SEO consultant useful. If you need help getting started, leave a comment below and let’s talk!
June 18, 2024
How To Increase Affiliate Marketing Earnings Fast?

Affiliate Marketing Earnings. As an affiliate marketer for over 6 years, I have seen many marketers fail to increase their earnings (in a smart way).

Before we go down into business and understanding more about affiliate marketing earnings, let me ask you something.

Do you know that you can make money from affiliate marketing outside from your blog?

Fact #1: Affiliate marketing is only 50% blogging

Here’s a real fact—affiliate marketing is related closely to blogging. I make around $8,000 a month through affiliate marketing and a nice chunk of it (around 70%) comes from my blogs.

If you want to be success in affiliate marketing, blogging is important and you should focus on creating a blog that share worthy.

Fact #2: Affiliate marketing is 50% lead generation and automation

According to the recent survey done by Google and Yahoo, it takes around 7 to 11 times for a person to make a purchase after the initial encounter.

What happens when they first visit your site (let’s say to read on a review) and goes away? They probably end up reading more reviews and blog posts on the same product and finally, deciding on purchasing several days later.

Damn. This means the sale is not going towards you but to the last click (which sucks). 🙁

The first solution: Email marketing

There must be lead generation forms on your blog posts to encourage them to fill up and be kept updated with whatever you are offering/they are interested in.

And when they put in their email addresses and hit the ‘send button’, there’s where the magic happens. Email automation kicks in and the potential buyer goes into a sales funnel before being convinced to purchase the product/service.

Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich uses email marketing funnels to convert website visitors into paying customers (up to $2,000 per online course) without even having to meet them face to face.

However, there’s something you should know about email marketing and affiliate marketing. Both of them don’t pay well (especially service providers). For example, MailChimp will shutdown your account if you are caught selling/promoting affiliate products.

Lucky for you, the best email marketing tool for affiliate marketers is AWeber. Thousands of affiliate marketers use this tool and have zero issues with it. The best part? You can try it for 30-days free (without a credit card) using this link.

The second solution: Automated lead generation forms

No one signs up for your newsletter simply because you asked for it. Seriously, no one (unless your family members).

If you are using WordPress, you might be thinking which is the best lead generation plugin you should be using. Well, after testing over a dozen lead generation plugins, the best one is still Thrive Leads (click here to see the demo).

Why choose Thrive Leads over others such as OptinMonster?

For me, it relates to the pricing and straightforward features. Thrive Leads is not differentiated with the different packages and plans (with different prices). You pay for a fixed fee and every feature is unlocked. Unlike OptinMonster (for example), you are required to choose the different plans where each plan comes with different features. Ultimately, you are required to pay a hefty figure if you need to unlock many features. You can find the comparison between Thrive Leads vs OptinMonster or take a look at OptinMonster pricing page for more clarification.

Are you ready to increase affiliate marketing earnings?

In today’s world, the competition is real, especially when it comes to affiliate marketing. It takes more efforts to close a sale and you need to take the right actions if you are serious in increasing affiliate marketing earnings.

Make no mistake as this will not be easy but definitely something worth doing.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and tell me what you think!

June 18, 2024
Why Web Developers Should Use Divi Today?

June 18, 2024
How To Increase Your Freelance Earnings In The Next 30 Days?
Increase Freelance Earning. If you are a freelancer, you are going to love this article. I promise. Today, you are going to learn how you can increase your freelancer earnings in the next 30 days.

The Basics – Your Offerings

This is the most important thing you should do – understand the basics. In this case, you are required to know what you can offer.
- What can you offer to these potential clients?
- What are the skills you are really good at (that beat/s your competitors)?
- Most importantly, what are you willing to do every day without fail?
The trick here is to find a freelance work that you are passionate about. While money is a powerful motivator (even for me), knowing what you love is more important which guarantees long lasting success.

Portfolio Building

Freelancing is all about portfolio. In this case, take time to construct your portfolio. A good portfolio is like driving a Lamborghini. Most people don’t care if you own or rent the car. As long as you are driving one, it provides a powerful status.

With the right tool, you can build a portfolio in hours (not days). Building a portfolio for freelance is rather affordable (to be honest). It doesn’t costs you an arm and leg.

For example, building a portfolio with Thrive Architect costs you $69 per year (click here to read the review) or Divi that costs you $129 per year (read the review).

Do I really need a portfolio?

The answer is yes. A portfolio is important for freelancers to attract potential clients and make money from freelancing. Your portfolio can be as simple as a single page and the impact of it will help you take your freelance business to new heights.

Display Testimonials

One of the biggest mistakes done by many freelancers is not displaying their testimonials. They often say how good they are (in words) but failed to convinced potential clients.

The reason?

Simple! There are no testimonials to back up their claims!

If you want to increase freelance earnings in the next 30 days, then start working on your testimonials.

Display them as much as you can because the more you do it, the better chance for you to close more projects and double your freelance earnings.

Let’s be honest here. Testimonial is a must-have feature in your portfolio. However, it is not easy to manage multiple testimonials especially when the number increases. If you are looking for a quick way to display and manage your testimonials under one roof, consider using Thrive Ovation (demo).

Upselling

When was the last time you upsell a freelance service? When a client reaches out to you for a project, chances are he/she needs more than one service.

By upselling your services, you are bound to generate more revenue from freelancing.

How can you upsell a service?
- Ask more questions
- Thinking out of the box
- Share results from previous jobs that are related to the current project
Referrals Are Golden

Last but not least, the best way to increase your freelancing revenue is through referrals.

When you make a client happy, he/she will be more than happy to share the experience with others.

Plus, it is certainly alright to reach out to our clients to touch base and to ‘ask’ for more projects.

Always remember that it is easier to get projects from existing clients than finding new ones.

Let’s increase freelance earnings in the next 30 days!

What are you waiting for? Follow me and share with me your journey in creasing freelance earnings in the next 30 days.

Leave a comment below and tell me what you think.
June 3, 2024
How Fast Can I Make Money From Blogging?
Make Money Blogging. “How fast can I make money from blogging?”

Does this sounds familiar to you? As bloggers who are just starting out, you have heard how much money big names have been making solely from blogging. Pat Flynn, Darren Rowse and Spencer Haws for example. They make thousands of dollars from their blogs each day—month in and month out without fail.

However, their path to making money from blogging isn’t that straightforward as what most of us thought it would be. It is not just buying a domain, install WordPress and constantly publishing content.

It takes more than that and that is exactly what we will discuss today.

Let’s dive in now!

The Blog Design and Layout Matters

Are you using a free WordPress theme that is used by thousands of other websites? If that’s the case, there is no difference between you and a quarter of the blogger population in the world.

When it comes to blog design and layout, make sure you take serious thoughts on this—from opt in forms to advertising banners.

A good WordPress theme doesn’t cost you an arm and leg. At most, just a few cups of Starbucks coffee!

Here are two of our favorites WordPress themes every blogger should be using:
- Thrive Themes
- Divi Theme
Get started with lead generation

The fast you start with lead generation, the faster you make money from your blog. Lead generation is important because there are millions of websites today. Therefore, creating a list of subscribers will encourage repeat and loyal readership.

How soon should you start an email list?

The answer is as soon as possible. It is never too late (or early) to start an email list. The faster you get started with an email list for lead generation, the faster you can make money from it!

Ready to grow your business with email?

Get a glimpse of how sending emails with AWeber can help you connect with customers and grow your business when you sign up for our behind-the-scenes email series.

Powered by AWeber Email Marketing

Google Adsense + Affiliate Marketing = Success

How fast can I make money from blogging? — You asked.

The fastest way to make money from blogging is with the combination of Google Adsense and affiliate marketing.

Google Adsense is best to generate indirect income from your blog and best when you have high traffic to your blog. On the other hand, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money from blogging (and fast).

Here are two guides to help you get started with:
- How To Promote High Ticket Affiliate Products (And Be Successful At It)?
- Affiliate Marketing Tips: The ONE Tool That Increase Conversion Multiple Folds
Are you ready to make your first dollar from blogging?

I hope this article answers “how fast can I make money from blogging” and I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
June 3, 2024
12 Website Development Tips for Newbie Bloggers
Disclaimer: This is a guest post by one of my readers.

Blogs became popular network tools to exchange experience and create communities long ago. Many examples motivate people to create their blogs, and the Internet gets filled with new interesting pages.

Once I decided to create my blog too. Of course, as a regular blogger and essay writer for writercheap.com, I couldn’t imagine what would happen to it in 2-3 years.

It is always difficult to start something, and that is why newbie bloggers ask more experienced colleagues for a piece of advice. Here are the most often questions I got:
- How to develop a blog and make people read it?
- How to strengthen a position in a blog niche after that?
So, I gathered 12 tips that I consider quite useful for newbie bloggers because they keep helping me support my website and my image and reputation of an omniscient blogger.

1. Choose the Tree You Need

Come up with an issue your blog should solve. It is okay to create the blog “just because,” but you’ll have to answer this question one day whether you want it or not. The task (or the goal) of the blog will help you remain in certainly required frames while writing it. Plus, you will be able to measure the effectiveness of your blog, basing on how well your posts and audience’s feedback contribute to the completion of the task set.

2. Speak About Your Problems

Determine the topic and style of your blog and follow them in the future. Diverse blogs are not interesting for many people unless they are personal diaries. It is very difficult to attract readers at the very beginning if they don’t understand the topic (not to mention the fact that they don’t know who you are).

They might like 1-2 articles and even sign up for upcoming post notifications. But after they get 2-3 articles touching a completely different topic, they are going to say their last goodbye to you, unless they are your loyal friends.

Determine what you are best-versed. If these are different spheres (say, from fishing to marketing), then you’d better start several different blogs.

Your writing style matters a lot too. People might not know you in person, but regular readers remember your unique blogging style and can even scan your outlook scan through your articles.

So, your blog makes you analyse yourself. This will influence your image later. But at the very beginning, you attract potential audiences.

If you need serious readers, be serious. If you need open and communicative people to join your community, be open and communicative.

3. Remember That Eagles Don’t Catch Flies

Write articles touching useful and relevant topics. Even if you are not a 100% expert in something, become one and write a reliable article! This not only will attract readers but also add to your reputation.

Don’t be afraid to express your thoughts. This is exactly what people could value the most. Why should they read someone else’s thoughts and ideas on YOUR blog? Don’t be too shy to be “the white crow”: this is often the reason why people stay with you.

4. Time and Hunger Wait for No One

The world changes rapidly, and the field of your expertise welcomes new specialists every day. They can organise their instruments to exchange experience or create a community as well and fast as you.

As soon as you stop being interesting, and more useful resources appear, netizens may turn away from you and start looking for new developing things.

If you decided to make your blog popular, then touch global topics, look for trends in your field, and discuss them in your posts.

Besides, nowadays it is difficult to imagine a popular blogger without a Twitter account as well as a blog post without those “Like” and “Share” buttons.

5. Patience Always Pays Off

Don’t expect feedback and result to come at once. At first, you’ll have to put a lot of efforts without getting the wanted comments or anything else. This is a tough period when people don’t know a thing about you. But it is worth gaining patience and go on approaching the goal you’ve set.

6. The Sleeping Fox Catches No Poultry

People like active, lively, and brave creatures of their kind. Show these qualities when writing a blog. Do not just publish articles but take part in competitions and marathons with other bloggers. This will let you get to know your colleagues and gain new readers faster.

Come up with new “features.” What useful things can you give your readers except for your articles? Can you introduce an instrument, a new subtopic of your blog, a quiz, or a giveaway of invitational codes for useful resources?

7. No Man Is an Island

It is very difficult to reach success alone, so you should learn networking rules.

At first, you should gather a community of friends around your blog. They’ll be your support for that time. This group will grow later, but now you need someone to write your blog for. Your friends can do you a favour here. Invite everyone you know and people who could be interested in the topic of your blog, ask them to comment on your new article.

Additionally, you need to have the right social circle. What does it mean?

“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Remember this wisdom? Expand your social circle but take care not only about the number of its participants. Could you pay attention to their quality too? Your environment directly influences you and the development of your website. Try to attract popular and interesting people to it.

8. Show Yourself

The blogosphere is very wide, and netizens may fail to notice you if you stay alone, even if you have super-unique content. So, it is very important to let people know you and to participate in the process of blogging development actively.

To do that, you need to read and comment on other blogs, take part in discussions and marathons. Being open and communicative is essential. If you don’t have these qualities, then gaining them will be very useful for your blog development.

9. Join Efforts

It is not enough to write useful content; you need to serve it correctly to your audience too. Check where people who may be potentially interested in your materials can spend their time. Share releases and articles on platforms you find. Don’t concentrate on your blog solely, look for like-minders on various resources, including social media. Use guest blogging and content marketing strategies.

10. Calmness Means Wisdom

People will criticise you! Treat criticism consciously, be tolerant. Inadequate perception of criticism will only result in your loss of authority and regular readers. Try to find something common even with most toxic readers. It will be the thrust of your long-term success.

11. Take Care of Your Audience

It is critical to take care of readers: provide them with comfortable reading tools on both the website and the RSS reader, give them the possibility to see other articles, related to the topic (including those on other resources). Just keep your blog comfortable.

Any possible discomfort, such as a captcha to send a comment, an unusual text format, or too bright colours, may significantly reduce the number of your followers.

12. Grow Up

No comments!

I hope this article will inspire you! Wish your blog to be popular and profitable!
June 3, 2024