5 Areas Of SEO You Need To Master To Become A Freelance SEO Consultant

5 areas of seo you need to master to become a freelance seo consultant

Everyone knows what search engine optimization or SEO is by now, and yet so many people are scared of it. I got into SEO several years back and I absolutely love it and I’m surprised to find how much people don’t know about it. A lot of people ask me how do I become an SEO consultant? So I wrote this post to break down the top 5 areas of SEO that you need to master in order to become a freelance SEO consultant.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is not for the faint of heart, it requires you to know how to code and how to alter a site’s code to comply with Google’s standards. Now, a lot of times you don’t need to actually know the ins and outs of the code itself as an SEO consultant, but you should know what needs to be done to be able to outsource it to an engineer. This involves things like the schema of the site, how the pages are built, how the site map is structured and more. These elements are critical if you want to show up in Google search results.

Local SEO

If you are freelancing for a business with a physical store it’s absolutely crucial that you show up in local searches. That means every time someone searches what that business does and the name of the city or neighborhood you want to make sure that they show up on the first page. You should definitely get them on as many directories as possible, you should also work on getting reviews visible on the search result next to the name of the business. Having a page on Yelp or Wikipedia helps as well.

International SEO

If your business is global it’s important to know how to rank in various countries. There are a lot of nuances that go into this, besides just the different languages. It’s necessary to know the long-tail keywords of each country, the various review and public directory sites that are available and much more. If you learn this aspect of SEO you can start working with some larger clients.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is probably the most well-known aspect of SEO that everyone talks about. It involves optimizing things like your title tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, and URLs. It’s important that you have a solid keyword strategy that goes into each type of page and element on it. It’s also important that you check your results regularly and double down on your successful pages.

Off-Page SEO

Last but not least is an area of SEO that everyone likes to call link building. This has to do with doing outreach and getting quality backlinks to your client’s site. This is a multi-faceted process that includes lead generation, cold email campaigns, negotiation skills and often content writing. So you should definitely get a good understanding of what’s required and set up a successful team of freelancers that can scale off-page SEO for you. Backlinks do wonders for clients search engine rankings.

Recap

If you want to be a successful freelance SEO consultant you should master these 5 areas of SEO – technical, local, international, on-page, and off-page. Companies love to hire well-rounded SEO consultants because they know that they can do everything for them, from start to finish. So, beef up your knowledge and experience in these areas and you will see your freelance business grow!

With over 9 years of search marketing experience, Sandra is cross skilled between PPC and SEO. Her experience in search spans across different verticals including Technology, Retail, Travel & Automotive.