How To Become an SEO Freelancer in 7 Steps

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the strategy of improving a website’s ranking in search engine results like Google. SEO freelancers are experts who help their clients’ websites rank higher for specific keywords and phrases relevant to their businesses. SEO is a fundamental component of digital marketing and a core focus for many companies, driving the demand for these types of freelancers.

As a freelancer, you can offer your SEO services to clients by improving their websites’ ranking, creating SEO content, and developing an SEO strategy. Freelancers are independent professionals who provide their services directly to clients, often through platforms like Upwork. Being an independent professional gives you more flexibility and independence, as you can work from home and create your own schedule.

If you’re interested in becoming an SEO freelancer, these are the seven steps you can take:

Steps:

1. Understand the basics of SEO
2. Develop your SEO skills
3. Create an impressive portfolio
4. Market your services
5. Set competitive pricing
6. Manage client relationships
7. Stay updated with SEO trends

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1. Understand the basics of SEO

When someone types a search query into Google, Bing, Yahoo, or another search engine, the engine crawls (scans) all pages on the internet and compares them to the keywords in the search. These search engines have their own algorithms for determining which websites are the most relevant and have the highest authority for keywords and search queries.

A search engine’s goal is to present the user with the most relevant, correct, and up-to-date information for their search interests. Searches typically fall into three different categories: navigational, informational, or transactional. Users are searching for a specific site, asking questions, or looking for a product or service.

Factors that can affect your site’s ranking:

• Crawlability and indexing. Google’s bots must be able to crawl your website and add it to their indexing (database of websites it has already crawled). Maintaining a site map and regularly checking Google Search Console for any issues will improve crawlability.
• Content quality. Blogs and articles should show authority over the subject and contain all the information their top competitors do while adding new information whenever possible.
• Backlinks. Create useful content so that other sites use you as a source and link back to your website. This shows the bots that your content is valuable and increases your authority.
• Keyword usage. The main keywords that you want to rank high for should be in the title tag, H1 heading, image file names, alt tags, URL, and meta description of each page, article, or blog post.
• Accuracy. Link to high-quality and up-to-date sources when necessary. Try to get as close to the original source as possible.
• Site organization. Websites need to be intuitive and user-friendly. Content should naturally flow in a helpful way, making it easier for bots to crawl and understand.
• Mobile friendliness. According to Statista, over half of all searches worldwide were from mobile devices. Search engines want to display websites that are responsive on mobile.

Search engines continually evolve, changing their algorithms and incorporating new technology like generative AI. As an SEO freelancer, staying on top of these changes and how they impact SEO will help you be competitive and get results for clients.

2. Develop your SEO skills

Clients expect SEO freelancers to be experts in all aspects of SEO. Before you start accepting clients, you want to develop your SEO skills. You should be able to speak about SEO confidently to your clients during the interview process, perform content audits, and then recommend and implement an SEO strategy. Afterward, you’ll want to run reports and present them to clients, demonstrating the impact of your work.

As an SEO freelancer, you want to be fluent in all of the popular SEO tools and platforms. These tools can help you with everything from keyword research to content auditing. You may even want to start incorporating generative AI into your SEO toolkit to help you be more efficient.

Taking advanced SEO courses and earning certificates can help you demonstrate your expertise to clients while honing your skills. If Credly issues your certificates, you can add them to your Upwork profile for potential clients to see.

Many of the industry-leading tool providers offer certificates and courses, such as Google Analytics, Moz, Yoast, and Hubspot.  

You can also develop your SEO skills through hands-on practice. Create your own personal website advertising your SEO services or volunteer to manage the SEO for a small business. Having a website where you can experiment with different SEO techniques and strategies while being able to run reports and see your results can provide valuable experience.

This website can also become part of your portfolio, demonstrating the before and after results and providing SEO content examples.

3. Create an impressive portfolio

Clients want to see examples of past successes and results before hiring an SEO freelancer. You can demonstrate your skills with an impressive portfolio. Show off your projects with the best results, highlighting increased website traffic and improved rankings.

Before and after documentation of analytics is powerful for SEO portfolios. You can also show examples of SEO content that you’ve created.

Portfolios help to build trust with clients who haven’t worked with you before. They feel more confident after seeing the results you’ve achieved for other clients. When working in SEO, data is compelling. It’s how you measure success, making metrics an essential part of your portfolio.

If you’re working on Upwork, your portfolio is built into your profile. This makes it easy for clients to evaluate talent; everything they need is in one place. You can also create a separate portfolio website if you want to pitch directly to clients who aren’t yet on Upwork. As an SEO freelancer, having a portfolio or personal website can help you practice and develop your SEO skills.

Don’t worry if you’re just starting your SEO career and haven’t had any paid clients yet. You can create mock-ups or volunteer your SEO services to small businesses to use in your portfolio. Mock-ups for faux clients (make sure it’s obvious that these aren’t real clients) work well for competitive analyses and website audits.

What to include in your portfolio:

• Website audits. Demonstrate how you evaluated a website’s SEO, either for a past client or by creating a mock-up.
• Case studies. Outline the client’s specific goals, as well as your strategy and steps you took for implementing SEO and improving the website’s ranking.
• Testimonials. Share positive feedback from past clients (with their approval).
• Competitive analyses. Show how you analyzed a competitor’s SEO and used it to improve your client’s rankings.
• Content optimization. Explain how you’ve optimized content for past clients or mock-ups. You can get creative here by showing before-and-afters and marking up content with your suggestions.
• Link-building strategies. Showcase your link-building strategies (guest authoring, infographics, social media) and your most impressive backlinks for clients.
• Local SEO. Highlight how you improved the client’s online presence and SEO ranking for specific geographic areas.

When building your portfolio, use descriptions, visual tools, and data whenever possible. Keep in mind that your clients aren’t likely to be SEO experts themselves. Explain your processes and the steps you took for past clients. Break down the analytics so they’re easy to understand and show before-and-after content and results. You could use markup tools to highlight changes and improvements to websites and content. Reporting and data are essential elements of a compelling SEO portfolio. When presenting these reports and showing the data, try to be as visual as possible. Use tools with graphs and charts rather than just numbers. Be mindful of the user experience when building your portfolio and use readily understandable language if your client has very limited knowledge of how SEO works.

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4. Market your services

Once your portfolio is ready, you can start marketing your services and accepting clients. You’ll want to decide what channels you’ll use to find clients and promote your services. On Upwork, you can browse SEO jobs on the Talent Marketplace™ or list your pre-scoped and fixed-priced SEO services on Project Catalog™.  

As an SEO freelancer, you want to create a strong personal brand that communicates your expertise in the industry. Market yourself as the go-to person for SEO to quickly establish trust and confidence in your skills. Part of your personal brand is letting clients know what sets you apart from the competition—your unique selling point and why they should hire you.

You can develop your personal brand in your Upwork profile (starting with your title and overview), personal website, and professional social media accounts. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking and marketing your services as a professional. You can follow clients and businesses you’d like to work with and post thought-leadership pieces (and drive traffic back to your personal website if you have one).

You can also meet others in your industry by attending virtual or in-person freelancer or SEO events. Conferences, meet-ups, and expos can help you learn more about your industry and meet potential clients and other professionals.

5. Set competitive pricing

As a freelancer, you can decide how much to charge clients for your SEO services. You want to set a rate that is competitive with other freelancers based on your skills and experience while being fair to the client. SEO experts on Upwork charge a median rate of $15 to $35 per hour.

Many new freelancers start off by charging a lower rate than their target level at first to build their reputation and gain positive feedback. On Upwork, as you complete projects, they’ll appear on your profile with the client’s feedback, and you’ll earn a Job Success Score (JSS). Having positive feedback and a high JSS can help you land more interviews.

You can slowly raise your rates as you successfully complete more projects. Experiment with higher hourly rates and see if they affect whether clients respond to your proposals and request interviews. A rate that is too low can signal to clients poor work quality, while being overpriced can scare them off too.

You’ll know it's time to start charging more as your workweeks are consistently full and you have to decline new projects and clients. When working on long-term hourly projects on Upwork, you may have the option to include automatic scheduled rate increases.

Popular freelancer pricing models:

• Hourly. Track the time spent on the project and bill clients hourly each week or month.
• Per-project. Negotiate a set price for the project or milestone based on how long you think it will take to complete.
• Retainer. Charge clients a set price each month for your ongoing services.
• Value-based. Base your pricing on the estimated revenue your services will bring to the client.

When working on Upwork, freelancers and clients have payment protection on hourly and fixed-priced projects when terms and services are followed. If you want to work with a client who isn’t on Upwork, you can use Upwork for payments and have payment protection through Direct Contracts.

6. Manage client relationships

When freelancing, managing client relationships is a core element of success. You’ll work directly with clients and have to meet their expectations, solve any problems that come up, and build professional relationships.

This client communication will likely be remote, as freelancers can work from home. Clients may also be spread out across different time zones. You’ll have to work on your virtual communication skills, combining asynchronous and synchronous communication.

Building client relationships starts with effective and clear communication. Before you accept any contracts or start working with a new client, you want to make sure that it's the right fit for you both. Setting up a video or phone call to discuss the project’s scope can help you evaluate the client's workstyle and personality to avoid any mismatches.

Reviewing the project’s scope is an essential step in managing client expectations. Before accepting a contract, you want to make sure that you know exactly what the client expects of you and their SEO goals. If you find that a client is difficult to work with, you’ll have to learn to set clear boundaries and resolve conflict.

Checking in regularly with updates and progress helps build trust with clients. Let them know what you’re working on and share any reports or results. These check-ins and progress updates also help you to make sure that you’re on the right track with what they’re expecting.

When working with an SEO freelancer, especially for the first time, clients may have concerns and questions. Common questions include:

• When will they see results?

Unfortunately, SEO results do not typically happen overnight. Increasing ranking and traffic to a website occurs over the course of months based on the efforts of an SEO freelancer. You’ll need to explain this to clients and clearly outline your SEO strategy. Explain each step that you took, why you did it, and how it will improve their rankings over time.

• Can you guarantee higher rankings?

As an SEO freelancer, “guaranteeing” higher rankings with any specificity is risky. While you can optimize the website and content, actual rankings can depend on the industry and competitors. You can show clients the results you’ve gotten for other clients that prove your skills and past successes.

• How much will SEO cost?

SEO costs depend on the specific services needed and the SEO freelancer’s experience level. Clients often worry that SEO is expensive and they may confuse it with SEM, which is paid ads. Be upfront about what you charge and offer fixed-price projects so clients can see if they fit their budget.

• What if the search algorithm changes?

Algorithms change, and this can sound ominous, especially to clients who aren’t familiar with SEO. Explain to your clients how algorithms work, realistically, the impact that a major update would have on their SEO, and what your plan would be to optimize in a worst-case scenario.

• How is generative AI affecting SEO?

Google’s AI overviews, ChatGPT, and other generative AI tools may bring concerns to clients about SEO and how it will change in the future. Stay up to date with the latest AI trends and how they impact SEO and let clients know what your strategies are.

7. Stay updated with SEO trends

SEO is an ever-evolving industry that is subject to algorithm changes and technological advancements like generative AI. As an SEO freelancer, you want to make sure that you stay updated with the latest SEO trends. These algorithm and tech updates may mean that you need to adjust or incorporate new SEO strategies.

Clients expect you to be the expert on SEO. Part of being an expert is staying at the forefront of any changes or updates. They want you to be the first to know. Demonstrating that you’re knowledgeable about SEO and active in the industry can boost their confidence in you, which is critical to long-lasting relationships.

Consider these actions to stay informed about SEO trends and changes:

Follow influential SEO blogs

• Search Engine Journal
• Neil Patel
• Ahrefs
• Moz
• Google Search Central
• Backlinko
• Search Engine Land

Attend SEO webinars  

• Semrush
• Yoast
• Search Engine Journal
• Wix

Join online SEO communities

• Google Search
• Reddit (r/SEO)
• HubSpot
• Moz
• Upwork

Summary

As an SEO freelancer, clients hire you to improve their website’s ranking in search engines for keywords and phrases that are relevant to their business. Your job is to be an expert at all aspects of SEO, including keeping up with algorithm updates and industry trends.

Freelancing gives you more control over your career and flexibility over the hours you work and the projects you accept. Freelancing lets you run your own business. This means that you’re also responsible for marketing your services, negotiating contracts, and managing client relationships. Freelancing on a platform like Upwork allows you to create a profile, build a portfolio, submit proposals to jobs, communicate with clients, and accept payments all in one place.

You get to decide what’s fair to charge clients based on the market rate for your services and your experience level. As the demand for your services rises, you can increase your rates and give yourself a raise. Compared to working as an employee and having to ask your manager for a raise, freelancing can give you greater earning potential.

If you’re interested in learning how to become an SEO freelancer, these are the steps to follow:

Understand the basics of SEO. Become knowledgeable about SEO concepts and the different strategies for increasing website rankings and traffic.

Develop your SEO skills. Demonstrate your credibility by taking advanced SEO courses and earning certificates.

Create an impressive portfolio. Highlight your skills and expertise by presenting your best client projects or mock-ups.

Market your services. Decide how you will promote your service and reach clients, whether by joining Upwork or social media and networking.

Set competitive pricing. Research the market rate for someone with your skills and experience and make sure your rates fall within that range.

Manage client relationships. Make sure you understand the project’s scope before accepting a contract, communicate progress to clients during the project, and meet the expectations for actions and results.

Stay updated with SEO trends. Follow reputable industry blogs, attend webinars, and network with other SEO professionals so you’re among the first to know of any algorithm changes and industry trends.

Start SEO freelancing with Upwork

Upwork is the world’s work marketplace, where you can keep all of your freelancing work in one place. Submit proposals, communicate with clients, deliver work, and accept payments, all within the platform. Thousands of opportunities are available every day.

Search the Talent Marketplace for SEO jobs and find projects that you’re passionate about. If you want clients to come to you, Project Catalog lets you list your pre-scoped and fixed-price projects for clients to shop.  

Whether you have years of experience working in SEO or are just starting your career, you can build a business on Upwork. Create a strong profile that explains who you are and what you do, then build an impressive portfolio of your best work. As you complete jobs on the platform, you’ll earn a JSS and public reviews, which help you establish credibility with clients to land more interviews.

You get to decide what your career looks like here. If you prefer one aspect of SEO, like website audits or content creation, you can make that your niche and work on becoming the go-to person for that skill. Grow your career by upskilling and offering complementary services in digital marketing or content. You can work on one-off or long-term contracts. If you decide that you want to work full-time for one client, you can explore full-time opportunities. Join Upwork and start designing your dream SEO career.