Why 99.1% Of Freelance SEOs Are Bullshit (At Least At Upwork)

Today i’m going to show you why freelance SEOs are bullshit.

Or at least why everyone thinks they are.

I’ve put up a fake job posting on Upwork and got 115 applications in the first day alone for it.

Only 1 was decent.

Let’s dive right in…

First things first, the idea for this article came from Tim Soulo at Ahrefs, who i emailed asking for advice and who promptly replied with his 2 cents! (more like the whole concept :P) Thanks Tim!

The central idea to this article was to “expose” bullshit SEOs by creating a fake job posting on sites like Upwork, Freelancer etc. to see the kind of replies a typical person looking for SEO services would get.

I decided to create 2 fake jobs ads:

1. for a Saas company
2. for a local business

I picked 2 random (real) sites that clearly needed SEO work done and I pretended to be the poor, unaware owner.

To make sure I get clear and concise answers I came up with a simple, straight forward job post.

Here it is:

“Hi,

I’m looking for an SEO expert.

We are a [X] business that provide a [X] solution called: [sitename.com]

We want to work with an expert to optimize our SEO in every level.

Please send us an offer including the first thing/what you would do and a price range for that.

Thanks”

Fired up the ‘ole Upwork profile and I was all set.

Here’s a screenshot of my Upwork job postings, you can see the number of applicants for each.

That makes 115 total applications and most of them if not all came within the first day of posting.

I was eager to check out each application.

Needless to say the results of this “experiment” have been disgustingly bad.

I started scrolling through the applications, one by one, this process alone has been excruciating. I could easily feel the pain that clients feel when they try to hire one of us SEOs. The thing that hit me straight away was this:

Every application was basically the same.

The fact is…

When a client looks through their proposals, they only see the first 2 or 3 rows of our cover letter. From this alone, i was able to (very easily) identify 3 types of applicants.

Let’s analyze each of the 3 in depth.

The 3 Types of SEO Applicants On Freelancer Sites

1. The “Rambling Man” A.K.A. the Generalist

I call this the “Rambling Man” (though, women are there too). The application usually starts out with something like this:

“Hello,

Hope you are doing good !

I have checked your website. I have more than 5 years of experience in SEO, SMM and SMO. 

I am qualified SEO, SMM, SMO, Expert with a proven track of bla bla bla bla….”

What does this tell to the common client (like me in this example)?

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

the funniest thing is, they start with “i checked your website” and then keep rambling about their expertise (hence, why the name “rambling man”).

Who cares??

Fact is, there is no way in hell i’m going to keep reading your proposal if you don’t tell me something that is of interest TO ME.

I couldn’t care less about your incredible expertise and your 5 years working for SONY if you don’t show me how this all applies to me and my business.

Especially when, in my job ad, I asked you for “1 simple advice and a price range for that.” see, there’s a reason I (and most people do) asked for the price range. And that, is because what I care about the most (being someone who’s looking for SEO), is something that can be described with just 3 letters… ROI.

Clients on Upwork just want to find out 2 things:

1. Can you solve their specific business problem?
2. Can your SEO services give them good enough return on their investment?

So you see, there is no point in bragging about your previous accomplishments, especially if they are not 100% relevant.

The Rambling man then go on with something like:

“Planning and execution are the two important parts of getting the results. I would begin with planning for the project and share it with you. Once you are fine with the project strategies. I will go ahead and …”

Let me stop you right there….BORING!

I mean, what an incredible idea… first planning, then execution… duh?! That’s too generic. Clients need specifics. Simple details like just mentioning a change of title tag (and the exact page title from their site), pointing out clear technical issues such as redirect chains and improving internal links would be better than all this crap.

Most of all, this would potentially give the clients a few really nice quick wins.

Your proposal needs to at least keep their attention and have them keep reading. To do this, you have to show them you have checked out their site for real.

The rambling goes on:

“Here is what i can offer you :

1. Website Analyses

2. Keyword Research

3. Meta Tag Creation

4. Sitemap, Robot.txt, Google Places Creation & Implementation.

5. Fix all other On-page Parameter issues

6. Off-Page SEO (Bookmarking, Local Listing, Classifieds ads, Search Engine submission, Ping submission etc)

7. Social Media Marketing

8. SEM (Paid Marketing)

9. Content Marketing (Blog Writing and Postings)

10. Google webmaster and Analytics Traffic Analyses and keyword Report Generation

11. Google Analytics tag creation and updation

12. Connect Google Analytics and Webmaster”

A few of them also sent additional PDF attachments like this:

BOOM! aka the giant and useless to-do list.

And again, that is boring, it’s too generic and those are all basic things everyone can read in a million of blog posts around the web. It doesn’t tell me (the client) absolutely anything about how it can help ME.

A lot of the points on the list aren’t even coherent with my site, he’s mentioning “local listings” (and this was for the “SaaS” job ad), “Social media marketing” and “paid marketing” when all i asked was SEO.

You see, this does nothing but overwhelm the client.

You’re just going to scare him/her away by giving all this (generic) informations and most of all, you’re giving him/her homework. You’re forcing the client to stop and think:

“Wow do i really need all this stuff? This is going to cost me a fortune”.

The problem here is, the average consumer is exposed to up to 10,000 brand messages a day. If you want to keep them focused on you, you have to be specific (talk about them) and to the point which means avoiding unnecessary fluff and stuff that doesn’t concern them.

And this was basically it, he ended the “proposal” with the usual pleasantries and bye bye.

Do i really want to contact someone like this? Most of all, does this make me want to HIRE him?

I don’t think so.

NEXT!

2. The Straight Up “Fraud”

This is going to be fun.

This is where I actually stopped and thought to myself: “Is this for real? this must be a joke”

I call this the “Fraud” for a good reason:

fraud: noun; “a person or thing intended to deceive others”

this is basically what this guys does, starting from his/her profile picture and name all the way to his/her proposal.

Check this out:

Let’s see, Mr. X here…

After a simple Google Image search for his profile pic, it turns out the guy is not exactly an SEO expert…

and another one…

Upwork profile:

Real person:

Oh, there’s more:

Upwork profile:

Real person:

You get it…In fact, around one third of the proposals i got was like this. Not a good sign…

Next, let’s take a look at the proposals itself.

These kind of individuals usually have poor english and say stuff like the following:

Note: For real, I just copied and pasted these from Upwork into the article.

• Hello, I’m interested in your job post.
• Top 3 Ranking in Google Map Guaranteed.
• I am glad to tell you that I am capable of delivering you the best with full perfection.
• We will surely help you to promote your website on google 1st page.
• Hello, I provide guaranteed Keyword Ranking results.
• I am 100% White Hat SEO genius.
• Hello [wrong name]
• ★★ PROVEN TRACK RECORD -WHITE HAT SEO EXPERT in OPTIMIZING LOCAL WEBSITE ★★
• I am certified digital marketer and I only follow the basic algorithms i.e. “Panda & Penguin”.

Woah. LOL.

For the SEOs out there reading this, i know how you feel, i was laughing my ass off too.

For the clients out there that have experienced the same, here’s what you need to know:

No SEO in the world can guarantee rankings

When you go to that famous therapist your friends recommended to you, you’re probably expecting something amazing, you’re expecting he will make you feel better and cure the pain once and for all.

But…are you able to tell 100% for sure that’s going to work? Nope, still you’re paying for the full 3 months up front. You are confident that therapist is going to try his best using so-called “best practices”.

You see, it’s the same with SEO.

No matter how experienced somebody is, all we can do is take our best guess based on how your site currently performs and what we’re going to do to it. Certain activities have more impact than others like creating quality content assets and link building for example.

A few good quality links coming from relevant domains can, with good probability, push your article (assuming it’s relevant to the search query) from page 2 to page 1. But you will never be able to tell for sure, EVER.

Google’s algorithm uses something like 200 or so ranking factors. Do you think anybody in the world is able to exactly know how to rank “X” site in “X” spot on “X” page?? Exactly…

So, in essence, when some SEO guy tells you he can guarantee “anything”… RUN.

3. The Good One

If you’ve been reading this far, you’ve probably already deleted your Upwork account by now and will never look back.

By no means, I want this to be an article against Upwork. I use it every single day in my business and have found absolutely amazing freelancers on it.

This brings me to the last of the typical applicants. The good one.

Here’s an example of a really good (in my opinion) proposal that actually got me interested and had me keep reading:

Here’s why this is good:

1. He got my attention. After a brief intro (i like to-the-point) he’s telling me straight away that “there’s a lot of work here”. No fluff, just straight honest telling me that my site is a mess (and the example i used really is).
2. He shows authority. He shows me that he knows what he’s doing and how to apply it to my personal situation.
3. He’s being personal. He’s talking directly to me and my business. He’s not using jargon just for the sake of it and he’s showing me that he’s likeable to work with because he has an interest in helping my business.
4. He’s detailed. I asked for the first things that he would do and he tells me what those are. I asked for a price range and he gives me one. He shows me he actually read my job ad.

Now, those alone are all good indicators of a great SEO (or any freelancer).

One thing i personally would have done in addition to that is to close my proposal with a clear call to action. Ideally a question or something like “Are you available for a short skype call?”

Still, from something like that you can tell there’s a huge difference with what we’ve seen before. You can tell it’s not a copy/paste template and he’s not trying to impress with huge claims or guaranteed rankings.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, this wasn’t a rant towards Upwork per se, more likely I wanted to try and show you that what makes up the SEO industry is not much about SEO itself as a marketing channel (there are plenty of other blog posts and case studies showing the real power of SEO and content marketing).

What makes up the SEO industry are the people in it, and there is a clear difference between good and bad SEO people.

So the next time you’ll hear someone talking about why all freelance SEOs are bullshit, why it’s so hard to outsource SEO work and SEO doesn’t work and bla bla bla, try and ask them WHO they had to deal with in the first place.

Who did their SEO?

What kind of work has been done? (if they say “well i don’t know, the guy said he posted $10 spinned articles on directories” you have your answer…

People, make sure you do your due diligence!