My Experience as a SEO Freelancer on Upwork to Top Rated PLUS status

It's incredible how many of my clients are SEO agencies who have no idea about SEO. My non SEO-agency clients are companies with a ton of horrible experiences with SEO companies. I'm talking about one client was dragged for an entire year with an SEO company before me, and had no improvement with organic traffic.

A new client just now told me he hired a SEO company before for his website, and when I took a look at the domain rating, it's a 0.1/100 on Ahrefs.com DR measuring tool. Only 100 organic monthly visitors. I am just shocked at the amount of SEO and Digital Marketing companies that are clueless about SEO, so they are on upwork trying to outsource this important process.

The worst is when I see people on Upwork trying to form partnerships with SEO freelancers. Really, someone just trying to make money off you and bring no actual value to the table. Keeping good integrity and frequent results has built me a solid reputation, and it's easier now to get new clients with the Top rated plus badge. But I am aggressive with my outreach on the Upwork platform, which contributes too.

It should be illegal to sell SEO services unless you have 10 ranking websites you own personally.

Do you live in U.S?

I feel like companies, like «digital marketing» companies that focus on both SEO and SEM, usually slaps a paid campaign and implement a blog and calls it a day. Atleast in my country.

Panther28 said:

It should be illegal to sell SEO services unless you have 10 ranking websites you own personally.

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It should be frowned upon/illegal until proof of ranking something at medium level. Any walnut can rank a low volume, no competition keyword.

Upwork has some good people on it, but boy do you have to do a big sort!

After reading stuff here, I get paranoid as to whether the reviews are even real. lol

Panther28 said:

It should be illegal to sell SEO services unless you have 10 ranking websites you own personally.

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Fiverr has a test you have to take before you can post SEO jobs, I passed and rank among the top 20% with a 3.9/5 test score. Some of the questions where really tricky. But overall, I really welcome this type of filter for quality control of freelancers.

Arditkallaba said:

Do you live in U.S?

I feel like companies, like «digital marketing» companies that focus on both SEO and SEM, usually slaps a paid campaign and implement a blog and calls it a day. Atleast in my country.

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Yup. I am in the US. And thats also what I see too.

PHPInjected said:

It should be frowned upon/illegal until proof of ranking something at medium level. Any walnut can rank a low volume, no competition keyword.

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Yeah, its when they commit and do not deliver which and have an excuse should just be called what it is, fraud. Because a real SEO experts sets real expectations and meets goals.

Surfdbreak said:

Upwork has some good people on it, but boy do you have to do a big sort!

After reading stuff here, I get paranoid as to whether the reviews are even real. lol

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Your right, there is definitely some incredible talent on there. Many people will find the trash though before the diamonds and get discouraged the first time around and never come back.

Is your service about buying backlinks in newspapers for $1000 per link? Is that what your're charging your clients for?

I strongly disagree. Unless you are a wage earner in a corporate office, the first thing you know is seo.

ramuite said:

Is your service about buying backlinks in newspapers for $1000 per link? Is that what your're charging your clients for?

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You're referring to a technique I shared. But I am a top rated PLUS freelancer on upwork. Learn about the badges here https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049702614-Upwork-s-Talent-Badges
I have since grown into a SEO agency with an entire team to help with a ton of different areas such as manual link building, content, and professional graphic design.

IM Rider said:

I strongly disagree. Unless you are a wage earner in a corporate office, the first thing you know is seo.

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I have 33 successful jobs completed on Upwork. Its scary how many are SEO and Digital marketing agencies that pay me to do all of their SEO. Its quite incredible the bullshitters that will talk their way into wasting companies budgets. But by being honest, and setting realistic expectations, has allowed me to earn a great reputation on the platform. Which makes it much easier to close new contracts. Honestly, there are free guides online with the best SEO information such as BHW and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWquNQV8Y0_defMKnGKrFOQ but a ton of people who just dont want to invest their time to learn correct SEO. There is a ton of cluelessness out there when it comes to "SEO experts," and their understanding of how Googles' algorithm works.

I am a little bit agree with you because on Upwork we don't know if our proposal is accepted or not.