Nick LeRoy

Guest Bio

Nick LeRoy is a freelance SEO consultant, podcaster, and newsletter author in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Nick specializes in SEO strategy, technical SEO, editorial strategy, and website migrations through his company Nick LeRoy Consulting.

Nick LeRoy is also the author of two SEO-focused newsletters: #SEOForLunch and The SEO Freelancer, and the owner of the boutique job board SEOjobs.com.


Knowledge Bombs

19:25 High-Quality Product or Service

Nick revealed that his secret to ranking on page one of Google is having word class or high-quality products or services. He added that it does not matter how much SEO you do in links or content. Having the highest quality value behind your quality service or product will keep you on page one in the long term. 

26:20 How Nick Landed Enterprise SEO Clients

Nick shared that no magic process helped him land where he is now. He just made a lot of effort into building his brand and his network, and from that, he got direct referrals from clients that have worked with him.  

Some of these clients are also a product of networking and those he met at conferences in the SEO world.

27:13 Tip on Building A Personal Brand

With Nick’s solid brand-building, he said that he did this on his time through blogging. He shared his top tip for consultants in building their own personal brand, and that could be through blogging as well, especially since there’s a lot of opportunity to get on the search engine lands and journals these days. 

This will allow you to share your vision with big audiences.  He added that this could be a good way to get your name and voice out there.

28:28 Nick Networks With People Within SEO

When asked who networks who or who hires Nick, he mentioned that he networks with people in the SEO space. These people would then tend to make the referrals in the C-suite or even at the presidential level. With effective communication and strategy, they would then buy into it. So overall, it is the practitioners or the owner level of agencies in the SEO space that hires him.

29:25 Skill Sets to be Successful in SEO

Nick shared two skills necessary to be successful in SEO. The first would be to understand how SEO works. Because there are a lot of SEOs, you should be able to pull all these types at different levels. While this can’t be learned overnight, it can be really impactful.

The second skill is effective communication because SEO can be very technical. If you are talking to people at the enterprise level, you need to know how to make them understand the concepts of SEO in its entirety without being intimidating.

Quite simply, Nick explains that you have to communicate what the issue is, how it is going to be fixed, and what reward they can get from it.

32:56 Value-Based Pricing Model

Nick introduced the concept of Value-Based Pricing when he previously asked about the number of hours he dedicated to his work. He explains what this is by saying that rather than focusing on the number of hours worked, he focuses on the results of the work done.

So you are setting certain goals and doing whatever it takes to be able to hit them. He positions the value behind his knowledge and the strategy versus the certain amount of hours that go into it. 

35:14 Process of Getting A Client

Nick admits that his approach is not as sexy as others. He does sign a lot of like NDAS up front so he can get access to Google Analytics or better understand their back end. So he’ll do preliminary audits and clicks to determine things that don’t look good and opportunities to increase revenues and traffic.

Once he has about 3-5 things, he would pitch this to the client and say, ‘Hey you pay me five grand, I feel confident that I can get you ten grand in return’  This works every time.

36:46 Preliminary Conversations before getting Access to Analytics Tools

When Nick was asked if he getting access to their analytics tools before giving them the price, he said that he likes to have a preliminary conversation with the clients first. 

So he lets them know his availability, what his price range is, their goals, and if they are in the same range or area. Once it is all locked in, he gets into SEO tools and works with them.

37:50 Tools Nick Used for Project Management

Nick simply used Emails and a long-to-do checklist. He was also always taking notes, and with the to-do lists, he delivered what needed to be done the next day to the night before that to be reliable to his clients. 

He said he also used Trello before but spends much more time setting up cards than doing the actual work. He also uses Excel but not many other fancy tools, and it works well on his end.

39:51 Revenue Is The Sole Measurement of Campaigns

When asked how Nick measures his campaigns with his clients, it all boils down to revenue. Because the traffic will not pay bills, he believes at the end of the day that, his clients pay him for the value that he adds to them, so he strives to add revenue for them.

41:41 Common Mistake SEO Freelancers Make

Although it is very hard to say, SEO freelancers should always charge more than you currently have and don’t undervalue what they put on the table as long as you are still delivering results and value to their clients.

42:53 Setting Up Analytics for E-Commerce Site

When asked for SEO advice on an E-Commerce site, Nick suggested that the analytics should be well set up. When the analytics is sketchy, it can be hard to find a baseline in tracking traffic. For SEO, site architecture and linking should also be done properly so you can conduct the crawling and indexing properly. 

49:30 Nick Talks about how to Promote Oneself

According to Nick, it is about doubling down on Networking. Then take advantage of the number of opportunities just from people on LinkedIn or Twitter, or search engine journals. 

He adds that you can also just send an email and just say, ‘hey, I’m interested in talking to like-minded people let’s jump on a 20-minute conversation’ in Zoom or person.

This online copy chat is huge and can have a huge impact even months after they would consider your service again when the needs arise. 

54:44 Top Advice to Become an SEO Freelancer

Nick’s advice is that it doesn’t have to be a zero to one hundred percent commitment meaning you don’t have to quit your job and become a freelancer. The best thing he would recommend is finding a freelance client on the side, working towards it, identifying rules, and setting up certain boundaries to find which role would work best for you in the freelancing world.

56:45 What is SEOjobs.com

Nick owns the platform, and its sole purpose of what, the name says, is to help people find the opportunity to find some of the best jobs that are available in our industry. 

1:01:43 Top SEO Advice 

According to Nick, in order to succeed, be e curious always and push yourself. Don’t put too much credibility behind what you read online; many people will share what they’ve gone through and their tests, but don’t let that impact if you think that no-follow links have a lot of SEO value. 

Stay curious, go ahead and build them and measure them for yourself. 

He believes it should be the default for anybody looking to start out in SEO and should also look and focus on incremental gain. 


Google News

Google answers some questions on status codes this week during Google SEO Office hours.

Let’s check it out.

If you want to learn more about status codes.

The link is in the description
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors

Ted Kubaitis shares his top 3 schemas to implement for higher rankings
https://www.youtube.com/live/FVa0bPtzLNM?feature=share&t=3199

I’ve been a Schema fanboy for the past few years.

The schema I love is mention, about, person, organization, product reviews, and FAQ.

A tool I started using to help me generate schema is ChatGPT.

Writing it all out by hand can be a pain, so I get all the information ready and paste it into ChatGPT.

Then I ask it to generate all the different types of schemas I want from the information I just fed.

Fabrice from Bing and a past guest here on the show share Index Now updates https://www.youtube.com/live/Z3Vh7gRKlb0?feature=share&t=2073.

If you are having problems getting Index in Google, try IndexNow.

I’ve personally gotten better indexing results but submitting with IndexNow.

And if you are not using Bing Webmaster tools,

I highly recommend making it a part of your SEO tool stack.

How do you earn premium rates as an SEO freelancer?

Liam Carnahan answers on Serpstat.

https://www.youtube.com/live/q6g6IMFCP5U?feature=share&t=1460

Before charging premium rates for our SEO services, we must learn how to become an SEO consultant.

This brings me to my favorite part of the show.

Please ask questions on the topic, and I will address them in the order they are received.

Become a channel supporter by liking and subscribing while I get things ready.

#SEO #SearchEngineOptimization #SEOvideoSHOW

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Paul Andre “DRE” de Vera
web: https://seo.video
email: [email protected]
phone: (323) 523-5122

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