03: How SEO Helped Me Scale FreeUp to $12M in Yearly Sales

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Happy Sunday Savvy people!

Hope this one catches you on a stellar day 😀 

Have you ever wondered how SEO can actually help a business grow?

I know I did at first.

And it took me some time to truly understand it.

Unfortunately, most people hear about SEO & they may think it sounds “good”, but they don’t fully see how it could work.

Even marketers and SEOs sometimes still struggle with it.

I want to clear that up.

Finding SEO

My business partner, Nathan Hirsch, and I started FreeUp, a freelance marketplace, in 2015.

Coming hot off our first eCommerce business, we had hired 100s of people from the US, Philippines, India, Europe, etc. and we wanted a better way than Upwork and Fiverr.

But we were faced with a new challenge: digital marketing.

You see, when you’re selling on Amazon, they take care of that part for you.

With FreeUp, we had to do it all ourselves & we were forced to learn.

I found SEO while researching blogging & building my own site, ConnorGillivan.com.

I immediately became obsessed!

Growing Clients w/ SEO

The first SEO goal was to rank on high & medium intent keywords to get new clients.

So, we went after phrases like:

• Best freelance marketplace

• Hire a virtual assistant in the Philippines

• Find a graphic designer

• ecommerce virtual assistant

And we really focused on long tail keywords where the industry giants weren’t focusing their efforts. Those low hanging fruit!

Over time, we developed a content creation system that had a team of 5+ Writers and a full-blown editing & optimization process.

At our peak, we were publishing 30+ high quality & valuable blogs & pages for our ideal customer each month.

And it clicked!

By 2019 when we sold the business, SEO traffic was regularly bringing in 100s of leads and clients each month.

Increasing Freelancer Apps w/ SEO

With any marketplace, there’s two sides.

Next, we needed to attract more freelancers and virtual assistants to apply to join the platform.

We repeated the content creation system and keyword research we had perfected for clients & simply targeted freelancers and VAs instead.

Again, it took some time, but it took off & we saw 100s of applicants every single week at the peak of the business from our SEO.

Building Quality Backlinks

All the while, we were also creating relevant, authoritative backlinks:

• Industry partnerships with eCommerce softwares, tools, & service providers.

• Guest articles on other blogs

• Features in publications like Entrepreneur, Forbes, etc.

• Relationships with news sites

• Personal outreach

As it stands today, FreeUp has a DR of 71 with 50,000 backlinks from 3,700 unique websites.

Rinse, Wash, & Repeat

After 1-2 years of testing different SEO strategies and processes, we finally got it all down.

It was all about consistency and volume at that point.

Putting out quality content at quantity targeted at relevant keywords.

Today, FreeUp has 20,000+ monthly visitors from search and ranks for 16,000+ keywords.

In Summary

SEO was a MAJOR factor in our ability to grow FreeUp to $12 million in sales per year.

It catered to both sides of the marketplace and impressed clients & freelancers as they came upon FreeUp for the first time.

It was quite a 4 year journey. And we couldn’t have done it without SEO.

Today, 4 years post acquisition, SEO continues to drive new customers and talent to the marketplace.

A testament to the power of SEO in the short and long run.

Action Steps

1. Case Studies: Read 3-5 case studies from other SEO agencies to learn how they have grown businesses with it. If you’re an SEO, it will give you new ideas. If you’re an entrepreneur, it will show you how valuable SEO can be in the long run of growing a business.

Cheers!

Connor

Whenever you’re ready, here’s 3 ways I can help you:

1. My SEO Course: Launching in Q4 2023. Stay tuned for updates.

2. My SEO Agency: Want help with your SEO? My SEO agency, TrioSEO, is accepting new clients. Share your info & I’ll reach out with next steps. Apply to work with us.

3. Sponsorship: Promote yourself to 3,000+ SEOs, marketers, & entrepreneurs by sponsoring this newsletter. Email me for info.