Month: May 2015

Over the last couple of decades, the number of people that decide to become freelancers has skyrocketed. The Internet, more than anything else, made this possible, with writers-for-hire, marketers, web developers, graphic artists, designers, and more seizing the opportunity to “do their own thing”.

What’s the Motivation?

To understand freelancers, we have to first consider their motivation for becoming self-employed. The desire for professional independence can take many forms. For some, it may be born in their tendency to bridle under direction by others, while others may simply feel that their creativity is stifled by too much regimentation. Some find that they work more efficiently without the distractions of a shared workplace and still more feel awkward or uncomfortable as part of a collective. Finally, there are many that make the change in order to be able to spend more time with their family.

And of course, we can’t forget the others that think that working solo is the path to untold riches and a two-day work-week. Boy, are they in for a disappointing realization!

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We often have new prospective clients come to us, asking what’s wrong… why have they lost 60 – 70% of their organic traffic over the last couple of months. The first question they have is whether we can fix it. Then comes the ‘how long will it take’ question. The answer to the first is generally something along the lines of “Nearly everything can be fixed.” The second can’t be answered without a lot more information.

Sometimes a glance at their homepage is enough to give us a good idea of at least some of the site’s issues. But after examining hundreds of sites, we’ve yet to see more than a handful that had only one significant problem – it’s usually a hodgepodge of issues.

The First Step – Take Stock

There are a few quick things we need to know before we can even give a client a firm quote. Assuming they don’t have a manual penalty, we’ll take a look through their GSC (Google Search Console, previously called Google Webmaster Tools), their GA (Google Analytics) and take a stroll through their site while Screaming Frog is doing a crawl. If Penguin is a likely issue, at that point we’ll normally run a Majestic report, too.

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