What does a freelance SEO consultant do? Inside the world of search engine optimisation

Join us as SEO consultant Matt Meazey breaks down search engine optimisation (SEO). He recounts his journey from web design to SEO, delves into the role of AI in today's strategies, stresses the need for ongoing development, and offers practical tips for those new to the field

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ
• Matt Meazey - SEO consultant.

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ. I'm your host Emily Slade and in this episode I chat to Matt who works in SEO.

Matt Meazey: My name is Matt and I am an SEO freelance consultant, relatively new in the freelance world as well. Yeah, enjoying it so far. 

Emily Slade: Perfect. So what is an SEO consultant? 

Matt Meazey: First of all, SEO stands for search engine optimisation. So really my job is to try and get websites ranking as high as possible on search engines, mainly Google 'cause. That's the most popular search engine, sort of a higher level than that. It's just trying to make a website and a brand more visible online. That’s as high level as I can go really in terms of SEO you can split it into three to maybe 5 main core pillars. First of which is content and on page SEO is what we call it so. That would be physically like written content on on. The web page, but also imagery video. You know, all that podcasts would also be some content. So be my job to try and optimise that as much as possible for not just search engines, but for people. And it's really important. We don't just optimise for search engines. So it's quite funny it's actually. Search engine optimisation, but I'd like to try and think as. For optimisation building, which sounds weird when you say it out loud, so you've got the content side of things, you've got the technical SEO side of things, so that's essentially trying to make the user experience of a website as best as we can. Again thinking of people first, how frustrating it is when you go on a website and it's. And you know, and you try and click on something and suddenly the thing moves and it's so annoying. So we've got that. And the other side of technical is is trying to make website more crawlable and I suppose visible to search engines. Is what we call off page SEO, so that's you may have heard of a term called backlinking or link building. So that is essentially trying to build an authority off your website so I guess. One way I would. It. Is if I had a link going to my website from the BBC who is a reputable authoritative source, very basic level, Google would see or search engines would see OK, Matt's got a link from this reputable source. Map must be reputable as well and because of that we'll try and push you up the rankings a little bit further. Again, very sort of top level way of describing that, but so you got that and then you've got the local and international levels side of things as well. So again, if you had a shop in a city somewhere, your SEO strategy would be very different. To AB to B only online type business. It's very varied. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Matt Meazey: Which makes it really interesting. 

Emily Slade: And is it something that you sort of you, you, you. Do you can you do those 3 pillars such a new optimisation boom done or do you have to come back on like a daily weekly basis and keep updating all of that stuff? 

Matt Meazey: This could be funny because there's it depends. Is a very well known phrase of in the SEO industry. But yeah, it does depend what I my approach would be is I always start with the research. So figure out what people are actually searching for, what are they? What is their intent behind those searches? Research around the topic. Research around the industry again, that's another reason why I love it. Because it's not just your head's not just on a website, it's bigger. It's a bigger picture. So you start with that. That were then to kind of determine where you would go. So you'd be like, OK, this website, the content's awful compared to what people are actually looking for. So that's where my focus is going to be for the next month, three months, six months, again, without going into the weeds, if you had a. A big website that might be an e-commerce website technical SEO might be more important than one of the other pillars, for example. So yeah, it really depends on the business on the audience as well. I would say I'd always come back to that thing of think of the person that's actually trying to get on your website like I was trying to go back to basics at Google's or Bing. I always say Google. But what I mean, search engine job really is to. Experience possible for someone that's searching something. I don't know. It sounds really basic when you say it out loud, but if you. A seamless experience for someone that's searching running shoes for sale or best running shoes and your website comes up with a really amazing piece of content that talks from through about what you should consider when you're buying shoes. You know really unique content around that. The website's also really fast and it's really easily crawlable from a search engine perspective. And it's also backed up by. Links that from authority websites. Then you're not going to be far away. And we'll probably shoot myself in the foot there. But yeah, that's that's very basic levels where I would come back to a question until it depends on what the client needs. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So what was your educational journey? 

Matt Meazey: Yeah. How long have we got? So I guess all right, so I went to high school. I got a relatively average grades. I think I got is sort of showing my age now I've got 5CS and 5 B's at GCSE, so nothing spectacular. I then had no idea what I wanted to do. So I did a bit of work experience. I went to college and did some it thing that I can't even remember what it was. And then yeah, I went around the houses. I was confused. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I then worked in a warehouse at Lotus Cars, which is fun. That generally was one of the best places I ever worked. It was so fun. Yeah. And I was just pretty confused. Didn't know what to do. I did have like this. Love science and I love umm. I've got a curious mind, I guess. So whilst I was at Lotus, I decided I wanted to do something sciency and I also liked geology is like specifically so when I was at latest I've decided to go back to college and I was 21 at this point. So yeah, went went back to college. And did like a. Access course. I think they call it to natural sciences. The idea with with that is that will then enable me to then go to university and study geology. I had this lovely idea that I become some sort of volcanologist and then on top of volcanoes and stuff like that. 

Emily Slade: Oh wow. Yeah. 

Matt Meazey: So yeah, it. And because I had a genuine interest in in geology and rocks and all that, yeah, it seemed like a way to go. So went to college, did really well. There went to University of Leicester, Leicester for. As I said, I was. Yeah, 22. I think at this point when I went to university, so I was a little older than most people that go to uni. Yeah. And I guess to cut a long story short, I quickly found that geology was more of a hobby slash interest rather than a career that I wanted to pursue. Which then threw a cat, a mud and the pigeons a little bit because I was then feeling like I was back at square one again and I was like, oh, I'm now 22 and I still don't know what to do. But I'll always remember this moment I was. At my desk in my halls, and I still don't know why we were asked to do this, but I was studying interplanetary geology and one of the modules was to design a website about the Apollo missions to the moon. So random. And I found myself spending hours and hours and hours on on this website and. Funnily enough, not anything to do with the content on the website. I was just happy building this thing and and really enjoying it. And yeah, as I say, I really remember this moment. I was it was one of these like light bulbs. Like why don't I just do this? So yeah. And at that moment, that was when I was like, OK. This isn't for me at uni. Love the social side of things? Probably a bit too much. But yeah, I decided to leave in the summer. And I worked in pubs, warehouses to and whilst I was at home I'd be teaching myself how to design websites and build websites. And then I got a job at a very small agency. Again, just doing that, building websites which was felt like the big milestone. It was like, OK, I've this, I've now made that step into a career around. Websites and Internet. And then, yeah, did OK there and then. Very Long story short, I then went self-employed work for myself for I think it was around 2 years, two years or so building websites for my own clients which again loved, but I craved people. Working at home...like co working spaces, I think back then this is I don't know, 10, 15 years ago I think. It was. They weren't a thing. I don't remember them being a thing. So yeah, working at home, I was just driving me crazy. You get to the end of the day and you'd be like I haven't actually said a word to anyone today. Yeah. And then I think again, by luck, I'm going to say I got a call from a recruiter randomly. About an SEO job and obviously I knew about SEO because. Is sort of part and parcel to building a website. I did have a specific interest in that whilst I was building websites as well. It wasn't just about creating a nice looking website, I wanted it to rank well and stuff and I was really interested to see how that developed. Anyway I got this call. It was for an agency in Norwich who were really is a really exciting place to be, they just. Won a literally a global award at Google for their work. And so when I got this call, I was like, is this real? I don't don't really feel like this is real. Anyway, that went well. I've got the job there. I was the first SCO there. So they were a paid media agency. Really and. Yeah. And then I was there for eight years and then built A-Team and it was good fun. Came head of Scoi got that sort of itch. I suppose that a lot of people do in. Agency and probably in House worlds, where fancy sort of going alone again, but this time gone for a Co working space and it is the best decision I've ever made. So yeah, that was my journey. It's very convoluted and here there and everywhere it's. 

Emily Slade: No, no. Very real, I think, because I can't imagine you were gonna turn around and say I studied especially, you know, 10-15 years ago. I did a degree in SEO. I don't think that kind of thing existed back then. 

Matt Meazey: Yeah, yeah. It was quite difficult because and I've I really feel for people that that were in my position like you, you're sort of expected. I don't, I don't know, education. They obviously don't mean this to be the case, but you're expected. Feel. You should know what to do. We even know like 14. Yeah. And like, like my brother, for example. Since he was like 3 years old, he was. He was like, I want to be some sort of artist designer or something. And then his path was very linear. For college to graph design college. University graphic design now he's a. Designer, yes, easy peasy. So from my perspective, seeing him as well, that's so done it so easily. Well, not easily. That's unfair. But you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like, why can't I just, why can't I be like that? 

Emily Slade: Yeah. Linearly. That's a word. Yeah, I've always found it's better to do things to know what you don't want to do, and then that's always going to get you closer to figuring out what you do want to do. 

Matt Meazey: Yeah, exactly. And I think with SEO as well, I think you have to have sort of a certain type of mind like you have to be curious. It's the sort of job that you can't just do because you've kind of ended up in it you. To want to do it because it's. Certainly the technical side of things can be, you know, a little bit dry here and there, but you have to have that sort of drive like, OK, the bigger picture is this and that's why I'm doing it. So yeah, very here there and everywhere my journey. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Matt Meazey: But I'm glad you know I have no regrets whatsoever about that journey either, and I think that's really important to say because there were moments as to say when I was like 22, I was like. How how am I here? Again, I don't still don't know what I want to do after getting in loads of debt. Going to university. Like with the tuition fees and stuff and. But yeah, still no regrets. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. Yeah, so now your freelance SEO. So what does a typical working day look like for? 

Matt Meazey: You, without sounding cliche, it's almost the best thing about it. There isn't really like a typical working day. As I mentioned earlier, with like the four or five main pillars of SEO means that. One day you can be quite content heavy and being quite creative with. Do that in the morning and then in the afternoon you could be doing the dry technical stuff as I just mentioned. So yeah, it's it is there isn't a typical day and I think that's why I really enjoy it is a real blend of creativity and yeah technique. Technicality. We'll say that's a word, sure. Which I I don't know. I don't feel like there are many jobs out there that has that sort of blend of sort of left left brain, right brain, you know. So yeah, it keeps me on my toes for sure. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. So do you have to find your own clients or do they come to you? 

Matt Meazey: I've I've been really lucky. I I'll sort of hold my hands up. I've been really lucky that I've got a really nice good network around me. So yeah, of course. When I went freelance it was a real guest. That this might not work and there was always an element of risk to it. Obviously money unfortunately does make the world go round. So now I've got a young son now family and stuff, so I can't just not, you know, I had to earn. But yeah, luckily since I've got since I've gone freelance, I haven't actually had to look for work that much. I sort of sent a couple of people some emails and did a LinkedIn thing. So yeah, Linkedin's been. Is a slightly gross place sometimes, but also very helpful. So yeah, I put a few posts on there and you know it's it's sort of a domino effect. Like I've surprised at how many people actually that I do know in my network and then how many people those people know, if that makes sense. And that so far, I've sort of relied on that. And what am I now? 7-8 months in? Yeah. And things, things are going well, but I appreciate. It's not always like that, and it won't always be like that. Me though, and again keeping myself on my toes. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. A little bit. So the latest thing to have reached the search engines is AI overview. Have you noticed is that impacting your work, your job, your role? Negatively, positively. What's what's going on there? 

Matt Meazey: Big question, I guess specifically about AI overviews. So the. The SERP, what we call the search engine result page features what we'll call it. Those specifically haven't impacted me and my clients yet that it has, but not on like a measurable sense, right? I think AI on the like AI is a topical sense. It’s not necessarily affected my clients in terms of results and revenue and all those lovely things, but almost the way of working is probably the biggest thing that's changed and it is changing so quickly as well like 2-3 years ago wasn't really a thing. It's. I don't know. I would. I'd love to know how many people use AI as part of their day-to-day.  And probably most people don't even know they're using it like so when it when it all sort of exploded with chat, EBT and and being put getting involved and things like this, there was a lot. Oh God. And. This new thing is, you know, where's this come from? But actually, AI has been. Part of our lives for so long, certainly in the digital marketing world, I still remember my paid media colleagues at the agency I worked with. They're like, oh, it's not new like Google have been using these models for ages in our page stuff. So yeah, it's it's a big it's AI would be naive if I wasn't thinking how, like, what's it going to be like next month? What's it going to be like 6 months, two years because it is. It's it's becoming so clever. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Matt Meazey: You know, I use it everyday mainly for. Efficiency point of views. You know, like I have my head in spreadsheets quite a lot and I'm not an Excel wizard whatsoever. But you know, things like ChatGPT and that's really helped me create like crazy formulas. Are 200 characters long and I don't understand, but it's making my workload so much easier and workflow so much easier. So I mean what next is a massive read. We could have a whole podcast series on that. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Matt Meazey: Yeah, I don't know. I would again would be naive to sort of say or make any sort of prediction. Mm hmm. Specifically around. I think the next big step would be I'm going to say Google because we'll just forget about the other search engines. 

Emily Slade: Yeah, sorry other search engines. 

Matt Meazey: I am absolutely certain that they will come up with some sort of e-commerce integration within the search engine results page, so again, let's use running choosers. An example initially when AI overviews got announced, there was sort of. Hints of what this thing could be like in the future? And we're nowhere near that capability yet, but they're it's obviously in their plan. But one of those features was, let's say, yeah, let's go back to running shoes. If you search, what are the best running shoes for a marathon in Italy? In theory in the future? 

Emily Slade: Mm. 

Matt Meazey: It will come up with a really detailed answer, sort of talking about OK is Italy is probably going to be warm, so anything about breathability of your shoes marathon obviously as you think about the marathon distance, blah blah blah. And it'll come up with. Sort of varied different types of views. Sorry, it's very convoluted dancer, but I'm yeah. I generally believe that you'll soon be able to click on that result and then buy the trainers like on Google, essentially without having to click through to the website, which would be massive because you then suddenly taking that whole journey away from people's websites, people that spend huge amount of time, money on optimising building because of 11 big thing here is that perhaps doesn't get talked about enough is Google exists because it makes a lot of money and that's one big thing that a lot of people have been talking about is. AI overviews potentially could have a quite a big impact on their ads, and you know, and they make a lot of money from ads. So a way of perhaps helping that revenue stream for Google is perhaps integrating some sort of. E-commerce functionality within the search and then taking some sort of percentage transaction fee or something like this. So I don't know, that's a prediction I have, whether it will happen, I don't know, who knows but. To me, if I was at Google, I'd be like, why let's do this? Yeah, let's try and keep everything on on our platform and and see it. Yeah. It's a ever changing world again. Another reason why I love the job because it is every single day is something's changed. 

Emily Slade: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Do you have to keep topping up your own knowledge? Do you keep taking classes, workshops, courses, or just reading up on the latest information to make sure you're cutting edge? 

Matt Meazey: Yeah. And you have to because you're left behind very quickly. Don't necessarily do things like courses. Again, LinkedIn is a very good resource. There's so many people on there that I follow and would recommend to follow again. Some really good community as well. Yeah, that would probably be one of my biggest tips actually is if you were to get into SEO. Is you should always have that desire to learn. I've been doing it for over 10 years. And I'm learning every day still, and which is great. But again, if you have even a month of not doing that, you're going to get left behind. So yeah, somewhere like LinkedIn is a really good place for for that sort of knowledge. 

Emily Slade: What other skill sets would you say? Someone interested in SEO should ideally possess. 

Matt Meazey: I guess it depends here it goes. It depends. So some people specialise in technical SEO. Some people specialise in like the content side of things. So but then others probably like myself, more of a generalist. So I would ask yourself that, like where, where would you perhaps want to go in? And and you might not necessarily have the answer. You're sort of the thing. You probably discover as you're learning it, 11 skill. I think that is really overlooked is sort of the commercial element. So see people hire Se OS to try and make more money. Most of the time and Seo's cost money because certainly the content side of things. Things can be quite creative, so the commercial side of things gets a little bit lost. It's sort of like our put your rankings up a little bit or we're now ranking first for this cool, but what does it actually mean like in terms of the bottom line? And it's granted it's very difficult to measure that certainly from an SEO perspective and. The paid community will probably be up in arms from what I say now, but it's easier from a pay perspective because you have that whole Google ads platform that can track. You know how much you're spending and how much basically you're selling, and you can kind of make that A to B connection whereas SEO it's not weird that you're sort of hacking the system a little bit. There isn't a platform that Google owns or anything, so you can't really track that. Sort of this person's land in any website. And then they've gone and bought something. So it's quite hard to, I guess put like a specific ROI on SEO. But to have that commercial understanding of OK, the reason they're doing this is to make money. I think it's really important you know some. People I know have almost like a financial background, which I think goes hand in hand. But then you've got the other side, the creative creative side of things. So if you're creative, SEO could be a really great place for you to be as well. Yeah. Lots of squares, lots of scales that you can. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. 

Matt Meazey: Sort of if you have. That again, is a bit of an open arm. Industries like a lot of people with all sorts of different skills can get into it and thrive. Like so. Yeah, it's cool. 

Emily Slade: Yeah. Are there any SEO myths that you'd like to debunk? 

Matt Meazey: Yeah. Again, how long have you? Let's keep it real, like recent, I suppose, say. The new thing at the moment is how do we optimise for AI? And again I might be sort of putting my head on the block for a little bit here, but I don't necessarily think your approach has to be. 

Emily Slade: Mm. 

Matt Meazey: Any different to what it would be for traditional SEO as we call it, yes, the llms work differently to search engines. In theory, if you get all the basics right again about those four or five pillars that I mentioned. You're providing and you're providing people with the best experience and AI. You should like you as well, essentially as way I'd put it. So that's one. I don't necessarily think it's a myth, but it's something that I'm aware of as a lot of people are talking about, right. We need to do, we need to optimise AI, we need to. And I'm like just just be careful and. When we say optimise for AI is when you search something in ChatGPT for something and it references websites. That's what they're talking about. Like how can we get clicks people from ChatGPT onto my website. So I just think be careful because there's not many people that are actually clicking on like AI results, ChatGPT and stuff like. That's one myth, I guess another myth is kind of I've already said it in a way is optimised optimising for search engines. Shouldn't shouldn't be doing that. Yes, there are specific things you can do to help search engines or discover your website and discover your content. Should absolutely be doing if people rather than search engines. 

Emily Slade: What's the best piece of advice that you'd give to someone starting out? 

Matt Meazey: I would say almost what I said earlier about you need to need to keep on top of it. Always learn and learn and learn and learn again, and not just within the SEO world. I think it's really important that you learn about the basics of how paid media works and. How SEO and paid work together? How excel works? You know all these things because you have to. You have to have all this sort of knowledge to be a good SEO and quite often. I see. So a lot of people are very sort of drilled down on SEO and want to focus on that, but. Is very beneficial to have an eye on everything I could be biassed by saying this, but I think SEO when it comes to digital marketing is almost like the core to digital marketing, because again, with good SEO in theory you'll have. A better website, so if you. If you're spending £1,000,000 on Google ads and actually the SEO work has improved, the websites use experience. Those people that come in from the from the ads are more likely to convert and turn into a sale, so it's having. A beneficial impact on another massive sort of marketing stream. So again, just having. A breadth of knowledge, not necessarily like the insurance and outs of how ads work or insurance and outs of how websites bill. But just like an an underlying knowledge of a bit of everything probably will be beneficial. 

Emily Slade: If people want to reach out to you for advice or help, can they? 

Matt Meazey: You can. I'm on LinkedIn. My surname is weird. Meezy MEAZEY and I have a website. Mattmeese.uk. Yeah, I know. I'll be genuinely, really happy to chat because as I said. There might be some people listening who were in my position a long time ago of like, I don't know, what on Earth I should be doing. So yeah, I'd be more than happy to receive some messages and that and if I can help someone a tiny, tiny bit, I'll be well happy with that. Feel free to to chat. 

Emily Slade: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Matt Meazey: Thank you.

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Matt for their time For more information on working in SEO or it head to prospects.ac.uk. All links are in the show notes below. For a full length video version of this episode, check out our YouTube channel @futureyoupod If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you. As always, for listening and good luck on your journey to future you. 

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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