Keyword Research Masterclass: Finding the Right Freelancer to Boost Your Traffic

The SEO Content Dilemma

Digital marketing is a very competitive business and Keyword Research is a crucial element in creating a solid foundation for a Search Engine Optimization strategy. 

Like any other part of SEO, keyword research must be done to perfection. 

Because without a well-researched set of keywords and their related long tail phrases, no matter how beautiful and informative a piece of content is, it’s destined to get lost in cyberspace while vanity traffic generated from ill researched keywords will not bring in any return on investment for your marketing efforts.

There is an expertise gap the marketing industry is facing today. Business owners know that keywords play a part in digital marketing, but executing in-depth competitive analysis and intent mapping on complex topics is very difficult. Most people understand that finding the right keywords with enough volume is just the tip of the iceberg, and that a much deeper understanding of a user’s search and the search process is required. 

Understanding at what point in a user’s search journey a particular webpage can answer a question is critical. There are also many competitors vying for the top spot on a SERP and using the right combination of marketing and SEO to outmaneuver them is often too complex for businesses to handle on their own, and the results they do get are in the form of ‘vanity traffic’ that fails to generate any real returns on investment.

Scaling your business through digital marketing means more than just driving ‘vanity traffic’- that is to read and then discard. Businesses must go from amateur ‘testing’ of keywords to get top rankings in search engines, to professional SEO that really drives massive returns on their marketing spend. 

Scaling out means specializing and Gigmint.ai is at the vanguard of facilitating top freelance SEO experts to those businesses that are serious enough to scale out. With GigMint you’re able to ensure that the bedrock of your Search Engine Optimization is as explosive as it is sustainable by bringing in the top 1% of the highest quality SEO experts to get the very best, deep search results to drive huge amounts of quality traffic.

Why Keyword Research is the Bedrock of SEO

You might misunderstand Keyword Research as simply finding the most amount of searches for certain words. That is not to say that high search volume cannot be relevant, but true Keyword Research involves identifying the Language of your customers, and decoding the exact vocabulary, phrases, and questions that your potential customers use when searching for products or services to solve a problem that they are having.

For the bridge between the problem of your target audience and your solutions for it to be effective, you have to account for the user’s Search Intent. Specialists usually class search requests into three categories: Informational, Navigational and Transactional. The user with Informational Intent searches for information on a topic, they look for knowledge or guidance, eg ‘how to do keyword research’. 

The user with Navigational Intent searches for a specific website or for a specific brand, might search for a GigMint login or hire an SEO freelancer. The user with Transactional Intent searches for something to buy. If he clicks on a result that contains a 2,000-word history of a product or service, he will most likely leave your page. Search engines will then assume that your pages do not match the user’s query and your rank for that search query will plummet.

The biggest risk of all with bad keyword research is typically unknown until too late and after considerable investment. In the worst cases this can result in “vanity traffic” where considerable time and marketing budget is spent attracting large numbers of irrelevant visitors to pages on a site. Such activity can appear to be highly successful in terms of statistics but will deliver little or no return on investment for the business as a whole. 

We use keyword research in order to index a site within the search engines' architecture. By constructing a semantic web of relevant information surrounding a site, we inform Google of exactly what a site is about, and therefore why it's more authoritative than any other competing site. 

Using keywords in conjunction with the site's technical structure and its meta-data, we can ensure that your presence in the search results isn't just there, it's in the best position to convert visitors into customers. In short, it's the best digital real estate in your niche.

Why You Should Hire a Keyword Research Expert

Businesses try to master SEO in-house but in reality this ends up being a drain on resources. Many hours are spent by in-house staff ‘giving it a go’ by trying to guess the best keywords to rank for, to keep up with constant changes in the SERPs and to try and get the best results from tweaking their content to fit around the SEO. 

By contrast, an SEO specialist is like a surgeon – they don’t operate by ‘guesstimate’ and they analyze in depth to create the best results. With hours of expertise spent creating a data-driven SEO strategy for your business, you can transform months of tinkering from your in-house staff into instant results and get your site filled with high traffic and quality leads within minutes.

To the four basic elements of deep-dive SEO optimization, i.e. meta-tag optimization, internal linking, anchor text strategy, and site architecture/technical flow, a good SEO specialist also needs to have a broad, general knowledge of how search engines index web sites and work to deliver results to searchers. 

The amateur SEO can use tools to determine the most appropriate keywords to include in a site’s content, but a true SEO specialist knows how to structure a web site so that all of the relevant pages can be found by the search engines for all relevant keyword phrases. 

This is important because the content on a web site must not only be found by search engines, but also be relevant to the people who are conducting a search. By structuring a site in the proper way, the content on a site can be shown to search engine users who are searching for specific information, and are therefore much more likely to be interested in it.

To practice in-depth SEO as efficiently as possible, a variety of premium SEO suites and analysis tools of high-end. In addition, it is also desired that the tools can be easily integrated and that there are clear instructions on how to use the tools as much as possible in an automatic way to be able to work effectively with the huge amount of data that these tools can generate. 

Specialty within the field of online marketing is rather expensive for the majority of individual businesses and therefore often not affordable to be used on a regular basis in order to achieve the best results possible for the business.

This makes it even more attractive to hire someone, who already has the suitable tools in their Toolbox in order to generate the results online that are being expected by the client. This not only results in a very good return on investment but also opens up new possibilities that are hard to achieve, when an individual business tries to do it all by itself.

Speed to market is the best way to keep ahead of your competition online. Waiting weeks to find, interview and bring on a contract service provider to help with your SEO campaign is not a good move. Our platform here at GigMint enables you to source and hire from the best freelancers online for projects of any description including SEO – quickly and efficiently. 

The whole process can be done and completed within 24 hours to provide you with the momentum you need to keep ahead of your competition online and secure your own online piece of real estate in the process.

What to Look for in an SEO Freelancer

Finding the right SEO freelancer can feel like finding the right car technician to complete a complex engine repair. In both cases, you are relying on someone with in-depth knowledge of many individual components, all working together in perfect harmony. 

So while browsing through various platforms and job market places to find the right freelancer, don’t just rely on simple vanity metrics like years of experience or even the number of completed projects. Instead, pay close attention to the following core competency markers.

Technical Proficiency

We want someone with good technical SEO abilities, above and beyond the average freelancer’s keyword research ability.

An Expert Freelancer Will Complete Advanced SERP Analysis

• Your potential freelancer must be able to review the Search Engine Results Pages for targeted terms and specifically identify the content gaps, backlinks and intent signals of the competition. This allows him to understand specifically why they ranked where they did and he can then reverse engineer it to rank higher in search engines.

The Long-Tail vs. Head Keyword Balance 

• Most inexperienced ‘seomasters’ spend all their time trying to rank for high volume head keywords (that usually end up being impossible to rank for anyway), whereas someone with long-term SEO experience knows to target long-tail queries that have high conversion rates (specific intents) as opposed to just high volumes of traffic. 

A good freelancer will be able to give you their insight on how to balance having a high amount of visibility online with targeting long-tail, and understand that this is all based around the intent of the searches rather than the volume of searches.

Comprehensive Auditing Skills 

• This candidate needs to be able to audit your existing content, not just create new pages from scratch. They should be able to identify areas of your existing content that could be re-vamped in order to capitalize on missed opportunities through better keyword mapping and/or technical tweaking.

Strategic & Business Acumen

Niche Expertise 

• Avoid partnering with a generalist who lists pet food SEO, for example, right next to SaaS software, find a freelancer that understands your specific industry’s niche as well as the industry specific vocabulary your audience uses.

Beyond Traffic—The ROI Mindset 

• When reviewing a portfolio of work for a potential SEO freelancer, it is pointless to see the total traffic numbers for projects in the past. Instead look at the case studies for that work and see what has happened for relevant keywords and most importantly leads (even sales) for the client. Someone who discusses leads as opposed to traffic clicks is working with the correct ROI mindset for your business.

Communication & Clarity 

• Your freelancer must be able to translate their information to actionable business steps. The freelancer must be able to explain the work being done and the results in easy to understand terms, they should also manage your expectations and help you to grow your business, also explain their strategy in full detail and explain how it can help achieve your business objectives.

How GigMint Simplifies Freelance Hiring 

Finding the right talent on GigMint is so much easier because we operate on The 1% Standard. The vast majority of applicants to join the GigMint community of independent workers fail to pass The 1% Standard’s multi-stage screening process.

When you connect with independent workers through our platform, you really connect with the top 1% of independent workers globally. Most of them specialize in SEO and have developed years of experience with keyword research, leading them to truly successful campaigns always.

When you find your ideal freelance expert on GigMint you continue to work efficiently to reach your goals through our unique, AI-driven Task Pipeline.

A great freelancer is only as good as the brief that they receive. By automatically helping you to structure your project briefs GigMint’s AI-driven tools translate your business objectives into the appropriate SEO work that needs to be completed by the freelancer. 

We also have a complete Trust and Safety system in place to safeguard your finances and protect you from any freelancers who are only out to scam others for their cash. Our funds are held in escrow until the freelancer has finished the work and you are satisfied that you have received value for your money. 

GigMint does not just connect businesses with talented freelancers, we ensure that the relationship between them is professional for life and will assist in maximizing the value of the money you have spent in sourcing them in the first place. We remove the majority of the administration and hence greatly reduce the risk that you would normally have when employing anyone overseas.

Building a Productive Partnership

Building a productive partnership with your SEO freelancer can be a powerful means to turning a single project into a long term traffic generator. Leveraging the GigMint AI Task Pipeline for a number of the AI-driven tools to define the goals of your business, the target audience and the current landscape of your competitors, means you can fire off clear and precise requests to your freelancer rather than a number of open ended questions. This will mean that their initial research is perfectly aligned with your current position in the market and allows for the best possible work to be completed.

While establishing clear KPIs is a must for any work with a freelancer, don’t expect the SEO experts to deliver the same results within the same time frame as other marketing projects. Set up your freelancer to succeed by defining a number of measurable goals, including the target ranking for specific keywords, increased organic CTR, and more in-depth content.

Because you’re working with an SEO freelancer does not mean you can overlook the human element of how the work is going to be delivered and quality controlled. You need to create enough time in your calendar to review the work in terms of how it has been written, checked for spelling and grammar, and generally to ensure that it has the right tone and flow.

Also your collaboration with the freelancer should form the basis of your ongoing SEO strategy,  every piece of information or analysis derived by the freelancer from the data acquired will help develop your SEO. ‘treat your expert like a partner not a vendor’.

Tracking Your Growth 

While your SEO strategy is in place and launched, the real work begins to pay off! By mastering the art of tracking and analysis you can make sure that your SEO investment generates returns quickly and sustainably in the long term.

It is important to monitor a few key performance indicators in core areas: 

your keyword positions, the growth of organic traffic and conversion rates. Important: don’t confuse these with ‘vanity metrics’. You should also be monitoring how many users proceed through your sales funnel and complete desired actions – these are the real measures of your campaign’s success.

As users are actually visiting your website it’s also important to track their engagement, by measuring time spent on individual pages as well as the percentage of users finding what they were looking for on your website. High levels of engagement on your pages is a sign of high value content, thus improving your rankings as search engines recognize this.

The online market is in constant change. As search engines update their algorithms from time to time, you must use your performance data to make changes to your content and the technical measures in place. This way, your SEO strategy is no longer a finished project, but a versatile online asset that can be fine-tuned in order to achieve long-term guarantee of an increase in turnover within your niche.

Elevating Your Content Strategy 

High-quality keyword research is the key to digital success and to long-term organic visibility. When done correctly, it allows you to understand the intention behind any search and therefore to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. A good professional is not an expense but an investment that brings great returns in the long run and that can give a lot of credibility to your brand. 

Don’t spend your time struggling with SEO and with DIY strategies that don’t bring the desired results. Promote your content to the best, start a project on GigMint (https://gigmint.ai/), the platform that connects you in less than 24 hours with a specialist among the top 1% in the world.