I am Josien, 
Freelance SEO Specialist

I am an all-round freelance SEO specialist for a wide range of clients. I focus on all facets of search engine optimization, including technical SEO, SEO content and link building.

I have been working in SEO since 2012, freelancing since 2017. Through my experience I can often quickly see what has to be done about the SEO of any website.

As your SEO Specialist, I audit your website first. Based on what I find I'll write a report with everything that needs to be done to optimize your online visibility.  Not only do I show you the issues, I will also fix them for you and explain how I do it. Besides that, you will receive a monthly SEO report on the results. 

My work as SEO Specialist is very divers. I have helped career coaches to gear box resellers and gardening tips to NGO's. Every niche brings new questions and perspectives, and where I teach SEO to the company, they teach me about their product and services. Win-win if you ask me! 

What needs to be done differs per client. For some I am only consulting on SEO, for others I implement a whole SEO strategy. It all depends on the problem the client is facing and what the goals of their business website is. SO, depending on the wishes of the customer, I adapt my activities.

SEO is of great value to businesses for a variety of reasons. Many optimization steps are initially carried out to improve organic findability. These often also contribute to the user-friendliness of the website. Think of website speed, accessibility and increasing brand awareness.

Achieving a target ranking position for a relevant keyword ensures a consistent flow of relevant visitors. These visitors are often already far in the customer journey, so the conversion rate is high. When the ranking position is achieved, the company will benefit from this for years to come.

The vision and goal I have for every client is that the result is sustainable. When my job is done, my clients' website will rank higher than before and that will stay that way for years to come. They will be able to keep their organic rank in search engines because I have given them all the tools and knowledge to keep their website fresh, clean and easy to find. Long-term results are the goal. I don't use old-fashioned tricks to score fast, Google is (has become) too smart for that.

Working with a freelance SEO specialist has several advantages. Firstly, as an entrepreneur you are not bound by long-term contracts, projects are agreed for a certain period of time. In addition, everything is measurable. Extra visitors, increased conversion rates, more sales, all this can be monitored excellently with the help of the right tools.. You know exactly what the return on investment is.

Another advantage of outsourcing SEO is that you can be sure that it is well organized and that it complies with the latest developments within the search engine. The world of SEO is complicated if you don't know enough about it, that's important.

Google has drawn up certain guidelines for the ranking of websites in their search engine, if you don't comply with these, you can be 'punished' and lose your place. Unfortunately, Google changes their algorithm A LOT. SEO specialists know all the tricks of the trade and are up to date when it comes down to this ever-changing algorithm. Therefore it's highly recommended to hire an SEO Specialist every once a while.

The last benefit of hiring a freelance SEO specialist is the costs. It would be a shame if you put in a lot of time, money and effort when you don't have enough knowledge about SEO (and the latest updates from Google). Let an expert do it for you. This is cheaper in all cases. On top of that, research of Ahrefs.com revealed that online marketing agencies charge 2x more for their SEO consultancy than freelance SEO specialists!!

Google's algorithm bases the value of a website on more than 200 factors. These 200 factors can be divided into roughly 3 parts: technical, content and authority (also known as On Page, Off Page and Technical SEO). As an SEO specialist I monitor all these factors closely.

In addition, the SEO landscape is constantly changing. Google updates its algorithm more than 500 times a year. This means that factors that are important at the beginning of the year are no longer taken into account at the end.

On-page SEO is a balance between giving the right information to search engines without compromising the information that your customers are reading on the page. You may remember a time about a decade ago when there were pages stuffed with the same phrase again and again. Search engines at the time loved it, but people hated it. Now this technique gets you punished by search engines.

Off-page SEO techniques are anything that’s used outside of your site to improve these ranking signals. The most common is the backlink. In the earliest versions of Google, the theory was that if a page outside of your website linked back to your page, creating a backlink, that was a sign of popularity for the website. The more links that went back to a page, the higher it should be ranked. Furthermore, each backlink could be weighed based on the popularity of the site linking to you.

This is one reason why backlink profiling, guest posting, and other off-page SEO techniques are important. Your SEO company can get rid of poor quality backlinks dragging you down and work on developing better ones. There are more off-page SEO techniques than backlink management, but it’s the easiest to explain.

Technical SEO is about improving the technology behind your website. This ensures a user-friendly and fast website, which is rewarded by Google with a higher ranking.

It is often thought that technical SEO is only improving the loading speed, but also optimising the crawl budget, improving the user experience, preventing duplicate content and indexing problems are also part of technical SEO.

You don't necessary need a freelance technical SEO specialist, you need an SEO Specialist that also knows about the technical aspects. 

Achieving organic success within Google is difficult. In most industries there are many competitors who work structurally on SEO for years. In order to benefit from organic results in the long term, it is important to tackle this part together with an SEO specialist.

Besides the expertise surrounding the organic part of Google, it also provides a lot of security. Google has guidelines that a website must meet. It is possible that a penalty is given to websites that are not set up in accordance with these guidelines.

A real SEO specialist has a curious mind and is a real investigator. Due to the fast changing algorithms and Google guidelines, a SEO specialist has to continuously investigate and research. In this way she/he discovers new possibilities and quickly adapts to changes. This way you can continuously stay ahead of your online competition.

Of course an SEO specialist must have extensive knowledge of the trade. From general online marketing knowledge to extensive SEO knowledge. A specialist knows that it is all about the bigger picture and that SEO is just a small part of the entire organization. An expert will always know what role SEO plays in the online success of your company. This brings me directly to the next characteristic.

Every campaign is different. As an SEO specialist it is extremely important to be transparent in my work. This way my clients can receive feedback, they may acquire new product knowledge and they can adjust their online campaigns. I achieve the best results by working personally and aiming for involvement within the organization.

SEO is all about measurable results, so a good SEO specialist knows how to work with numbers and how to set measurable goals. 

As a specialist I can't get the most out of the campaign if I don't know exactly what products and / or services you offer. An SEO specialist must therefore fully devote himself to the product portfolio, in order to understand the market and the customer in this way.

SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. As a SEO Specialist you need to be patient to see results. The work we do today, will show results in a couple of weeks, not tomorrow.