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Introducing Nick Jordan
In this months SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Nick Jordan. Nick, is the CEO and co-founder of Workello and Content Distribution. He’s also been in freelance consulting roles and is actively working on building out his (and his teams) social media presence. In this podcast we talk about tactics and approaches he’s taken to drive over 1 million impressions on LinkedIn.
How to connect with Nick Jordan online
Contentdistribution.com + Workello
This Months Sponsor: Sitebulb.com
I am thanksful to all my sponsors. They allow me to spend time coordinating and recording these podcasts with my guests. It’s especially fun to work with companies that I’m already a big fan of, in this case Site Bulb.
Sitebulb.com is one of my top SEO tools when it comes to auditing my clients websites. Not only do you get the traditional findings of running a crawl but Sitebulb does a great job of explaining the risk/reward behind each recommendation.
Want to try Sitebulb? Get your 14-day free trial today.
If you are a freelancer interested in joining me on a future episode of The SEO Freelancer podcast Please email me directly at nick@nickleroy.com
Podcast Transcription
Nick LeRoy
welcome to the SEO Freelancer podcast. I'm your host, Nick LeRoy. And today I am talking with Nick Jordan, who is going to give us a background on his SEO career freelancing experiences that he's had, as well as how he's driven over a million impressions on LinkedIn.
Before we jump into this month's episode, I want to thank our sponsor site, Sitebulb. So Sitebulb is a tool that I personally use for a lot of my clients and my auditing initiatives. It's a tool that I actually consider an SEO tax that I'm willing to pay and happily pay every single year, the Sitebulb team has made it incredibly easy to use this tool, not only just to crawl the site itself, but making sure that you understand why the things that are being called out as an issue are actually an issue. So it doesn't matter if you're running a crawl on a 10 page site. Or if you're in the progress of migrating million pages over to a new domain site, Sitebulb has got your back.
So if you haven't already, go ahead and go to site sitebulb.com. And download the tool, you get a 14 day free trial, and put Sitebulb to the test. It's a tool that I rely on regularly. And I think you will too. Just give it a shot. It's sitebulb.com.
Thanks again, Sitebulb for sponsoring this episode. And let's jump into this month's episode with Nick Jordan.
Nick Jordan
Hey, Nick, super excited to be here and share. You know, what I've learned growing. My career is is SEO consultant. And I'm really hoping your audience can walk away with some actionable tactical things I can start implementing tomorrow.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, I think this is going to be a very exciting conversation here. Jumping straight in there. For those that aren't familiar with you. Can you give us a little bit of an introduction? Yeah. What's your name? Who you are? What are you up to these days?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, for sure. My name is Nick Jordan, I started an SEO agency called content distribution.com. But in the beginning was just me. Three, four years later, I've launched a couple of SEO products workout.com and cluster AI, I grew my agency from one to 45 writers and editors, we published more than 10,000 pages. And we took a project from zero to 1.5 million organics a month, enabling them to raise at a $210 million valuation. But I didn't, I didn't end up there, I was asked to consult just by myself, you know, in the beginning.
Nick LeRoy
And that's why I was so excited to have you on the show, it just kind of shows that, you know, freelancing can potentially be a starting point, and bringing it to where you are today. And it can be a career all on its own. And as some people know, it can also be, you know, just an additional opportunity on top of the nine to five. So I think with that, Nick, I'd love to hear from you. Like, where did you start with your SEO career? Like, you know, can you just go a little bit of a background?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, you know, I would say it's it's a non traditional career, but maybe it's not so much. So actually had a whole career outside of SEO, I got into SEO, only about five or six years ago. Before that I was a I was a sales guy. And I'm from Seattle. If you look me up on social, whether it's LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook, Nick from Seattle, is is my handle.
Nick LeRoy
Hopefully you don't move anytime soon, right?
Nick Jordan
The AI to AI future proofed it. So I could be Nick from Seattle and Europe. I could be Nick from Seattle, in Asia, from Seattle and Miami.
Nick LeRoy
I like it. So walk us through what was the first job that you got that was relevant to SEO, I know you had said you kind of started in a sales position, which I suspect gave you quite a benefit to be able to quote unquote, sell yourself and your SEO services, but walk us through a little bit. What that was like, Yeah, that's
Nick Jordan
a that's very true. So being from Seattle, it doesn't matter what you do, you'll end up in tech. And so that's what happened to me is I spent 15 years or 10 years, something like that building. You know, building early stage SaaS companies, sometimes for myself, sometimes for other people. And I joined this organization, we grew to 200 employees and for years bootstrapped. And I worked at incredible scale with companies like Rackspace and GoDaddy. And I looked at my skill set, and I realized I had built an enterprise business development skill set. And as someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, I realized, well, it's not a great skill set to have because I can't build enterprise anything, can't build an enterprise product can't build enterprise support team can build an enterprise legal team. And so I was like, Man, I Gotta learn this marketing stuff, it's gonna better service me and kind of the goals and aspirations, I have to travel the world. I'm currently in Europe, where I've been living for the last couple years. And as a sales guy, you gotta live on timezone, your value stops when you, you know, hang up the phone and log off for the day. So I was like, I gotta learn marketing. And it's going to be SEO. And I, I quit my super cushy, high status tech job making 100,000 a year to slang a local SEO services for a local SEO agency that my buddy was running for a bit of a wage, because I knew that in order to sell SEO, it's a consultative sale, you have to know what you're talking about, in order to know what you're talking about, I had to learn it. So I was like, I'm gonna sell it. But that's going to drive the learning. And that's under what ultimately what ended up happening.
Nick LeRoy
That's crazy. So was it literally just kind of like overnight, like you put in your notice making this cushy as you had said, $100,000 salary, and now you're, you know, bucks an hour or whatever it happens to be. Was it literally that that much of
Nick Jordan
it? So I ended up burning out after four years. And so I spent six months laying on a beach. And then I went into the SEO agency talking to my buddy, I was like, I was like, Man, I'm like four months in I'm pretty bored at this point. I like I need to do something like I think it's going to be SEO like let's do it.
Nick LeRoy
Well, yeah, no, that's, that's pretty cool. I've always had a lot of respect for people that have SEO as kind of a second career. You know, Marie Haynes is one individual that I always talk to you and she was a vet in a previous life and then switched? Wow,
Nick Jordan
I had no idea. Yeah.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, it's really cool. Whereas like myself, you know, I had graduated from college and kind of fell into an SEO role. You know, and this was, before SEO had even been defined, you know, shoot, it's almost 15 years ago at this point. But it's just exciting to hear what everybody's stories are.
Nick Jordan
You know, it wasn't from a lack of trying actually tried to get into SEO a couple times earlier in my career, and I just never saw enough results to stick with it. And it didn't really click until the third time that I tried to get into it, which is when I was working for an SEO agency, and it was so much easier, you know, being able to ask my co workers, hey, how does this all work? Instead of trying to figure it out by myself?
Nick LeRoy
Definitely. So you, you quit this cushy job again, as you had said, you got a minimum wage paying local SEO, there's obviously a gap here. And we'll talk a bit more about the freelancing work that you had done. But can you walk us through a little bit more what what's kind of the in between, you know, from now running your own company to you know, the guy who kind of walks in and says, I'm gonna be an SEO today?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, so let's go problem. Let's go from making minimum wage selling SEO to kind of my SEO freelancing career. So I like I, in order to like, learn stuff, you have to do it, you can't just read about it. And so, you know, when I looked at the projects the agency was working on they're all pretty, you know, I would say, boring or unambitious. But they're all local service businesses with $1,000 a month budgets, and I just wasn't, I just wasn't interested in any of the things that they were doing. And so I was like, I'm gonna take control the blog, the agency blog, and I'm gonna grow that. And that's how I'm gonna learn SEO. And I ended up growing it to 100,000 Organics a month from about 100 pages of content. Some of the keywords that we rank for were pretty funny. We outranked Instagram for Instagram support, that article received 10s of 1000s of visitors a month. We did the same with Shopify, except we were right under Shopify, for Shopify support. Didn't make any money from it, but kind of informed, like my philosophy and approach to SEO today.
Nick LeRoy
Actually rank and drive traffic.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, yeah. And then we our agency wanted to get into E commerce. And so I was in charge of starting a small drop shipping website. So we could kind of learn how Shopify SEO works. And it worked again, and I was like, Hey, I think I kind of know this stuff. And for various reasons, I had outgrown the agency. All leave it their way out of my way out, I was like, alright, well, if I'm going to quit this agency, and like six months, I better like like, I'm just going to start my own publishing site. And so I started this website called doggy pedia. And then that hit 100,000, organic Summon, and all the kinds of success that I saw. I want I came in and I accomplished my goal or an SEO. But then too, I was pretty sure that once I left the company, I would still know SEO, and I'd be able to kind of figure out any new challenges that came. And so I left.
Nick LeRoy
I love it. I think that's amazing. I think too many of us we get stuck Back in what's considered comfortable, or you know, when you're not getting stretched anymore, it becomes a perceived Easy Paycheck. So for you to recognize that and say, Hey, I'm learning things I've shown success, I'm going to take it to the next level is huge.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, you know, the reason I was so comfortable kind of stepping down from this, like, my last job sent me to Europe four times in a year, and like selling the flower shops. The reason I was so comfortable with that is because the way that I approach every opportunity that I take is, you know, whether I get Richard not I'm gonna meet the people and learn the skills to do something even higher impact next. And so when I quit that high status tech job, I was looking at the five year plan, sure, next year, and not the next three years, but where am I going to be in next five years? And so it was very, it was a very easy decision for me to make.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, and I think just looking at a five year, career trajectory is hard. I mean, there's so many opportunities, especially like you said, when you take and I don't want to say this, like directly, but from a salary perspective, you take the step back, but you obviously taking the step back with the idea of the six steps moving forward. Which Yeah, very exciting, but still difficult. Yeah, you know,
Nick Jordan
what's the five year plans kind of similar to SEO, like, seeds, you gotta, you gotta, you know, water them. And then hopefully, in five years, you don't get crushed by Google update. And
Nick LeRoy
there's nothing more disheartening than that. But maybe we can jump into a little bit. So like you said, there's still that little bit of in but in between, you know, before you had launched, the current company that you have, you know, where you were doing more consulting. But one thing that I really enjoyed, that you had kind of positioned to me was how you were able to build, you know, a six figure revenue stream, without having a website or a team to support you. Do you want to walk the walk?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, definitely. So I think in the first I don't know, is, I think it's the first year Southern 100, I generated about $114,000, before we had a website. So when I did a couple of things, when I was leaving this, this agency that I was working at that I recommend your listeners also consider. So I was like, Well, you know, this whole marketing thing, the beauty of it is that it's one to many, the sales thing I'm good at, it's one to one, I got to jump in there and have the same conversation again, and again, again, but this marketing thing is one of many. So what I started doing is I started building my brand before I left. And what that means is I went into Facebook groups like SEO signals lab and, and all the big ones. And I just started being helpful to everyone that was asking questions. And I did that same strategy on LinkedIn, I would both post content, and then I would spend a lot of time giving away as much value as I could on the newsfeed. And ultimately, I can attribute every dollar of revenue I've ever generated from consulting to building my brand on social.
Nick LeRoy
That's amazing. And I've said this before, plenty of times on the podcast and most people that are familiar with me are aware of my newsletter, the SEO for launch, and, you know, kind of a different approach, but very similar to yours. It's like I was building that, that personal awareness, that brand, and trying to give back, you know, I'd written that newsletter for like, three or four years before I had even dared, like, take an advertiser or ask somebody you know, fortunately, for me, it was kind of my insurance policy for, you know, when I would eventually be let go from my job. But then I turn around and literally say, Okay, guys, I've been doing this for three, four years, I and maybe need a little bit of help. Hopefully, you don't all hate me too much. And you'd be surprised. Yeah, how many people are willing to give back so I absolutely adore the fact that, you know, you were investing in your brand. And, you know, and just being visible online, I think it gives you that second career in this instance, someone's like that third opportunity, once you are done kind of with your agency experience.
Nick Jordan
It's It's pretty incredible. The leverage that you get from building a brand on social, like I said, you know, even after I launched the website, and even today, three or four years later, all my revenue still comes from social. Well, it originates on social and then I have this funnel that I'm gonna explain to you. That's pretty simple, but pretty effective. That turns all of those eyeballs into consulting dollars.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, we're definitely gonna go into that more detail as we kind of kicked off. Yeah, Nick has generated over a million impressions, you know, through his content, and as he had mentioned before, it's generated a ton of money from it, too. So it's not just eyeballs for eyeballs sake. But before we jump into that, I definitely want to just testify that LinkedIn definitely works. It's one of those things that was kind of like everybody else. I was a little bit nervous to get out there. You Oh, that's the I'm using the air quotes now, your professional environment a little bit different than Twitter or Facebook, you know, not only are your co workers going to look at it, but you know, random CMOS or presidents, you think there has to be kind of a different voice and tone in, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say in my experience, that's necessarily the case, you know, being direct thinking outside of the box, is what gets people a lot of attention. And as I've doubled down in the last couple years on LinkedIn, I've gotten quite a few of my biggest leads directly from people reaching out and saying, Hey, I saw you know, your opinion on this. And I actually agree with this. I want to hear a little bit more, it's a topic that we are addressing in house. Yeah, so it's definitely a platform that I think, you know, I don't want to say it's underrated, but maybe underutilized by a lot of professionals.
Nick Jordan
Absolutely, yeah. You know, sales guys get LinkedIn recruiters get like dead, but a lot of other people don't get it is so much. And it's, you know, all the revenues attributable to LinkedIn, and Facebook, so you can't you can't sleep on it.
Nick LeRoy
Absolutely. Well, I think a lot of us and almost reasonably, so I think you become more active on LinkedIn, when the idea of a job change might be imminent, whether it be or not, so you start becoming, but then you jump off, or some people
Nick Jordan
you know, and to be fair, like working in public is very unnatural, and it creates a lot of anxiety for me. So it's not free money. You need to work hard on building the community, and then you're gonna pay the data price and anxiety. But some people like me, and maybe you think it's a good trade off?
Nick LeRoy
Absolutely. You know, one of the scariest things that I had done that has probably paid the most dividends, is I wrote a blog post, and then threw it all over social that was literally titled, from being fired, to making like, 160k in eight months. And it went out on that, like, it's not that nobody hasn't been fired before, or that we haven't had bad experiences at work that is not abnormal. But the world kind of makes it taboo to talk about it. So if you are willing to confront it, you know, it's being in that awkward position where you're gonna say, Hey, I went through this. Yeah, it was scary. But I was fortunately able to turn it around and make it a really good opportunity. And here are some things you can take away from it, like people are going to eat that up all day. It's just, it's amazing the amount of support, and that in my opinion, and Nick, maybe you will contradict this or agree when you give us some of your tips. But being authentic, versus just trying to tell people what they think they already want to hear, for me has been one of the most critical components to finding success on social media as a whole.
Nick Jordan
You know, it's, you're right, it's very hard to be vulnerable on social and publicly. You know, like, it's, it's very tough. And I found that the only I can be vulnerable, but only after like, I take the L and then I bought the way back up. While I've taken the L I can't talk about it.
Nick LeRoy
Nobody and I want you to I mean, I kind of do the same thing. I'll take mini ELLs, you know, lowercase ELLs, you know, like this, and it failed, and that's okay. But yeah, I was definitely not like, Hey, I got cam today. You know, for me, it was only after being out on my own and realizing that it was indeed going to be successful. Yeah, I was my cell phone for a double L
Nick Jordan
for free. For real. So step step one is is take the outs, but step two is get the W and then and then show it out. And then come back. Yep. Yeah,
Nick LeRoy
I think we've been dragging this on a little bit, people are going to be really interested. So you've driven over a million views. I think you had 21 point million specifically on LinkedIn this year. Can you walk us a million this year? Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. Can you walk us through what your strategy is, you know, were you setting out to get this large number and kind of backed into it? Or is this just more of a? What happens because you followed some of your best practices that you'll share with us?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, I think, well, I mean, I definitely set out to get big numbers. Like when I started, I wasn't hoping to like hit 100,000 impressions or get a couple of likes. I was like, I want to, I want to I want to be one of the top gurus. You know, my mom wasn't super pumped when I told her I'm gonna be an SEO guru. But I was like, listen, Mom, I'm going for number one, and she's like, okay, sweetie, as long as you're having fun. Exactly.
Nick LeRoy
Do you need help with rent this month, though?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, so. So basically the strategy is you think of LinkedIn as a funnel, or basically a traffic acquisition source, maybe like the Google search results. You know what, how most people browse LinkedIn is they just sit on their newsfeed and they just scroll, and they comment and engage, and they look for things that are interesting. And so there's two things that need to happen. The first is, you need to create content, not only on your, your statuses, which is super important, but in the beginning, especially when you're fresh, the way that you're going to get attention is by being helpful on other people with a lot of visibility. So in the beginning, do like 10 times more commenting than you're doing posting. Today, now that I have the audience, I can get away with just posting and not doing a lot of engagement. But in the beginning, you just you got to put in the work you got and it has to be helpful, too. Or else it's not going to work. Now,
Nick LeRoy
what's interesting, I'll just say there to disagree, Nick is, I find that when you do that the the engagement, you find that you build all pods of I don't want to call them fans. But you probably see this too. It's like you post something. And it's that small group that you have commented on, they end up being the first ones to either like or comment on yours as well. It's like almost this reciprocal relationship.
Nick Jordan
That's exactly right. You just described how the LinkedIn algorithm works. LinkedIn gives you what you give it. And so the more time that you spend engaging on your feed, the more visibility LinkedIn is going to give to you. Because the you know, they're going to show your content to the people who liked your last content, and comment on your last content. And so if you can put the engagement in and people respond to you, your content will begin appearing in their feed, and they know how the game works. And so they're like, Hey, this guy boosted my posts with a comment, I'm gonna throw him a comment, kind of keep the relationship going. And you're right. And I, you know, I have, like, a lot of my like, I'd say, best friends and marketing are like people that I just like, started commenting on randomly on LinkedIn. And we're still talking, you know, four years later.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah. And it's amazing. I mean, I know, that's kind of how you and I had gotten connected. It was, Oh, hey, Nick, being Victorian, you I have written something that was interesting starts with a like, you know, then you like something that's like, Oh, I'm gonna throw in my two cents, then I was commenting on my stuff. And now it's like, as soon as something goes up, it's almost like an automatic, like, not only thing, but you're trying to give that extra visibility, because you know, there's going to be a benefit for them. And it's going to come back, you know, full force.
Nick Jordan
You know, I always say the nicest thing you can do to support your entrepreneurial, you know, entrepreneurial friends, it's just, you know, you don't have to buy their services, but we'll settle for a like, or a comment. Give us a little boost. newsfeed.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, one thing someone had told me the other day that I actually found very intriguing, and it's flattering to is this gentleman named Dave. He is in another group with me, he does a lot of schema markup on the SEO side. And we met for a call and he was super nice. And he already did is like he wrote a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. And it basically just said, you know, Hey, Nick took the time to jump on with me, we had a really good conversation. He's a good guy. And what was interesting, and I only found this out the other day, when I was talking to him is he does that with like individuals that he basically is targeting to build a relationship with. Because not everybody uses the recommendation function there. And so when you receive one, you have to actively read it and choose whether you're going to publish it to your profile or not. So it's just an opportunity. Now, granted, you have to be legit, like don't try to pitch somebody or services in a recommendation. But for somebody to say, you know, Nick Jordan, I really appreciate that you took the time to, you know, call me and you gave me recommendations that were valuable. Like, who doesn't want to be able to promote that on their own thing. And now you remember me as an individual who has applauded you for being awesome.
Nick Jordan
I think, you know, I think it all goes back to the, you know, one of the best ways to grow your career is just give to other people. And if you give enough, eventually you'll, you're the 1% who give back will change your life, because it's like a Gary Vee quote or something. So okay, so there's a second part to this. All right. So you're creating content on your posts. You're, you know, you're posting content, you're also engaging and commenting on other people's comments. But the very next step is you need to actually like, you know, you don't stop there. So if you go to my LinkedIn profile, it's linkedin.com/in/nick. from Seattle, or if you just search Nick from Seattle or Nick Jordan, you'll find me. You'll see that my headline is zero to 1.5 million organics a month, in 24 months, and then flash and then my company name workout. And what this does is first of all, I'm getting all this visibility. LinkedIn putting me everywhere I'm appearing on everyone's newsfeed, whether it's a post or a comment. But then they like see, like the craziest number, maybe one of the craziest numbers I've ever seen in SEO. You know, not everyone is friends with the SEO director at NerdWallet. So, zero to 1.5 million or gigs a month is great for most people. And they're like, What hack, and then they'll click my profile. Great, I treat my profile like a landing page. If you look at my like my headline image, it's like a big fat graph of zero to 1.5 million. And then it says, like, no backlinks, no technical BS, like this great content. And then, and then I use the LinkedIn feature like the featured media, and it's like, Hey, here's the case study on zero to 1.5 million. And then when they go to the My, like company, the, you know, my work experience on my profile, I also attach media there. And so everywhere that they're looking on my profile, I'm like, Hey, go to my website and check out this case study. And so then they click through, and then they what we call it indoctrination content. And the reason we call it that is because by the end, by the time someone's done reading it, they're like, this is the only way to approach SEO, this is the only guy I can hire to do it. And so it's 5000 words. And it's very tactical, it's very actionable. It's, it's, I give away 99% of the stuff. And throughout the content, I have email captures, and I have links. And I have my YouTube channel. And so people originate on Facebook, or they originate on LinkedIn, or Twitter, but then they get to the website, they indoctrinate themselves, and then they end up following me on every platform that I'm on. And so it doesn't matter if the algorithm on LinkedIn doesn't show them my content today, because Facebook will show it to them today, or YouTube will show it to them today. And I'm kind of I'm all of a sudden, I'm on the president.
Nick LeRoy
I like everything that you had said, and especially the idea of capturing that audience across multiple, you know, owned in all kinds of column rented spaces, you know, LinkedIn, with you, as we saw with Facebook, it's like your organic reach is like nothing these days. So it really, but, you know, being able to capture people on YouTube and LinkedIn and Twitter and you know, I love email, too. I mean, now it's easier to get somebody's social security number that is their email. So anytime you could do that, you know, that's a great opportunity. So I think that's absolutely fantastic. And that simply to your point, having a captivating headline, getting people to click into your profile, and then feeding them what they already want, because they're intrigued by that headline.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, yeah. And then pushing them to all your other channels. So you can't lose them if one of the platforms goes
Nick LeRoy
haywire. Yeah, no, and that's fantastic. I've had to a little bit lesser extent, I recently in the last six months had added like kohner of Seo jobs.com. And when I see people publishing, help wanted ads, or new job descriptions on LinkedIn, a lot of times, I'll go in there and ask them, you know, hey, do you want like a free listing, you know, or an ad for that, check it out on my LinkedIn or like go through, and they may take me up on the free one that time, but then they'll come back and do a paid spot the next time. So it's a really good opportunity to help, while also secretly kind of being promotional. Because anytime they take me up on the free one, I'll go back to that conversation and be like, Oh, hey, and here it is in the comments. So cool.
Nick Jordan
I like it. It's a long term game, you know, like, I've had people that have viewed my content for years before finally booking a call with me. And by the time they get to that call, they're like, so warmed up, and they feel like they know me. And they feel like they can trust me, because I didn't just have one successful project. I've had a bunch over these four years. And so they've kind of seen me grow and progress and never kind of stop all and, and leave the industry. And so by the time they reach out, there's so much trust. I remember when I first started consulting, the one of the first deals I close, he wired me $5,000, within 24 hours of DMing, and Facebook, and I had no idea who he was. But he knew he had been following me for like a year and a half at that point. And so it didn't seem quick to him. But it seemed very clicked to me.
Nick LeRoy
And that's the best way. And I think this kind of goes back to what you were saying about building that personal brand and visibility. Because you know, especially with your sales background, this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier, when you are starting a conversation from scratch. It's difficult, like nobody really wants to be sold to ever. So if you can go in and it's more I don't want to call like buddy, buddy, but it's like you've already just kind of broken down that barrier. And it's more like Hey Nick, just talk to me like what is indeed the issue that you have, what are you trying to solve? And then you can come to brainstorm collectively on like what the solution is. And naturally, if your solution happens to match the services that you offer, like you said, people are ready, then you're not hard selling them.
Nick Jordan
Absolutely. And when you're creating content, people get to know your approach to SEO. And so when he jumped on the phone, it's a lot more. All right, well, what are you working on then? Alright, well, let me start, like from when, you know, Google and Stanford's like dormitory kind of history of like, here's how I got to where I'm at. People just, they know how you work. And they just want to know how you can apply for their project. And that saves you a lot of time. And it increases your close rate and, you know, increases the deal sizes that you get access to.
Nick LeRoy
Without a doubt, I can tell normally, within five minutes of conversation with somebody who's interested in my services, you know, whether it's going to workout or not. And mostly it starts with either I was referred to you by x, or I saw your newsletter, which I know that you're going to be good. Like, if it's a good fit, we very likely we're gonna close us, versus if I get the Okay, now, tell me a little bit about yourself and your services. It's like, you know, you're starting from absolute scratch.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you're right, the conversations where people haven't read my case study on zero to 1.5 million always go way worse. Because like, I do have to spend all this time just like, explaining why everything that they know about SEO is probably wrong. And why am I like,
Nick LeRoy
exactly without telling them directly? That it's wrong?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, there's just so much to say it's, it's helpful if they already know most of it by the time they show up.
Nick LeRoy
Right. So like, I have a bunch of LinkedIn questions to get your opinions. But I don't want to interject. Do you have additional tips outside of that? Or can I go straight into my questions?
Nick Jordan
No, I think I think I'd say the last tip I have is that as a freelancer, you know, unless you're like Kevin and Digg, or Steve Tov, and you're just coming off a really hot grand on a really hot campaign, chances are, you're starting at the bottom, you get access to the worst opportunities, the worst clients, the worst budgets. And a lot of people get stuck there. You know, I know some people who started SEO the same time as me who are still servicing, you know, those $1,000 A month flower shops. And I think that the reason that I'm not is because I had a very purposeful approach to my career as an SEO consultant. And essentially, you know, going back to that thing that I said earlier, every project that every opportunity I take on needs to, if it doesn't make me rich, and it can't retire me, then it needs to, you know, enable me to learn the skills and meet the people to do something even higher impact max. And that's, you know, how you should treat project work till, you know, in the beginning, you need to take on whatever projects you can get, because you need to pay the bills, but if, you know, your capacity is limited, and if you're filled with unambitious projects, you're really not going to get the case studies that you need to move up market. And what I found is that it's very hard to build a living on $1,000 A month projects, people can do it, I can't, I just I can't even have significant operational excellence. And as a new SEO consultant, you probably don't have any operational excellence,
Nick LeRoy
right. And you're trying to set proper expectations. So it's not about crushing and driving the 150,000 visits per month, it's about almost trying to set the almost the opposite, it's like at $1,000, this is fake engagement. Therefore, you should only expect 100 visits or whatever the equivalent is. So it's like you're not delivering quality results per se, but trying to match the expectations to the budget.
Nick Jordan
The thing is, yeah, you have to match the expectations to the budget. But the thing is, is, you know, SEO, the case study takes a year at about and so as the year goes by, and you don't have this case study that can take you to the next level, like you didn't really make any momentum in your career. And so, you know, take on the project for the short term cash flow, because you need money to pay the bills, but then stop before you're tapped out. So you have capacity to take on more ambitious projects, you have to earn the right to move up market by succeeding at the projects you have access to at your current level. And so like, whatever it takes, you need to get the graph that's gonna allow you to get $2,500 a month, $5,000 a month, $15,000 a month clients. And it's gonna take a couple years to be able to get that kind of pricing power is assuming you're consistently moving up market.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, and without a doubt, it's absolutely every single time a situation where the rich get richer. You start with your success at that $1,000 rate turns into 2000 and then before you know it, you're closing your pitches. strictly because they'll say, oh, who else? Have you worked? And if and if you were gonna sit there and say, Oh, it's Shopify and Adidas and Nike, but not like, they don't even need to see your, your graphs, you know, they, you know, Norwich, those type of things, but it's definitely one of those situations before. And, you know, I can attest to exactly what you had said, you know, I came from agency world where as a director role, my rates were north of 350 $400 an hour. And when I went out on my own, you know, I had some personal branding, but I was unwilling to use previous agency experience and results to sell myself. So I had to start, I literally took the $1,000 And it's like, oh, okay, look, but I built this. And then it was, yeah, I did that. And then yeah, it's like, before you know, it, I was so excited, like, chasing the logos was super exciting for me, because it's like, all you need is to be able to get one good brand that you can do some really good stuff with. And your opportunities explode at that point.
Nick Jordan
It's so funny. Well, it's so I don't know if it's fight. Well, it's funny to me, but probably not to a lot of people. But it's so funny that the better at SEO you get the easier projects you get to work on, you know, like, I feel is way easier with massive budgets on super high authority projects. That's they hire the best SEOs. So
Nick LeRoy
I tell people all the time that I have so much respect for individuals that do SEO or small businesses, because they are probably better at that than I am with these largest because to your point, went from zero to 100,000 visits is infinitely harder than going from a million visits to 5 million visits.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, yeah. It's just you just have less budget. Like, there's just there's less stuff to work with. And
Nick LeRoy
exactly what do you mean, you don't have a content team of 30 people to write today?
Nick Jordan
Exactly.
Nick LeRoy
So Nick, let me run a couple LinkedIn specific questions. These are things that I tend to believe, but I can't say that I have anything to validate. These are best practices, specifically when it comes to posting. So I'm going to split fire a couple of tactics, and you tell me kind of thumbs up or thumbs down on whether it's good for the algorithm, okay.
Nick Jordan
Okay. By the way, I want to throw, throw this out there. I got a million visitors this year. But last year, at the end of the last year, I started making my executive team build their social profiles to and one of them got a million visitors this year using the everything that we talked about on this call.
Nick LeRoy
But that's even better. That's like, again, in my agency experience there was there's always fun to get those wins. But there's nothing more exciting than somebody that you're coaching to learn and watching them win. Because that's how you can continue to scale outside of just your name or your success.
Nick Jordan
That's exactly right. I want to I don't want to be the only Rainmaker in the organization.
Nick LeRoy
Exactly. Alright, so going back to these hard hitting questions that because I guess I'm curious, what's your thought on linking outside of LinkedIn, in your blog posts, or sorry, in your LinkedIn posts,
Nick Jordan
never do it LinkedIn or Crusher reach LinkedIn is goal is to show you more LinkedIn ads. And LinkedIn can't do that. You click my link to my website. So don't ever post an external link.
Nick LeRoy
If I wear my tinfoil hat and think I'm circumventing the the system and say, click in the comments to see Link, do you think that circumvents it, or?
Nick Jordan
I think I think it used to, and I don't think it does it anymore. I think it doesn't last but if I was going to drop a link, here's what I do. If I was going to drop a link, I want the post to get a lot of engagement first, because then it kind of has some momentum before you know before the link stops. So get the momentum, get the comments and then maybe go back and update the post, add the link and then let everybody know you also added the link.
Nick LeRoy
And you so you just stole my next question. If you publish something and you start seeing traction or don't, how often do you want to go back and edit it like is editing it and potentially even modify how it views before you hit the the ellipsis to drop down?
Nick Jordan
So I think I'm concerned about trends and how the content is performing in general and less about any given post and so, like, I will very rarely ever go back and edit just because, you know, I posted 365 Day days or the last 365 So like any given post isn't so important to my kind of presence.
Nick LeRoy
Right? I actually really liked that one because admittedly I sometimes can get caught up on the because I think for people like us that have read quite a few posts. You have a pretty good idea of what's going to show and then the what will display after somebody can click the ellipsis but every once awhile you hit publish and you're like oh shoot my first tip you know is showing above the fold. Which isn't necessary.
Nick Jordan
If I mess up the ellipses thing where like I like reveal, like the the hook, like instead of making them click the ellipses said I'll go back and delete it and like, but I know that will from what I understand if you added up how shortly after posting it, LinkedIn about Facebook actually reduce the reach of that. So I would just go ahead and delete it and then repost it. So that's
Nick LeRoy
a good tip right there. Because I admittedly have been doing editing. So I think I will try outright deleting and reposting and those ones
Nick Jordan
that it's fuzzy for me, I'm not like 100%. But that's kind of just what I've seen with Yeah.
Nick LeRoy
And admittedly, like I said, these are just the hard hitting questions that I personally have for you. And we're not going to hold you accountable. But it's here other people, especially like I said, you and I see each other's materials on LinkedIn. So we obviously know what's going on and what works. But it's fun to people, you know how you think about this? So I'm not going to I'll do maybe one or two more of these questions, but what's your thoughts on attaching an image? And does size matter? And does that have an impact on reach?
Nick Jordan
Yeah, I think it goes down to a user engagement metric. So if the media can drive better, you know, click throughs comments, likes, shares, lepsy clicks, then it's good. You know, I think like didn't Well, occasionally, when they want to push a certain feature, they're also give those features more reach. So there's a period of time, I don't know, six months, where LinkedIn was like, we need more polls. And so anytime you made a poll, it didn't just give you so much more reach than any other post type. And I get like, 20,000 impressions. And then the next day with my regular posts, I get like, 5000.
Nick LeRoy
Right. No, and that makes sense, too. And I think that does kind of show that you've got to continue to be aware of what all the features are what's kind of working, you know, even you know, when I see something in my feed that's got, you know, 100 comments or 100 likes, I'm immediately kind of reverse engineering at trying to understand what are they writing about? And is it the content or is that the interactions? Yeah. Okay, two last questions, and then we'll, we'll move on to some of your recommendations for the listeners. Okay, here's one I've always been curious about. If you're having a post that is having success? Well, I'll use the word viral loosely. Do you think there's negative comments? Or is there any negative to posting a new post while that one is like going viral?
Nick Jordan
So I think that there's like, frequency Kathy camp post 20 times a day, like, eventually there's diminishing returns. My co founder, Boyd, who is the one who got the million impressions, he actually beat me this year. He experimented with three posts per day for about a month, maybe two months, maybe three months, just recently, and it really drove up his his reach initially. But then it fell off a cliff. So he went back down to one a day.
Nick LeRoy
Wow, I love that. I think, again, you're beating a dead horse at this point. But it's like, just continue to watch and monitor your statistics.
Nick Jordan
Last, exactly what it is.
Nick LeRoy
So last question for you. When you do get responses or questions, obviously, when somebody is asking you a question, it makes sense to respond to them. That's just, you know, being nice. And that's part of social. But when people sit there go like, Oh, great tip, Nick, do you think benefit to you responding to that, you know, oh, hey, thanks for thanking me for my tip, you know, as in the frequency of interaction on it. I don't want to play like super detailed, but I'm just again, curious, your thoughts?
Nick Jordan
No, I love it. So you know, my headline is there to 1.5 million organics a month. My goal is to LinkedIn marketer is to get that headline as many places on the feed as possible. And so I like at this point three years in, not all my comments are super helpful anymore. Because I can kind of write on my brand. And so a lot of my comments are just like emojis like three rocket ships or like a heart or like, I'll do huge with a bunch of caps. Because I'm excited about everything. Just to get like, again the headline on people's newsfeeds so they click through the profile and kind of kick off this funnel. So I think it's, I would definitely recommend at the minimum just replying with like a heart.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, I like that. Don't overthink it.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, I want to I want to touch base on a couple different things are a couple of thoughts I have on the algorithm before we move on, so one of them is, you know, earlier I said LinkedIn gives you what you give it. The more engagement you give your newsfeed the more engagement you'll get back. What I've seen is that you can take a break for about a month before your engagement starts to dip. So you know I spent a bunch of time and effort building building momentum. I went on PTO, and I scheduled a bunch of posts using cobbler and those dripped out and they continue to crash. But eventually I hit a point where I could, I can see the amount of reach that I'm getting declining, declining and declining, it's actually the lowest it's been in a couple of years, just because I stopped putting in the effort into the newsfeed and engaging with other people's content.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, that's a good reminder, again, I've even seen it, you know, you go out for a week or two, and it's like, all of a sudden, you're gone. So it's a reminder to always be there, always kind of keep feeding that fire.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, the last thing is, there's actually there's two more things. So the first is, you know, I don't do any outbound sales. You know, when I connect with someone, I don't, I don't pitch them. But I do have a CrunchBase subscription. And I'm constantly basically adding founders of VC backed companies who just raise money in the last X days, that's my target audience, if you should do it, the same for your target audience, find a lead source and just connect with those people maybe use LinkedIn itself, and you just connect with other people commenting on the same status as you're commenting on. But, you know, continue to not only should you be engaging, but you should be expanding your network to. But as you're expanding, you're not pitching because cold pitching is one of the easiest ways for someone to never look at your content again. It's really, you know, it's really just like SEO, your SEO career is a long term game. So you know, the person you connect with today, they're gonna give you money three years from now, that's like, that's fine.
Nick LeRoy
It is fine. I agree with you, the long game is where the money is.
Nick Jordan
Alright, last thing is, you know, going back to the type of content that's engaging, it's always, you know, the most interesting b2b content has a strong opinion, I come from personal experience. And so, in order to create effective content, you kind of have to have effective accomplishments, or at least share the journey on your way to accumulating these effective accomplishments. If you're out there on LinkedIn, posting that and voice search is going to be relevant and 2023 are that, you know, the difference between SEO and PPC and just basically common knowledge about the industry that people have already said, you know, you're not going to no one's gonna engage with your content. So, so you have to have some sort of empathy for who your reader is.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, I think I think that's huge, you know, I do try and encourage people to just start by posting, because I think there's a hurdle simply to get into the habit of posting. So I do encourage a little bit of the elementary stuff, because it's not always brand new to everybody. But to your point, if it's gonna be a tactic that you want to rely on for quite a bit of time, if not forever, you got to get deeper. And I think that goes to just be in the vulnerable, whether it's me getting fired to you making, you know, 100,000 sessions, in a month, like, you gotta you gotta go there. Absolutely. So it's so starting to wrap up here, neck, one thing that I love to ask all my guests, I just recommendations that you have for anybody who, who is an aspiring freelancer, or may want to do things that we're talking about today. You know, this could even be with the LinkedIn tactics, but do you have like courses or tools, or anything in particular that you would recommend? Um,
Nick Jordan
you know, just follow up people in the space that are crushing it, Steve talk is crushing it, Kevin, and DAG, Eli Schwartz, boy in Mark, my business partner, I have good content. And he just kind of just fill your feed with people that you want to emulate. And eventually the robot fine. Yeah.
Nick LeRoy
Yeah, no. And that's so true. I think any opportunity you have just to talk to people, you know, I've interviewed Steve, you know, I've talked to Kevin, quite a bit, Eli, I've mentioned many times, giving away a couple signed copies of his books on my newsletter right now. You know, and building those type of engagements are huge. And those are the type of people that will come full circle and, you know, help you with leads or referrals, or, you know, we all regularly like and comment on each other's comments to which you know, yeah, just really helps. Yeah, nice. Well, Nick, I really appreciate your time. I think LinkedIn, as we talked about is really underutilized in all these tips. And, you know, kind of quick answers you provide are super helpful for people that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to contact you? And I'll make sure to include all of this in the transcript in the post too.
Nick Jordan
Yeah, great. So if you're on Facebook, or like Dan or YouTube, sorry, Facebook like did Nick from Seattle YouTube content distribution. My startup workout.com helps you hire writers and on my website, content distribution.com. For a lot of minutes, too many resources. I gotta consolidate We have all sorts of like tactical actionable guides on how to do crazy fat graphs. We give it all away. So hopefully the links will be in the description because I'm confused myself.
Nick LeRoy
No prob like it's not this will absolutely be in there. And neck. Like I said, Thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to the next episode of the SEO freelancer.
Nick Jordan
Had a great time. Thank you so much.
Nick Jordan: How I drove 1M+ impressions on LinkedIn