What Do You Get When You Hire an SEO and Copywriter?
Is paying a freelancer worth your money?
Freelance SEO and copywriter Kate and her yellow Labrador, Peggy Mitchell
Oh hello. Wondering what you get when you hire a copywriter and SEO expert for your food and drink business (apart from the Fred Perry tops and the cute dog) — and whether it's actually worth the money?
First, a bit about me, because I think it’s relevant: since 2018, as a freelancer, a good number of my clients have kept me on year after year — virtual summer beers, cheery Christmas wishes, the lot. I think that's because I'm a small business owner myself, so I get it. I properly listen to your dreams for your business, your pain points, and the limits you're working within — then I get stuck into your SEO and copywriting to turn your website into a magnet, not an anvil.
In practice, that often means I slot right into your team: getting the bigger picture, taking on auxiliary jobs like loading copy onto your site, and — for one client — being marketing manager as well as SEO and copywriter. Politeness, punctuality and humour are the cherries on top.
What you get for your SEO money
When you hire an SEO professional, you're investing in dedicated expertise to help your website's visibility in search — with the end goal of more organic traffic, better leads, and real revenue growth. Here's what my work here looks like:
Website audits — a deep-dive to catch technical issues, slow load times, mobile problems, and content gaps.
Keyword & audience research — finding the exact phrases your ideal customers search for, and using that to shape your content strategy.
On-page & technical optimisation — tidying up site structure, metadata, and internal links so Google can crawl and understand your pages properly.
Content creation and optimisation — blogs, product pages and landing pages written for humans and search engines alike (this is where my copywriting services really come into their own)
Reporting & analytics — regular reports tying the work back to real business outcomes: calls, form fills, ROI.
Loads of other SEO advice and help — both on and off the page, on your other online accounts and things you can do to create your own luck too (using info you already know like the back of your hand)
Is hiring an SEO expert actually worth it?
I'm glad modest-mouse-me left room for evidence. Have a look for yourself!
Over six months of SEO, once I've been under the bonnet of your business, you'd typically expect growing visibility, early page-one rankings for your key search terms, and a solid uptick in organic traffic — plus real business signals, like enquiries you can trace back to your website. But more than any single milestone, I look for consistent improvement: are the right people finding you, are your keywords climbing, are visitors sticking around and engaging? We track all of it in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and my own reporting.
A few examples:
Client A went from zero website enquiries to her first within a month — and a media enquiry from a national radio station in month two. One keyword jumped 90 places into the top 10 in month one. Her words: "That's some amazing SEO witchcraft you're doing on my website!"
Client B saw FAQ downloads start in month two, and their 'key events' (Google's term for things like form completions and downloads) jumped 725% by month three. Three keywords climbed from the 20s into the top 10, with one jumping from outside the top 100 to position 6. She asked me to start on a second website by month three. Thank you very much!
My own site: when I niched down into food and drink, a few basic H1 and meta title changes took "freelance food copywriter" and "food copywriter Sussex" from unranked to number 1 within a month — both still sitting in the top 3 today.
Results aren't just numbers on a dashboard (although they look pretty when they do well) — they're how your visitors behave, and how your business grows and gets noticed over six months and beyond.
So what's it actually like, working together?
Once we're set up, I look after everything on your site — technical SEO and user experience both — so this means you mustn’t change anything, even something as small as a phone number, without checking with me first. You'll hear from me every month whether you reply or not: a report lands about three days after month-end, showing progress and next steps, plus a 30- or 60-minute call depending on your SEO package.
I'm easy to reach — email, WhatsApp text or voice note (+44 7790 205509), and I'll flag anything urgent if you mark it as such. A bit of notice goes a long way too: send an agenda before a call and I'll come prepared with proper answers, no waffle (unless you sell waffles).
A few other things worth knowing: I don't work Wednesdays (I'm writing a memoir — ask me about it sometime), I reply within 24 hours (usually sooner), I sometimes keep unconventional hours so feel free to reply in your own time, and it's just me on your account — no hand-offs, no juniors.
Thinking of hiring a freelance SEO and copywriter?
Have a look at my ideal food and drink SEO and copywriting client info and see if we'd work well together. Every client's special, but I'd rather grow a relationship than be a silent assassin.
OK, off you pop and have a lovely day.
Eat well and sell better,
Kate