Areej AbuAli: My First Month As A Full-time Freelance SEO!

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Introducing Areej AbuAli

In this month’s SEO Freelancer podcast, Nick LeRoy talks with Areej AbuAli. Areej recently went out on her own starting her freelancing business Crawlina in January of 2023. Areej shares her adventure both agency and in-house side and how becoming a new parent played a role in her decision to go freelance full-time.

How to connect with Areej online

Women in Tech SEO: womenintechseo.com/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/areejabuali/

Twitter: twitter.com/areej_abuali

This Months Sponsor: BrightLocal.com

BrightLocal is the all-in-one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search.

Its focus on local SEO gives you what other SEO platforms can't: local ranking tracking, local citation monitoring, Google Business Profile auditing, local competitor insights, and review monitoring - it’s all here.

BrightLocal offers review generation campaigns, a low-cost local citation-building service, and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping-hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up.

The best part? It's super-affordable, with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white-label option to keep your reports professional and on-brand.

Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer and receive $75 in Citation Builder credits immediately. 

Don't miss this opportunity to level up your local SEO. Head to brightlocal.com/SEOfreelancer now.

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'm very excited to have our guests Areej AbuAli, who very recently went out on her own and today we're going to be talking about her freelance journey, her career to date, and also what made her take the leap. Real quick before we get into this month's interview with Areej, let's go over this month's sponsor bright local. Bright local is the all in one local SEO platform designed to drive traffic and leads from local search. Its focus on local SEO gives you what other platforms can local rank tracking local citation monitoring Google Business Profile adding local competitor insights and review monitoring. It's all here. Bright local offers review generation campaigns a low cost local citation building service and even helps you convert your site visitors into piping hot leads. Perfect for any freelancers looking to scale up. You know what the best part. It's super affordable with agency plans starting at just $49 per month and a white label option to keep your reports professional and on brand. Our listeners can take advantage of an exclusive offer. Sign up at Bright local.com/seo freelancer and receive $75 and citation builder credits immediately. Don't miss out on this opportunity to level up your local SEO, head to bright local.com/seo. Freelancer today. Thanks again to our sponsor bright local, and let's jump into this month's interview. So Rich, thank you so much for joining us today.

Areej AbuAli 

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Nick.

Nick LeRoy 

I guess I'm super excited. You have known a Areej for several years. She's probably one of those Pinnacle y'all. And I'm using air quotes here, your online friends. You know, we've been able to work in a couple instances professionally, but it's always fun to see her in the industry. And as many of you may know, you know, she's spoken at conferences publishes quite a bit, you know, organizes women and tech SEO, which we'll get into all of that so much. But again, Areej thank you for your time today. This is gonna be a great opportunity.

Areej AbuAli 

Yeah, awesome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Nick LeRoy 

Absolutely. So, uh, Areej. Let's jump in. You know, I'm kind of talking already, like, Absolutely. Everybody here knows who you are. And they probably already do. But do you mind giving us a quick recap? Yeah, who is Areej? What are you up to? How's life going?

Areej AbuAli 

Yeah, I think it's going quite well. I mean, this is my first official month of freelancing, which is very, very exciting. I've been doing SEO for the past decade. I initially started out agency side, I did that for a little over five years. And then I moved in house where I worked on aggregator sites, property market, and then I moved over to ecommerce. And then yeah, last year, I was on maternity leave. And I was like, You know what, that's it, I really want to do my own thing. And other than, you know, my day to day SEO, my big, big passion project is women in tech, SEO. I created that a little over three years ago. And we do all sorts of initiatives. So that's something that I enjoy working on tons.

Nick LeRoy 

I love it. And we're gonna definitely go into all of that separately. So all of it is just very exciting. But if you don't mind, can you give us just a little bit of history? I know you said already some of the in house, you know, agency side, but walk us through your first like, SEO job, like how did you get into SEO? And if you feel comfortable with it, like are you willing to share a lot of us laugh at what we were making for our first job? And compared to what we're able to, you know, find success with today?

Areej AbuAli 

Yeah, I'd be happy to I mean, I, I moved to the UK Exactly. 10 years ago, actually, this month is my 10 year anniversary. I know it's really exciting. And I did a master's degree in business it my background was computer engineering. And then somehow I kind of, you know, stumbled across this world of SEO through like, internships that I was doing while I was doing my master's degree. And the very first role I got was purely because I'm fluent in Arabic. And so it wasn't a SEO agency that were that had just won an Arabic client. And so they needed someone who was fluent in Arabic to work with that client. So it was actually a content marketing executive role. But then, after the first month, they switched me over to the technical SEO team right away. And my first salary was 20,500 pounds a year. Yeah, I think that was back in 2014.

Nick LeRoy 

Yeah. And people have now heard many, many times. But you know, when you take at least at the time that comparison you and I'd be making very similar Yeah, I was, I think it was $34,000 USD. Yeah. So we would have been very close by it was back in 2009. But again, this is one of my most favorite part is, you know, when we've all put the time into this industry, it's fun to look back and laugh at it. Back then I'll speak for myself only, you're just excited that you have a job and an opportunity. Yeah, so let's talk about your choice of going out on your own. I know you had already kind of told the CEO, you were pregnant with your child, you were kind of looking for other opportunities. But I'd love to better understand considering you've been in the industry, and you've kind of checked everything out the box, the in house, the agency, you've spoken at events, you've been published all the above. So why freelance like what made you say, this? Is it? I'm gonna do it?

Areej AbuAli 

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I've been overthinking it for a while, maybe a little bit in the last two or three years. The last full time role I had was pretty much perfect. Like I love the company I worked with, it was an in house ecommerce role, I was setting the tech team, I loved the team, we were getting a lot of stuff done. And I think it's what you said, like I felt like I checked most of the boxes there where I knew I would probably not be able to go out and find the role that was going to be as good as that one. But then like something still felt missing. I think a big part of it is because of all the work I do for women in tech SEO, being part of a full time nine to five job made it very, very difficult for me to work on some of these other projects, except during my evenings and weekends. And I really, really needed the flexibility of just owning my own schedule and being able to go like, No, you know what, today's Monday, but that's fine. I'm going to spend all of it on WTS, for example, and then tomorrow, I can pick up client work. So I feel like that was probably the piece of the puzzle that was missing. And then yeah, the other point was, I also really wanted flexibility, like around you know, now having a family and so forth and not being kind of, you know, I think a lot of things came out of the pandemic in terms of commuting, and, you know, the the luxury of working from home and so forth. And I just felt like it did, it didn't matter how good of a full time role you had, you probably were never going to be able to have as much flexibility.

Nick LeRoy 

Absolutely. I mean, I'm nodding my head at everything that she said, you know, a lot of people are familiar with my, my story. And unfortunately, I was let go of my gig during the pandemic, and