Ten years of not compromising: what I actually believe about international SEO consulting

There's a version of this post where I list ten things I learned in ten years. You've read it before, written by someone else, and you didn't finish it.

This isn't that.

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Time is short. At some point in my mid-twenties, that stopped being a philosophical observation and became a practical one. I wanted to build a life I could live on my own terms, decide where my time went, what I worked on, and with whom. Freelancing, at first, was the experiment. Then the maths worked. Then it became the structure that made most sense for how I wanted to work.

I registered a business in March 2016 to invoice €150 for two CV rewrites. Not exactly a founding myth. But it was the beginning of something I've been building, quietly and without apology, ever since.

What followed was two years of evenings and weekends, a growing conviction that this could work, and then, in 2018, the leap. Full-time, independent, and soon after: itinerant. Bologna. Gdańsk. Vilnius. Budapest. The Canary Islands. Strasbourg, eventually, where I've stayed.

Ten years in, I'm still here. Still building. Still finding this work genuinely interesting.

That last sentence is not a throwaway. It's the whole thing.

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What I've accumulated over a decade isn't a methodology you can download or a framework that fits on a slide. It's a set of convictions — about how this work should be done, what it actually requires, and what to ignore. These are the ones I'd stake my reputation on.

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There are no shortcuts. There have never been any shortcuts.

I've watched people sell SEO hacks for as long as I've worked in this industry. The same promises, the same dashboards dressed up as strategy. Some disappear quickly. Others flip their bad reputation into a badge — if everyone hates me, I must be onto something — which is, honestly, one of the least convincing arguments in professional life.

If any of those shortcuts produced real, durable results, we would know by now. We'd have the case studies. We'd see the clients renewing, year after year, because the work held.

Instead, I get the people who come to me after. The ones who spent two years paying four figures a month for a reporting dashboard and five keywords sprinkled across their homepage. The ones who tell me SEO is a scam… and they mean it, because for them, so far, it has been.

Real search strategy means understanding how a market actually searches, how competitors have built their presence, what signals matter in that context, and then doing the unglamorous work of making those things true about your site, consistently, over time. The decisions that shape whether any of that compounds happen long before the first brief lands: platform architecture, content model, how the organisation thinks about search as a function. Get those wrong and no amount of tactical execution rescues it. Get them right and the work builds on itself in ways that are genuinely hard to undo.

That's what a decade of this looks like, from the inside. Slow, deliberate, and durable, or not at all.

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Knowing a market is not the same as speaking its language.

My English is genuinely good. I grew up partly in the UK, lived there. And none of that prepared me for the day I found myself deep in research for a project on toilet-unclogging products in Florida, trying to figure out, with full professional seriousness, whether a chemical solution would cause unnecessary suffering to a snake that had lost its way in someone's pipes. 🐍

My Western European background had not covered this.

The point isn't vocabulary. Every market has a logic: the way its searchers phrase their problems, the competitors who've spent years earning their positions, the cultural register that determines whether your content sounds authoritative or slightly off. The French don't search the way the Belgians do. German-speaking Switzerland operates differently from Germany. Translation is the beginning of a localisation strategy. It is not the strategy.

I've spent a decade doing this work while living in those markets, not just reading about them, living in them. That changes what you notice. It changes what you ask. And it changes what you're willing to sign off on.

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The way I work produces better outcomes for the right partners.

Not because agencies are incapable. Because the incentives are different.

I don't apply the same recipe to everything. My deliverables are shaped by the actual situation, not by what fits a service catalogue. There's no overhead to justify, no pressure to make a project look more complex than it is. What businesses pay for is the thinking, and the relationship.

That relationship is part of the deliverable. I work on long projects with people I need to get along with, which means I have every reason to be honest, specific, and useful rather than impressive.

In an agency, when a project becomes "routine," the senior person moves to a more exciting account and the project gets a newer team. It's nobody's fault. It's just how the model works. Here, there's no version of that. The continuity is the point.

This also extends to the partner agencies I work alongside (white-label, advisory, or otherwise). Expertise isn't tied to a postcode in central Paris. Collaboration doesn't require a shared calendar. What it's tied to is the quality of the thinking, and the willingness to stand behind it.

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What businesses actually need is someone who will tell them when they're wrong.

Not rudely. Not with drama. Early, clearly, and with a reason.

The most useful thing I do isn't the work I produce, it's what I say before I produce it. When the brief is wrong. When the timeline makes the outcome impossible. When the thing being asked for will produce nothing, and here's why, and here's what to do instead. That's not a confrontation. It's the job.

I got this wrong in the early years. I said yes to things I should have pushed back on, delivered work I knew was compromised, and learned that clarity upfront is a service. Teams who understand that: we work well together. Those who want someone more accommodating find them easily enough, and we both end up better off.

Ten years earns you the right to say that plainly.

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Year eleven.

I know what I'm building. I know where this goes. And for the first time in a decade, I'm not hedging about it.

The frameworks I've developed across ten years of real projects — the way I think about market entry, content architecture, the decisions that happen before any tactical work begins — are taking shape as something beyond consulting hours. Not a pivot. An expansion.

For now: the business held. Ten years, without compromise on quality, on craft, on the right to say what I actually think. That's what this kind of work looks like when you mean it.

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If this resonates with how you think about international search, the best place to start is a conversation.

Celebrating 7 Years of Learning and Growing as a Freelance SEO Consultant

What does it take to succeed as a freelance SEO consultant? As I look back on my seven years in the industry, I've realised that it's all about persistence, dedication, and a willingness to learn and grow. This journey as a freelance/consultant/business owner has been an incredible ride, full of challenges, successes, and most importantly, the support of my clients, colleagues and friends.

Although I’m still not exactly sure which job title I should use after all this time, I thought I’d take you on a trip down memory lane and share with you some insights about this journey.

To celebrate this milestone, I took my partner and friends out for a very French evening at a local wine bar. 🍷

Photo credit: Julie Capon

Back in 2016, I started working as a digital marketer for international markets in Paris. I was excited to learn more about the field and make a difference in the industry. The same week I started working there, I got my first client and started freelancing on the side. At the time, I was doing a bit of everything, testing the waters, and working a couple of evenings and weekends here and there.

After two years of hard work, my freelancing business brought me enough income to consider a different lifestyle. This meant that I could work from anywhere in the world, on my own terms, and make a living out of it! So my partner and I left Paris to travel around Europe, and set base in Strasbourg 3 years ago.

The first years were not easy, and this job is still pretty challenging. I can’t say I’m the worst boss I ever had, but I’m certainly not the kindest! As a independent consultant, I had to work hard to establish myself and build a reputation in the industry - as well as learning about the intricaties of admin life. I spent countless hours researching and experimenting with different SEO techniques, watching webinars, reading blog posts or newsletters and traveling to conferences to make sure my clients were getting the best service possible. With persistence and dedication, I slowly began to build a loyal client base, to attract fun projects to work on, and to grow confident in my skills as an SEO consultant.

Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with some amazing clients, from small startups to large corporations, businesses or agencies, and from all over the world. I've helped them improve their website rankings, increase their online visibility, and ultimately, grow their businesses. I've also had the opportunity to collaborate with some incredible colleagues in the industry, who have challenged me to learn and grow as a consultant.

I have always strived to be as transparent as possible with all my clients, setting realistic expectations and creating solid SEO strategies that stand the test of time.

My consulting path even lead me to start sharing my knowledge a couple years ago, whether by teaching classes to students or speaking at conferences.

Of course, there have been challenges along the way as well. The SEO landscape is constantly evolving, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices is a never-ending task. But I've always been passionate about this field, and I've always been willing to put in the work to stay ahead of the curve (hello AI!)

As I celebrate my 7th anniversary as a freelance SEO consultant, I'm proud of what I've accomplished, but I'm also excited about what's yet to come. I'm constantly learning and growing as a consultant.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey, from my clients and colleagues to my partner, friends, and family. I couldn't have done it without your support, and I look forward to many more years of growth and success in this amazing field.

PS: Mom and Dad, I think I turned out to be an actual business owner!

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Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey as a freelance SEO consultant. If you're in need of SEO consulting services or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me through my website or social media channels. Let's work together to take your business to the next level!