The 85 SEO Win
Sometimes progress doesn’t look like perfection — it looks like an 85 SEO score on your client’s site while your own site’s still under construction. Freelancing means learning to celebrate the small wins, even when the numbers (or your bank account) don’t quite add up yet.
The 85 SEO Win
What’s the old saying? A contractor’s house is always under construction? Or maybe, “Why isn’t the builder’s house ever finished?” — something like that.
Anyway, that’s exactly how I feel right now. My own site’s SEO is trash. It’s bumming me out, but hey — I hit an 85 SEO score on my client’s site, so I can’t be too hard on myself.
There’s so much to learn when you’re freelancing. I get that showing what I’ve learned on my own site is important — it’s basically my portfolio — but dang, it gets frustrating. My site’s built from a template that’s… let’s just say, “aged.” The newer version of that same template performs nearly 20 points better.
I’m proud I have a way to measure my progress, but man, I wish I had someone who really knew their stuff to help guide me through it. The “low-hanging fruit” SEO tasks are handled — meta tags, headers, alt text, etc. — but it’s the moving target of modern indexing, scraping, and whatever else robots care about that keeps shifting.
Every video, every article seems to contradict the last. That’s just SEO, I guess.
Then there’s everything else that comes with freelancing — tracking hours, invoicing, setting prices, defining scope, writing terms. I’m here because I’m great at solving your problems, but I’m struggling because I’m not great at solving mine.
Put me on retainer and I’ll make sure you get more value than you pay for — because if I actually logged my hours, it’d feel like Monopoly money. I know I’m building at a rate where $40–50/hr is fair, but I still hesitate to ask for $25.
AHHHHHHHHH.
Still, the win is that I can measure my growth. The frustration is that I want one of those metrics — the one that matters — to be my bank account.
I’ll figure it out. One day, I’ll look back on this and think, “Shut up, dummy, what were you whining about?”
But for now, I’m doing the extra work.
I’m focusing on the 85.
That’s the win.
🧾 Attribution & Notes
- Author: Sean Sugrue
- Written: October 2025
- Inspiration: Freelance life, growth mindset, SEO frustration, and finding pride in progress
- Tone: Stream-of-consciousness reflection reformatted for readability and flow
- License: © 2025 Sean Sugrue. All rights reserved.
This post is part of an ongoing series about the realities of freelance web development — where growth often hides behind frustration, and progress sometimes looks like an 85.