Host Mark A Preston sits down with Rise at Seven’s Ryan Darani for an honest conversation about talking money instead of tactics, the loneliness behind the freelance highlight reel, and why the SEOs who last are the ones who think commercially.
In this episode of Unscripted SEO, host Mark A Preston welcomes Ryan Darani, Search Strategy Director at Rise at Seven. Ryan brings a decade-plus in search and a rare origin story — he came up through paid acquisition before moving into organic, then spent three and a half years running his own freelance consultancy across the US, Canada and the UK before returning to agency life. That mix of paid, freelance and agency experience makes for one of the most commercially grounded conversations the show has hosted.
Speak in dollars, not title tags
Ryan’s central argument, and the thread Mark keeps pulling on throughout, is that commercial fluency beats technical vocabulary every time. His paid background taught him to think in dollars in versus dollars out — a habit he says many SEOs never build.
Mark set it up perfectly with a line drawn from years of pitching: “No one ever won a pitch saying you’ve got 2,404 errors on your website.” Clients don’t buy audit tickets. They buy commercial outcomes. Ryan’s one regret from his early career is that he tried to be “the cool SEO in the weeds” rather than leaning into that commercial conversation from the start — because, as he puts it, simple always communicates better with clients.
Fundamentals over shiny objects
Ask Ryan what’s changed in a decade of SEO and he’ll tell you: “everything on the outside but nothing on the inside.” The fundamentals are constant. Do them right, for long enough, and you win. The endless hunt for a silver bullet — a new domain, a duplicate tool, the next tactic — is shiny object syndrome, and it’s a distraction from the work that actually moves the needle.
The freelance reality behind the facade
Some of the most candid moments come when Mark steers the conversation toward the parts of freelancing that never make it onto social media. Ryan is unsparing. Building his business cost him time with his then-fiancée, family, friends, holidays, even Christmases. If he’d filmed the first eighteen months, he says, there’d have been tears, temper tantrums, panic and low sleep. When a client doesn’t pay or decides to quit, it’s your problem — it all stops with you.
His hardest learning curve was delegation, an eighteen-month battle rooted in a “low-ticket mindset” — the fear that paying for help would eat his profit. The unlock was realizing that a little money spent on support freed him to do the high-value work: new business, conferences, webinars. Work on the business, not in it. He credits mentor Craig Campbell as his “voice of reason” through those years, and Mark adds a hard truth the two of them have long agreed on: you can hand people the golden ticket and tell them everything, and most still won’t do the work.
Bad SEO, black hat SEO, and playing with your own cash
Asked to sum up the industry in a phrase, Ryan lands on “delusionally frictional” — a nod to the ego-driven white-hat-versus-everyone divisiveness he sees widened by AI Overviews, SGE and HCU. But his sharpest distinction cuts through the tribalism entirely:
The fix he offers is the episode’s most actionable takeaway: play with your own cash. Launch something — even a candle shop — where the risk lands on your own pockets. Once you think in ROI, profit and resource allocation, 90% of the fluff falls away and you start speaking in cash-in versus cash-out — the same commercial discipline we break down play-by-play in the SEO Tactic Library. It’s also, he argues, what separates operators from technicians: people who’ve never had their own money on the line will spend five grand on an untested play, while someone who’s felt the loss tests first.
Underdogs, enterprises, and investing in yourself
As Search Strategy Director, Ryan is now out of the weeds and building single- and multi-platform strategies. He and Mark dig into what separates underdog brands from enterprises: maturity in market. Underdogs can move fast and eat market share with the right guidance, while big brands move slowly, smothered in red tape and internal budget fights, then reclaim ground with deeper pockets. His advice to anyone who thinks “Google just prioritizes big brands” — that mindset means you’re in the wrong career, because there’s never only one route to market.
For freelancers, he’s equally direct: word of mouth works until it doesn’t, and it dries up fast. He spent close to £50,000 out of pocket on equipment, courses, advertising, flights and conferences to be known — because “if you’re not willing to invest in yourself, why would anybody invest in you?” There are only four ways to win clients, he says: cold outreach, personalized outreach, cold emails, or inbound. Do at least one, and keep going until something sticks.
Money on your own terms
Ultimately, Ryan’s return to agency life at Rise at Seven — where he’s aligned with co-founder Carrie Rose on where the industry is heading — came from a hard-won realization. He chased money as his single purpose, got all of it he needed, and discovered it doesn’t save you. That’s what makes his closing thought land:
It’s a warm, honest, refreshingly commercial conversation — and a reminder that the fundamentals, and the money, always win in the end.
About Ryan Darani
Ryan Darani is Search Strategy Director at Rise at Seven, with more than ten years in SEO across paid, freelance and agency roles. He ran his own consultancy for three and a half years serving clients in the US, Canada and the UK before returning to agency life. He was mentored by Craig Campbell and is a familiar voice in the SEO community.
Where to find Ryan
- Agency: Rise at Seven
- X / Twitter: @searchforryan
- LinkedIn: Ryan Darani
- Watch the full interview: Ryan Darani on Unscripted SEO, hosted by Mark A Preston
Enjoyed this one? Explore more practitioner interviews on Unscripted SEO, and grab the plays behind the conversation in the SEO Arcade Tactic Library.
