Last Updated on May 12, 2022 by Learn Digital Marketing
Contributed by Shyam Bhardwaj:
My SEO affection is 6 years old. After my engineering graduation program, I wanted to join an MNC software development firm. Still, unfortunately, I couldn’t get an on-campus placement and I had to join Login Radius as an osCommerce Developer. Over there, I created an awesome plugin for providing users with the functionality of social login but what I noticed after building this great plugin is that without bringing users’ attention, your product launch will probably be a failure.
Solution? By that time, Login Radius had no online marketing department. I had no clue about SEO, PPC, Inbound marketing, or PR – But I knew there should be something that can trigger thousands of plugin downloads and its long-lasting integration into running web stores. We didn’t stop and researched, researched a lot. Nevertheless, we got the solution – improving online visibility with content and user experience optimization. I chose this as my profession (over development) and today I run a successful SEO consulting business.
Is an SEO career a good choice?
Rand Fishkin dropped out of his college to join her mother helping her in running a search consulting firm. Later on, they turned into a software firm and today, we all see MOZ as a profitable brand. Now Rand is on his next mission – building a new tool for influencer intelligence.
See Larry Kim’s WordStream – He was an electrical engineer but found his passion in SEO/PPC and today, WordStream is one of the fastest-growing private companies.
Do you know Neil Patel? He is one of the top influencers on the Web and truly an inspiration.
Following the success stories of these big names, if you are thinking of choosing SEO as your career option, you are not going in the wrong direction at all. Infect, SEO/SEM was ranked at the 9th spot in LinkedIn’s top skills ranking data.
Olga Gabdulkhakova reached out to 14 SEO experts to know if SEO is a good career choice for newbies. I remember, she published this round-up post on Link-Assistant Blog and my all-time favorite, Julie Joyce, was on the panel too. According to her, the industry is never boring and there is always something to learn.
Inescapable Skills of an SEO:
1) You should be familiar with the internet and the web – various browsers, HTTP/HTTPS protocols, IP addresses, server connection with the browser, and the data transmission; everything in between. SEOs deal with hosting companies, developers, testers, and clients. You can’t sound crude but someone who understands the web and their business.
2) Analytical Approach – Most SEOs will agree with it that how important is it to analyze bulk data based on filtration, screening it, and finding out pattern-matched results. When you will be the strategist or the lead manager; you’ll have to create the hypothesis working for your business and put a well-directed marketing approach with the required impulsion.
3) Grasp of Web Programming – Your job is to rank websites, drive traffic and make search engines work for your business. With that being said, you are going to work on the website first to make it the powerhouse; a powerhouse for real users and for search engine robots. The top priorities of your job will be to play with the design, code, and displaying content (where does it convert the most?).
A couple of days ago, I was talking with Richard Barker in the context of a rebranding task. I was amazed to see their designers craft great UX considering immense SEO benefits even without the involvement of the SEO team. Richard was able to create an in-house system where his Leeds website designer team understands the SEO logic, marking up structured data, and debugging.
Luckily, you have Design/Development help from the respective teams, but you need to guide them with the SEO perfection and most of the time, with a solid logic (I know the hard times I had in the in-house meetings with the Client and his developers telling them all the ins-and-outs of keeping text above-the-fold). In such cases, you are required to have sound knowledge of JS, JQuery, CSS, and HTML of course.
You know Amazon was leaving so much money on the table due to the slow page speed, but they got the issue and sky-rocketed their conversion with much-improved load time.
4) You Should Know What You’re Doing – Again, with the solid reasoning of your moves. Search engines play too much with their codes and some configurations that worked two years back might not positively impact you today. You’ll often see unexpected search results, rankings flux, and your competitors on top of search rankings using unnatural SEO moves. These situations shouldn’t trigger you to do the same wrong moves. I am talking about all things natural and we wear white hats, so we don’t need to game the system. Our work and search rankings race is not for the short-term. I believe, our Clients have the mission to be in their business for a long long time. Right?
The point is, do you understand search algorithms? Yes? So you’ll have the exact reason behind every SEO step you’re going to recommend and execute!
5) Social Etiquettes and Networking –
Real SEOs know the power of a network. We all need friends who can help us do things fast. But in the case of search optimization, we need to build a relationship with developers, bloggers, and media journalists.
Why? –
It makes it easy for us to get tons of editorial links (Thanks to the long-time blogger friends)
If you are a connection, journalists can ask you for a relevant quote or piece of advice on a specific topic for their upcoming publication.
Connections help to boost your social media activity. Sometimes, the real influential marketing does happen naturally without spending $$$!
6) Ability to Learn, Test, and Grow –
As SEOs – our learning never stops. We have something new to digest every time. Learning, testing, falling, growing up, and learning… that’s the cycle we need to follow and execute. Every Client brings us a new challenge, and we’ll have to accept it for our survival. That’s the fun side I enjoy most as being SEO. I love what I do. Will you?
When I hear something like this what Jason DeMers wrote on Entrepreneur that modern SEO doesn’t require technical expertise, I can’t digest it. I tell them, Hey! Look at this MOZ Post – https://moz.com/blog/the-technical-seo-renaissance Now it’s your turn to digest it. It’s a masterstroke from iPullRank and a goldmine for SEOs. I am sure you’ll learn a lot from here.
Your Turn:
I wouldn’t say that SEO is simple, but it’s a fun thing. It doesn’t require laborious work but the smart moves you’ll have to discover out of your research, competitor audits, and proven theories. Once you enter this industry, you have a number of ways to make money. People made a lot of money through blogging, affiliate marketing, freelancing, eCommerce stores, and online training. What are your thoughts after reading this post? Do let me know in the comment area. A career in SEO can be very challenging and fun as well.
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