You might be willing to start a career as a freelance SEO consultant or looking for a job in SEO industry or wish to start your own SEO agency or want to work on your personal / company website.
If you are confused that weather you should join SEO as a career or not, this article is for you.
SEO is a great choice to go for as a career. No matter, which country you belong to. SEO can give you freedom as well as wings. You may fly wherever you want. I am going to give you a perfect picture of my ten years of experience in SEO industry.
Don’t take me wrong here that I am going to scare you, but I am just going to tell the truth. You should know about the hard parts very well which you are going to work on daily basis, so it’s easy to decide either SEO is your thing or not.
1. Demand for SEO
You must be very well aware of the SEO worth or the SEO industry market value.
Keep in mind that search is growing. Yes, you need to understand that the google search users are growing every year.
Checkout the pandemic in 2020, it has changed our mindsets. Online shopping, online learning, online meetings, etc. have become more understandable than ever. This is very easy to understand now that search world is the future for businesses.
Many entrepreneurs who never took digital world seriously, started to acknowledge it.
SEO Industry reached $ 43.3 billion in 2019 and expected to reach $ 77.6 billion in 2023. Wow, big numbers.
2. Freedom & Wings
All you need is a laptop and a good internet connection & your office is open.
It could be your couch or some beautiful beach, it could be a railway station or an airport lounge. Choice is yours, whatever you like & wherever you like.
I have seen many people working online for different companies worldwide all you have to do is to generate results. Here is a secret, I am one of them (I guess, it’s not secret anymore). This is the excellent part of SEO for me & I love it.
3. Be a Super Star
When your client is happy and calls you with a sense of gratitude, this call or email makes you a star. It happened to me many times. Let me share couple of stories.
Once one of my clients called me and said “I was about to close my company because I was not having business anymore and then you came along and everything changed. I am really grateful as my company is running today, just because of you and my business is growing”.
Another client called me to a party which was for his company staff. He honored me with some special gifts and announced that “this guy is bringing more business to my company than whole of my sales staff together”.
Feels like a super star. Yes it is. I personally love the warm feelings that I get from my clients.
4. Learning Curve
Let’s talk about hard parts.
This could be the most difficult part for many people. In case you are new to SEO, keep in mind that you need to learn, learn and learn lots of things. These include different type of software, technical terms & their understanding etc.
If I am going to divide SEO essentials then these are more than 50 different sections that you need to master. Major ones are
- Basic things like Google Analytics, Google Console, etc
- Technical SEO Audit
- Keyword Research
- Keyword Mapping
- Competitor Analysis with different tools
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
I just mentioned the major headings of different sections. If I need to talk in details than a complete book can be written only on off-page SEO, as this is a huge topic itself.
5. Human Behaviors
Guess what? When I said you need to learn, I am not only talking about the learning of SEO tools & techniques only.
SEO tools, techniques and reporting are the essentials for every SEO specialist.
The real learning curve is with human behaviors.
Some people think that SEO is about search engines but here they are mistaken.
It’s all about human behaviors.
The purpose is not only to bring your website on 1st position in search engines but our goal is to bring relevant traffic on the website. We only need the people who are really looking for our content.
Human behaviors change along the time. Sometimes it’s a seasonal change. People look for specific things in summer and completely different things in winter.
We also see different shifting of needs like when COVID started. Everyone started looking for GYM exercises at home instead of looking for GYM,
Government policies change and so the people trends change. We need to keep an eye on these continuous changes which impact searches a lot.
6. Project Industry
Now that you have understood SEO and spent a good amount of time in learning.
Here comes the next challenge.
You got a new client who is dealing in cupcakes business or shipment industry or hotel industry and you do not know anything about that industry.
I guess you have figured out that now we need to first spend little time to understand that particular industry.
I was in Malaysia and I got to meet a new client, which was exciting. She told me that she is in NIRVANA industry.
I heard this word first time in my life. She explained me basics of this but now I needed to study that industry in particular. It’s important because I need to learn technical things in that industry.
This is quite normal, you need to spend at least couple of weeks to understand that particular industry then only you may do a good job as a SEO specialist.
Unless you decide to work on a niche industry, which is a good choice as well.
7. Multi-tasking – Need to know everything
You need to know how to fix website technical errors, as well as how to make changes in the content. If you cannot manage all things by your own, you will be handicapped in SEO.
In SEO world, you are on your own. You need to learn to switch among different sections of SEO as well as different projects.
This is really a big thing, while you are working on multiple projects. In first couple of hours you did keyword research on a project and in next hour you need to work on backlinks for another project.
Sometimes it becomes really frustrated. I have found this very difficult for people who are not having a multi-tasking mindset.
This is good if you have this quality otherwise you need to work on this.
8. Analytical Mind – What? When? Why?
Well the right words could be here that “Experience Matters”.
SEO is not a one plus one is equal to two thing. There are a lot of matters involved in every project.
You must have a “www” mind. When I said “www”, I did not mean “World Wide Web” but I literally mean what? When? And why?
You have to figure out things by your own and need to question yourself for everything like why this happened. When this happened and what is going on.
Yes, get used with these questions.
9. Patience with Reports
These are two different things. Let me explain.
Before I was a web developer, which I guess still I am but I push myself more towards SEO.
Back to the story, while any developer is working on a project, he/she can see the progress immediately. I created a website header and I see instantly that how does it looks, right.
But in SEO, you are working, working and working but result is going to test your patience.
Don’t get scared but it’s a fact that sometimes we need to wait for weeks, months or even years to see what we are looking for.
Now second part here is which is reporting. Reporting sounds nice but I hate them in times as we need to create a lot of reports.
Although these reports are good to analyze project performance and for customer satisfaction. But I prefer the results over reports, as in my experience, results stand out much better then lengthy reports.
10. Specialization
As I have spoken that you have to do everything most of the time, it’s a fact but not a good choice.
Once you have practiced all essential parts of SEO then that’s the time to move on. You can become a specialized SEO consultant in Ecommerce SEO or local SEO or content SEO, etc.
This can give you great opportunities along with the sense to focus on something special.
Summary
SEO as a career is an awesome job.
All you need to do is learn and this learning process is not going to end at all. We need to learn SEO, our clients’ business industry and behavior of clients in that industry.
SEO experts need to figure out many of the things by their own.
You need to master multi-tasking and the most important you need to bear patience.