SEO Big Leagues

A lot of driven people want to be the best in their field. There are a lot of striving, energetic, and driven talented SEOs out there. However, before you give most of your time and energy, make sure you have the right personality and qualities. Otherwise, you will end up with frustration and little to show for it.

The Right Qualities

Flexible

Can you adapt well? Google is constantly changing how SEO is done. They come out with over 1,000 new algorithms a year. That is a huge amount of change in how the search engine processes websites and online traffic. If you do not like change, then this is likely not for you; but, if you thrive on new challenges and a constantly changing environment, then hang in there and keep reading. Just remember what the rules are, and that today may not be the same as tomorrow. You need to be okay with adapting daily.

Self-driven

You need to seek improvement no matter what level you are. To quote Yoda, “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.” You have to keep pushing yourself to get better or you won’t reach the big leagues. Complacency is never a friend of the self-driven individual. Make a habit to learn new things every day.

Stats

Stats will be one of your best friends. You will run all types of data analysis and need to understand how to read and interpret very complex stats and algorithms. If you hate stats, you may want to consider something else.

Communication

Make sure you know how to clearly and discretely communicate with clients and other employees. SEO and marketing hinges on communication. This is how people find sites, information, services, and products. Make sure you make the effort to communicate cleary.

Study People

Learning how to read people and understanding thought process is critical for SEO. You are using the internet to intercept and move people through cyberspace to find your site or customer’s site. Remember that you are dealing with three groups of people: the ultimate/potential customer, search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, Bing), and the brand or company you are representing.

Niche

Find your strengths and use them. In professional sports, the athletes do not play every position. They have strengths and they use those strengths to help their team and themselves to do well. The same thing lesson can be learned. Know your strengths and use them.

Important Concepts to Remember

Be a Lifelong Learner    

Get on forums, blogs, and teaching conferences and learn from the SEO leaders out there. They will help you master the basics and then help teach you how to expound on those basics. Most of the time you will be part of a team. Learn from your coworkers who may have more experience or are better with certain aspects of SEO. You can always learn something new to help you get better.

Be Prepared for Successes and Failures

Since Google is constantly changing how SEO works, you will have failures sometime. Make sure you do not dwell on it, but learn from it. Just pick yourself up and start over the next day.

Be Well Versed

We talked about earlier to know your strengths and use them. However, there are lots of aspects of SEO, and when you work as a team, there will be days in which you may be doing the “grunt work.” Hang in there and learn what you can from these moments. Learn how to read the data better. Learn how to recognize trends. This will help you when you have new projects.

Integrity

Having integrity is critical in this day and age. There are some who cheat and do not play by the rules, but this will end up to catch them in the future. Search engines are learning more and more how to find bogus links. They will ultimately shut you down if you do this. If you have integrity, it may take awhile, but you will eventually learn and grow and develop in SEO and you will ultimately be successful.