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.
