SEO Career

15 years ago

Good reason: Pays well, way better than average salary people.

Bad reason: More hard works, good reputation to keep, nothing that can qualify you as a good SEO practitioner (except great feedbacks from clients).

There are many that offer SEO certifications but none of them are legit since currently there are no official organization/body that governs SEO.

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itfactory

15 years ago

If you are really serious about SEO then I would strongly following step.

1. Try to archive Ad words professional certification from Google
2. Expert rating Certification (SEO)
3. DO minimum 20 to 40 small projects using rentacoder and elance.

This will bring nice decent feedback, confidence and clients.
Please feel free to advice if you don't agree

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krishananda

15 years ago

Originally Posted by itfactory

If you are really serious about SEO then I would strongly following step.

1. Try to archive Ad words professional certification from Google
2. Expert rating Certification (SEO)
3. DO minimum 20 to 40 small projects using rentacoder and elance.

This will bring nice decent feedback, confidence and clients.
Please feel free to advice if you don't agree

You're right itfactory, with google adwords cert at least you win the heart of clients in need of adwords services.
Having a good reputation at freelance sites can also get you great feedback.

Regarding the SEO certification, better save your money and build your skills first.
Joining forums like this is way better than learning from ebook you'd get in the SEO certification providers.
Then if you feel the need of certs, with real experience you can decide whether the certs qualified or not, i.e. acknowledged by search engines, etc.

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IowaGal

15 years ago

Originally Posted by rosemarschall09

What are some of the good reasons and bad reasons to choose SEO as a Career?

The Good

It pays well. (But this should not be the reason you get into SEO).
It's fun. (If you enjoy a constant change and keeping up with those changes. I used to be addicted to "logic problems" and SEO is a natural extension of that.)
Once you "get it" it's a piece of cake to look at something and instantly know what issues a site is having.
It constantly keeps you on your toes.
You can pick and choose the area of SEO you want to focus on. On-page, link-building, PPC, or all of the above.

The Bad

It takes a lot of time and practice to understand the whole picture.
Many, many clients have completely unrealistic expectations. You have to be able to explain SEO in a way that the average person understands it.
It's extremely competitive.

In response to the PPC Certification, not all SEO's include PPC as part of their SEO strategy. I don't consider SEO to be anything in regards to PPC since they're two different animals.

For me, SEO is getting top positions in organic search results. Believe it or not I've actually been approached by other SEO firms (who didn't know that I specialized in SEO) and "guaranteed" me a top position in Google. When asked how they could "gurantee" such a thing, they essentially told me that I could get a #1 position in Google by using PPC.

To me, that's fraudulent. SEO is an art of gaining top positions without having to pay to be there.

(That rants over).

In regards to SEO "certification"...yet another thing that I don't quite agree with simply because it is so subjective. Any SEO certification course would be written by someone else's idea of how to do SEO effectively. Sure there are certain SEO criteria that are across the board but as krishananda said, there isn't any place that actually governs SEO.

It's not like a math course where 1+1 will always equal 2. In SEO sometimes 1+1 = 5 and at other times it equals 3. There are just so many tiny little factors that go into an overall SEO campaign.

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johnsonkyle25

15 years ago

Originally Posted by IowaGal

The Good[*]It's fun. (If you enjoy a constant change and keeping up with those changes. I used to be addicted to "logic problems" and SEO is a natural extension of that.)

I don't get quite well what you mean by logic problems, is it because you are trying to "beat" the search engines?

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David 15 years ago

Originally Posted by johnsonkyle25

I don't get quite well what you mean by logic problems, is it because you are trying to "beat" the search engines?

I do not think we are trying to beat the search engines.
If you've ever spent time (invested time) reading the many google support groups you'll begin to see that Google WANTS us to do SEO!

Google WANTS us to provide relevant listings.
What Google does NOT want is for some of us to scam the system.

Google provides all the tools you could ever hope to use... for free.
Google pays out (alegedly) 80% of what they take in from adsense to US!

If we're putting money in Google's pocket, Google wants to help us do that.
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IowaGal 15 years ago
Originally Posted by johnsonkyle25

I don't get quite well what you mean by logic problems, is it because you are trying to "beat" the search engines?

- Sorry about that. It was probably a bad example.

What I meant by "logic problems" are those game books that you can buy in the same section of the grocery store or book store next to the crosswords and word find books.

The logic problems would give you something like:
- Harry is married to Jane.
- Jane's older brother is John.
- John lives in Georgia.
How old is Harry?

(That one makes no sense at all I know but just an example).

The reason I relate that to SEO is because it forced me to figure out a problem or an issue that was difficult to see.

In the search engines when a site all of a sudden loses position or another site that doesn't appear to deserve it is sitting in the top position of a search engines, it's my "logic" that kicks in.

I'll start to pick apart the "why's" and connect the dots.

It has never been my intention to "beat" the search engines. I rather prefer to give the search engines what they want; it's worked pretty good for me so far.

Hope that explains everything. Sorry it was so confusing.

- Kristine
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MemberWing

15 years ago

Tip:
Demo results of your SEO work that exceeds expectation.
Google good looking 2-3 words keyphrase for the client and show that your site is high. This will land your cash-rich clients and respect in industry.
Talk is cheap. I found it hard way, until I got my ass above other 50M pages.

Gleb