Advice to an Aspiring SEO Professional

I recently received these questions regarding SEO job opportunities in the field of search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

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I’m going to assume that when you say “marketing” you are referring specifically to search engine marketing and such.

1) What surprised you the most when you started your career in marketing?

How much money was being made by people who weren’t good at their jobs. I learned quickly that firms, agencies, and individuals aren’t compensated strictly for the quality or results of their work, but that other factors are at work such as salesmanship (presentation skills), personal connections (it’s who you know not what you know), and snake oil (the temptation of clients to go with whoever tells the best story, regardless of whether it’s true).

In other words, doing good marketing on behalf of your clients is not enough. You also have to market yourself well.

2) What has been your most valuable learning resource, aside from trial-and error?

Blogs. The information contained in industry publications is often filtered, cleansed, stripped, reviewed, corrected, and dated. By the time it gets to you it’s no longer relevant. Blogs are the opposite, and I’ve gained insights into my competitors and the industry from them I would never have received through a professional publication.

3) What range of salary should I expect when entering a marketing job right out of school?

$30,000 to $50,000, depending on location, experience, and who’s doing the hiring. Notice I didn’t mention GPA. They might care about that at a large company, but smaller companies care more about experience and proven results.

4) What advice would you give a person who is about to start his/her first marketing job?

If we’re speaking specifically about search engine marketing, the thing to understand is that nobody cares about your schooling, they only care whether you can get the job done. That may seem to contradict #1 above, so let me say it another way. Employers only care about whether they believe you can get the job done, and generally they recognize that your schooling will have done nothing to prepare you for a job doing search engine marketing. However, if you have learned something about SEM in school then you can certainly use that to your advantage.

5) When Google updates its search algorithm, how seriously does that affect your work? Do you optimize for other search engines?

The changing algorithm is not what makes SEO an ongoing type of service. The algorithm doesn’t change that often, and when it does it is interesting and sometimes exciting to try and figure out exactly what has changed, but the day to day challenge of SEO is due to the competitive nature of SEO. Google doesn’t change every day, but the websites you are competing against do.

We focus primarily on Google, but we also look at Yahoo and MSN. There would have to be a special reason for us to optimize a client’s website for any other search engine.

6) Are you ever able to make guarantees for first page search engine placement for certain key-phrases or terms?

No. Anybody who makes guarantees regarding rankings is either ignorant or lying. Even when we are 99% positive we can get somebody a first-page ranking we still don’t guarantee it. We might be able to guarantee somebody certain results and achieve those results, but it won’t happen all the time and when it doesn’t it will become clear we have guaranteed something we didn’t have complete control over.

What we do promise our clients is that we are honest, we work hard, and if it can be done then we can do as good of a job as anybody else out there. Beyond that we communicate quite a bit with our clients and do a lot of research before they sign an agreement so that we can set accurate expectations.

7) I am currently working toward a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication Technology. I have also worked as the marketing director of A-Systems Corporation for almost a year and have spent most of that time learning about and performing SEO. What other qualifications would be necessary for me to be employed at your firm or other similar firms?

In this field your title and schooling will only matter to those who don’t know much about the field themselves, i.e. large corporations with bureaucracies to match. If you want to work at a firm that specializes in SEO/SEM then you’re going to have to show experience and results. If you’ve done SEO/SEM for multiple sites that’s ideal, but even if you’ve only done it for one site that is something if you can show positive results based on your actions, and if you can talk like an expert.

If I were you and I were interviewing for an SEO job, I would print out reports that show where a website was ranking for certain keywords when you started, where it ranks now, be able to explain the specific techniques you used to get those results (and they had better be techniques that aren’t out-dated), and especially show how those rankings translated into increased sales for your employer, because that’s what really matters.

I would also be prepared to explain how you keep up on the ever-changing world of SEO. Which blogs do you read? Which websites do you visit? Have you attended any of the conferences? Do you know who the big players are?

Do you have any other advice that you think I should know that I have not covered in these questions?

The best SEO firms are not looking for established SEO experts who know everything and have done it all. They are looking for fresh minds that have the basic abilities and that are teachable. Somebody who is proud or over-confident is a red flag, at least in my book. If you can show positive past performance then you don’t need to put on an act, you just explain yourself and the record will speak for itself.