Life of a Search Engine Optimizer

As what most people would expect, we, search engine optimizers or SEO specialists live the same life on the net. You see us searching through the web for hours reading articles, joining all sorts of forums, interacting with other SEOs and even spot us on some social networking sites, but what you don’t see is that these things are a part of our job. It‘s not even half of what we do inside the office!

We may seem so similar with each other, but what really makes a search engine optimizer different from another is through the methods and strategies we use, our years of experience, and our aggressiveness when it comes to pushing our limits. Some find it easy to learn and understand what Search Engine Optimization is, everyone can be a SEO, but not everyone can be a good SEO.

Personally, I learned SEO by force and in a hard way. It was year 2007, I was a fresh grad looking for a job as a programmer. Due to many failed 3-hour programming exams (and one failed web design exam) on several companies, I ended up applying for a SEO specialist position in a small company in Pasig, where they offered me training. I was depressed and really frustrated at that time, so I took the job.

My SEO trainer made me do a lot of stuff on the internet that I never knew, like for example, blogging. Yeah I know, creating blogs is very simple; I was a shy introvert who spent most of her time locked up at home watching TV and playing Ragnarok Online, how am I supposed to know?! I was even embarrassed when my trainer instructed me to create a Gmail account and I didn’t even know where to start.

It was a very rocky road for me becoming a SEO specialist, but the moment I came to realize that this field kinda suits me, I held tight on it and instead of remaining a simple backup link builder for the big shots, I worked my way on top and became a real SEO specialist.

Let me give you an idea of what kind of life a search engine optimizer lives:

The Noob

The newbie search engine optimizer always, with a bit of fear, follows search engine guidelines, read lots of articles and join webmaster forums. It is a must for a newbie to always have his beginner’s manual whether it’s a hard or soft copy, and you may sometimes caught a newbie peeking at his fellow noob’s techniques. A newbie never spam, unless told so or forced to, and always mistakenly use his own personal info instead of using a dummy account.

The Experienced SEO Lad

By this time, this search engine optimizer has already realized that it’s much safer for him to use a dummy account. An experienced SEO has his own set of techniques and strategies, still read lots of articles, experiments on his new found skill, and definitely have his own blog. On-page optimization may still be at a learning curve, but improving, or rather, must improve.

The Somewhat Arrogant SEO

Now, this type of search engine optimizer is easy to spot. What matters is that if the arrogant SEO can prove his skills or not. The arrogant yet not so great SEO is more of a chatterbox than showing his skills, mostly caught by unprofessional writing of proposals and website analysis; or worse, can’t even write a decent proposal; and often caught by his superiors copy-pasting previous reports. On the other hand, the arrogant but skillful SEO may boast a few times but can actually deliver the goods.

The Half-Empty and Half-Full SEO

By now you are wondering, what I am taking about half-empty and half-full, I’ll explain it to you.

• There are search engine optimizers that do very well in link building, but slowly lacking on-page optimization skills;
• There are some who specializes in gathering fresh info on how to get more links, rather than how to do them;
• There are those who are more technical than others who handles on-page optimization the best, but slow on filling his quota of building links;
• and don’t forget, there are those that can part great knowledge, give excellent advice, suggest the best ideas or recommend the perfect plan, but still a junior or newbie optimizer working their way on top.

Beyond the learned skills and developed strategies, a search engine optimizer still continues to learn new ways on how to improve a website’s rank. It’s a continues learning process that gets heavy with responsibilities depending on how gradual or drastic are the changes on the web. So don’t be upset when we sometimes can’t make it to your birthday party or wedding, because the continuance of our search for knowledge is already a part of our lives the moment we became real SEOs.