Starting a SEO career? Build a marketing mindset!

Posted on | July 17, 2013 | No Comments

As outsourcing and off-shoring boosted the IT-enabled Services (ITES) sector in India, web design and development companies benefited from the demand for providing lower-cost SEO services. While this has undoubtedly been great for many Indian companies (including ours) as well as young professionals by opening up new career opportunities, there are some negatives too.

For one, SEO became clubbed as a technical (and sometimes, mechanical) skill. Secondly—and this is in many ways, related to the first reason- it has led to considerable commoditization of the service. Such commoditization will not only hamper the growth of companies providing SEO services but also the career prospects of SEO professionals as they could be hitting the glass ceiling rather quickly.
Based on my several years of experience in the SEO/ digital marketing outsourcing industry, here is some advice I would like to give youngsters aspiring for a SEO career. Many of these attributes will be useful in other career avenues too!

Start thinking like a marketer
It is very easy to get caught up in the list of SEO tools, techniques and processes as you start your career. However, right from the beginning, start to think from a marketer’s perspective. Do everything to understand the medium of search engines, of course, but never lose sight of why you are doing something. If you can train yourself to think ‘what is the best way to help my client or the website I am working on reaching the intended audience’, you would have taken some rapid strides in advancing your career.

Learn to love numbers
The number s don’t just refer to the series of reports that starters are often expected to provide their team leaders or project managers. I am talking about understanding key metrics that are useful to both the client as well as to yourself in evaluating progress and success with specific SEO tactics and strategies! The sooner you learn to interpret numbers the better it will be. As you move up the career ladder, your quantitative and analytical skills will be extremely important. Not everyone is inherently gifted with these skills, but they can certainly be honed.

Stay curious and keep learning
SEO is a highly dynamic space; it is also not a perfect science where a certain input will yield a defined output. While fundamentals remain the same, changes in search engine algorithms keep SEO professionals on their feet. I am not recommending that get into chasing algorithms or listen to every fad that floats ever so frequently, but be deeply aware of what is happening and question the need to adapt to the changing environment with new or improved strategies and tactics.

– By Manoj Aravindakshan
Manoj Aravindakshan is Managing Director of On Target Marketing Solutions, a growing digital marketing company in Mumbai which specializes in providing SEO service for clients in diverse industries across India.

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