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Is SEO good career investment for the future?
Hi guys,I would like some honest opinion from SEO professionals. I would like to change my career to be in SEO industry. Is it a good move for a long term career? What are your predictions for it?
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1 Reply
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What is long-term? I don’t think SEO will be anything like it is right now in 20 years.
However, many skills should be transferable.
Is SEO a better career choice than other digital marketing disciplines? Most likely not for everyone; but probably for some. It always depends on one’a skills.
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I moved from a series of dull low paid factory and office jobs back in the late nineties into seo (though by accident and not by choice).
I optimised my first website in October 2001 and haven’t looked back since. I worked as a self employed seo and charged good money, making 3 to 4 times what I’d have made working in someone else’s company.
People have been saying seo is dead or dying for years and I did get concerned around 2014 that may be it was in its final days… Here I am 8 years later still doing tonnes of SEO for clients.
What has gotten harder is the number of people that offer seo for cheap rates and that level of competition has made things slightly tougher to win new clients (so concentrate on winning referrals from existing clients networks).
So yes I’d say its a good career investment, certainly not short though more like a mid term amount.
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no, there is a high churn rate in this industry, people dont feel valued because nobody really understands what they do.
the ceo just knows seo is needed and invests money in it.
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What is your current career, and you want to switch to SEO?
It’s an okay career, but fwiw as an in-house SEO I wish I had gone into PPC because that’s more appreciated than SEO, generally.
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We employ 20 SEO analysts and will have no role change opportunities if overnight, Google really decides link building becomes obsolete.
Chances are reasonably high Google will figure it out -
Tbh, no. Since SEO looks like a cakewalk (adding keywords to meta tags), everyone with little experience watched a few YouTube tutorials and started selling SEO services. Hence, it created mistrust in the SEO industry. Many of my clients had hired someone cheaper with no real-world SEO experience before they reached out to me.
Experienced SEO knows how to deal with complicated issues such as planning a site structure, fixing redirects, 404 pages, broken links, duplicate/identical content, zombie pages, etc.
Clients and employers can’t differentiate between a charlatan and an expert SEO. Most SEOs have difficulty distinguishing themselves from snake oil salespeople, and unfortunately, there are plenty of them in the SEO industry.
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It depends on what you want.
I transitioned from engineering (high paying position) to SEO for more work life balance .
That said, I’d never work at an agency , bc most positions I find are low paying and I hear lots of horror stories of people managing dozens of clients at once.So, I went for in house roles. Currently I work at a big retailer as an in house SEO. It has great work life balance, lots of work but low stress and pays ok.
I decided to explore what’s out there. Within 3 weeks I applied for about 10 jobs , got 2 offers and I’m currently deciding which one should I take. Both are close to a 6 figures salary. Both for in house roles. If I accept any of them, I’ll be making more than If I was an engineer.I have around 6 years of experience – some of them as a solo entrepreneur, optimizing my own websites and monetizing wit Google adsense.
I have no formal training in SEO or marketing.
Why am I saying this? To tell you no, SEO is not dead at all. Idk about the agency life, but for in house, you can find pretty good roles, specially for e-commerce or b2b. Focus on transferrable skills and use your SEO knowledge to influence business decisions , don’t be limited to optimizing on page or link building.
This way you are basically a consultant for your own company, with access to real world data directly from potential customers , at the tip of your finger. This is super valuable.What we do is basically “free” traffic. I know it’s a cliche and not free, but at the end of the day, that’s how businesses will see it.
As for growth prospects, there are a few possibilities , depending on your focus, if it’s UX, digital marketing or product /technical , even BI depending on who you work for.
Tldr: SEO is not dead, if you are in house, focus on using your SEO skills to uncover customer demand and influence business decisions. Ecommerce and b2b are great
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Yes, it was like what type of business you are going to choose whether is product based or service based.
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I am thinking of switching my career to Programmatic Ads operation.
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I would say start with SEO and make your way up to “CMO” or consultant for hire by learning ALL aspects of growth from local seo, ppc, social growth/ads and copy that converts. Then get that sweet retainer money.
Ive been doing SEO forever, my move is owning a fuckload of sites, seo them and grow traffic then passive income or sell em through Flippa/private investor groups.
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If you’ve magically got the skills of four different disciplines (design, development, writing, and data analysis), you’ll still be undervalued. But it’s probably my salty outlook on existence since I’ve become trapped in a niche and have no way out.
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I have been doing SEO for 21 years. I still love it because it is dynamic and always changing. It was a struggle in the beginning because you are bombarded by good and bad information throughout the industry. But you come to a point where you learn from experience what is bad information so called SEO experts or peddling and filter out those people and latch on to those who really know what they are talking about. My advice to you starting out is to document everything you do and what the results are of what you have done. Document your successes and failures. With enough experience you get to a point where you are bulletproof. The work you do will become more surgical and knowing what’s the best bang for the buck. As you start taking on clients make sure you set expectations in the beginning. Don’t over promise and under deliver. The fundamentals of SEO have not changed much. (best practices) you can make really good money if your good at it. This usually takes a good 4 to 5 years of actively working on your skills. But that doesn’t mean you learn everything in that time. Because it is such a dynamic industry your constantly learning new things. You constantly have to stay up to date. Early on you’ll make mistakes it’s part of the learning process hopefully it’s on your website and not somebody else’s. And as I said before document your failures and your successes this will make you a better SEO in the future. But at first it’s not an easy road as long as you stick to it will be successful you’ll learn what not to do and what to do and focus on those things watch plenty of videos and learn from top people in the industry. Sorry for rambling on but I wish you luck.
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SEO knowledge a great skill to have even if you don’t end up in the field. I own a video production company. About 60% percent of our clients come from organic traffic. Never spent a dime on ads.
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It’s baffling how wrong so many people are on this thread. I’ve closed three deals in the last four weeks for web design, content, and SEO. 32k, 39k, and 42k. My agency is just over six years old. We do close to $1,000,000 a year in revenue with one employee, two vendors for content and backlinks, and my co-founder. The SEO business is all about sales. If you can’t sell, you’ll be a scrub in this industry. I encourage all SEO enthusiasts to work in sales for a few years. You don’t buy $40,000 worth of services from somebody you don’t like, and you don’t sign a contract that doesn’t feel legit. If you can’t sell, then you’ll get one or two clients a year from referrals at best. Cold emailing is dying as well, so if you’re scared of cold-calling, you’ll get nowhere.
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Get properly qualified in PR and digital marketing so you can easily transition to CMO or digital marketing manager when link building becomes obsolete.
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