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Transitioning after 15+ years in seo
I was hit hard during covid, had some clients cancel. I was always so wrapped up in client work towards years 7-10 of running my own shop that I didn’t have time to keep leads flowing in. I let my email marketing slip, I wasn’t networking enough. The market became more saturated in the niche I was in and I wasn’t keeping up.
I’ve been getting my site ranking for local terms again which has been nice. At the moment I’m applying for senior SEO and director roles, you’d think 15 years of servicing clients in an uber competitive niche would at least get me a few interviews but it has been pretty brutal. I did bounce around a bit for my last 3 jobs that I took after covid, my friends keep telling me I need to be doing my own thing but I need to either take a job soon or start generating more revenue.
Have any seo’ers transitioned into a “fractional cmo”?
From my experience, the difference between a successful SEO campaign is who is steering the ship. I worked with a lot of lawyers and it would be the same story. The lawyers themselves are the main point of contact with the vendor/agency, which stunts growth and progress. More difficult to communicate with, don’t always understand the technology aspect, don’t have the in-depth insights after reviewing important data (local rankings, GSC and GA data, etc) to hold the vendors accountable and be involved in high-level strategy decisions.
Also, like every other seasoned SEO, I’ve picked up some AdWords, WordPress, email marketing and other digital chops over the years
Have developed a new fractional digital cmo site and am about to ramp up marketing, reaching out to old clients and doing some outreach to rainmakers in my niche.
I’m just curious, have any other SEO’s attempted to evolve or transition into more consulting work at a higher hourly rate? Any feedback/thoughts?
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1 Reply
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I did exactly what you are thinking of doing.
Ran my own seo agency from 2011-2021 at which point covid completely destroyed my clientele base which was mostly local businesses. Business revenue dropped by 60% almost overnight.
It took me about 6-8 months of job hunting but i was finally able to land a 6 figure seo director position with one of the largest marketing firms in the usa.
The job is fully remote which is nice and also helps pays for my part time law school.
Do i make less money than when i owned my own agency? sure, but having the day end at 5 pm and all the wonderful employment benefits truly is worth it. Not to mention, i don’t have to wear 20 different hats and have to deal with sales, marketing, customer support, vendor relations, etc.
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You honestly might have to much experience for some organizations.
Sometimes when people get high up there recruiters will assume salary ask will be too high.
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As an agency owner I love seeing posts like this! The industry became so saturated. Need some of you guys to drop off ????
I’m just kidding. And what I would say is I endured. We cut back, and we retained a lot of our clients by explaining that by them cutting off their campaigns they were going to provide a gap for their competitors and that now was the time to go even harder with marketing.
Then we offered aggressive marketing packages at a discount.
Yeah we ate it, but now we’re eating,
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I’ve run an SEO agency for 14 years.
Now I’m exposing all the nonsense and trying to make scammy agencies obsolete. I am the ultimate SEO whistleblower. I am revealing every single skill I learned, for free, to the world. I am sharing every “trick” there is (there are no tricks, that’s just shady marketing) for free so people won’t fall for them (except negative SEO, which I don’t teach).
Despite having immense success as one of the few agencies in the world who actually get results (as in, our clients get to and stay at the top of the search engines for years), I’m so repulsed by the industry and the spammy salesman who sell garbage services, rife with scammy 6-12 month contracts while telling their clients “content is king,” and then offering excuses when they don’t rank after 6-12 months (maybe your clients don’t rank because all you did was write content and content doesn’t do anything???), that my goal is to destroy the industry through free education.
So far it’s going very well.
If I can stop people from spending hundreds (thousands!) on garbage courses that don’t teach anything, if I can expose the “SEO gurus” who recycle the same non-advice, then I’ve had a successful career.
And it made me an awesome public speaker (conferences on the West Coast) and I met some amazing people working in an accelerator for a year.
And with a pre-SEO history of being an educator, I’m uniquely qualified to do just this. I fully support you leaving the SEO industry because it’s garbage. I love SEO. I’m one of the best in the world. But I dislike the industry more than most people can imagine. I have had lunch with CEOs of SEO agencies (my competition, lol) who don’t get results but laugh about the fact that they charge high prices. I had the CEO of a competitor walk out of a meeting with me when I asked him how he builds backlinks. Dude literally just stood and walked out. This is why your agency sucks, bro.
SEO is a no barriers to entry field, just like day trading and real estate investing, and actually draws to it the scummiest of the scum on earth, just like all internet marketing. Have you even seen the YouTube video ads? Literally the shadiest business people on the planet.
Scammers.
All of them.
I love making money but I dislike liars more. It was an easy choice.
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I’m a professional resume writer and have written 500+ resumes. I have done resumes for several SEO and marketing professionals who have had their own companies.
Job hunting is absolutely brutal in 2023. I have had clients who have worked at Google, Goldman Sachs, and other top companies struggle to get interviews despite having good resumes. Had one client that was making $400K who was okay with a paycut to $200K. The market isn’t the same. I just spoke with someone who had over 20 patents at a company and who was struggling to get interviews despite having a good resume. The formatting was decent but they had formatting that could make it harder for these systems to parse data. If the data doesn’t parse well, then the systems won’t rank you as high which in turn makes it less likely for you to get interviews.
You basically have to do SEO for resumes. There is something called the ATS (applicant tracking systems). They generally don’t handle formatting well. So no underlines, italics, line dividers, photos, columns, or fancy symbols. Text boxes also cause issues. The only formatting I use on my client resumes is bold.
You want to make sure you look at the positions and incorporate relevant keywords. You want to make sure your lines don’t read like a job description and describe what you do. You need to talk about you did and what impact it had. Did you increase the amount of leads? Traffic? Did you make processes more efficient? Estimate if you don’t have exact numbers. They can’t ever really verify the number BUT people get in trouble when they are asked questions. Don’t make up a number and when they ask a question, you don’t have the story to back it up. If you increased a websites traffic by 1200%, make sure you can outline how you did it. People also generally tend to forget about budgets. I have had clients who mentioned large budgets. Large could mean anything. Just put the number and let them determine if it was large. The only time I would maybe leave out a number is if it were small.
The good thing is that most people get the formatting wrong. So if you have a format that works, you will already be ahead of the curve. It’s easy to tell when someone has even done basic research on a resume. You should also make sure you list the software that you know and any certifications that you have. These are filters that the recruiters may be searching for.
Remember, the recruiter typically hasn’t worked the job they are recruiting for. They go off the job description and what the hiring manager tells them. Often times the hiring managers are busy and give a shitty description to the recruiter. A lot have unrealistic expectations when it comes to hiring or haven’t really thought about what they need.
On top of that, you want to optimize your LinkedIn profile. It’s basically LinkedIn SEO. Optimizing your profile makes you appear in more search results. It makes it easier for recruiters to find you. Think about the top skills you have. What would a recruiter do to find someone like you? The headline is what recruiters preview. Make sure your title is there. Putting industries helps too.
SEO Manager @XYZ company | B2B SaaS | SEM | PPC | 360 Marketing Activations | Ecommerce |
I just made that up. You can put even more. Make sure the keywords include your industry and the relevant terms that you see on job postings that also match your skills. There’s a lot that goes into it but even the basics go a very long way.
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I am basically doing Part-Time CMO/CTO with a few clients over the last few years. I love it. They love it. It was the best move for someone like me with lots of experience in SEO/SEM, IT/Sysadmin, and project management. Having been an actual CMO helps, too.
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Good luck with the Fractional CMO concept
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How much does a senior seo role like you are looking at pay?
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Do you have case studies. The proof is in the pudding as they say. I’ve always felt that the best SEOs end up learning web design, web dev, web mastering, cro, a/b testing, pr, social media, advertising, etc. if you have these experiences, I think that’s a transitional role for a CMO.
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