The Smartest Tips for Starting a New Career in SEO

by John Alexander

Are you thinking about starting up a new business in search engine marketing?

With recent economic trends, there are a lot of businesses that really do need help with legitimate relevancy building SEO strategies. Search engine marketing skills are the order of the day.

When I first started with my own studies of SEO or search engine optimization back in the 90s, the big search engines at the time were Webcrawler, Infoseek (an optimizers dream) and Lycos, then came Altavista, Magellan and Excite, Inktomi, Hotbot. And do you remember Northern Light? These were all around before Google which was launched. But back in the early days, even the acronym of "SEO" had not been really formed. I think most people referred to early search engine optimization as "Web Positioning."

So fast forward to today.

One of the great things that has occurred with the search engine industry is the great opportunity for people who have always wanted a business all their own. A business that you can literally operate from any city or town or location of choice. With people fine tuning their SEO skills they can also choose from different types of work, based on their own niches or choices.

I am sharing just a few tips for starting a new SEO career today, for those of you interested in starting a successful search engine marketing business and want a few of the smartest tips for starting your own SEO business.

Tips for Starting a New Career in SEO

One of the things to keep in mind is how you can become uniquely different than the competition. Everyone talks about setting themselves apart, but have you really refined the vision for your new SEO business. Assuming you are serving a client base offering SEO services to others, how will you be different than everyone else? The best formula to use is creative thinking and brainstorming with someone as a brainstorming partner. You need someone you can trust and someone who is good at brainstorming. As you fashion certain ideas, you want to allow yourself the liberty to believe that literally, anything is possible. Dream big, for your new business.

Keep your SEO skills fresh and continually growing

Regardless of where we are in our knowledge and skills - we must continually stay fresh and growing. As you have already probably surmised, it's competitive out there. So the first step is to get comfortable with your own SEO skills and get yourself up to speed with all the latest. This is probably the first and single most important step in building your brand new SEO business. You need to start by at least gaining a true comfort level with your own skills and understanding. Maybe you already have that comfort level, but maybe you feel like you would like some personalized help to catch up. Whatever your situation, take the step you need to get solid understanding and balance before you get involved with demanding clients. You need to have the peace of mind knowing how you can make each of your new client's profitable with the minimum of stress.

If we stay teachable - we stay growing!

Keep your skills Fresh (and growing)

One excellent bit of advice is to spend some time working on your own Web sites right after you train so you can quickly build that confidence you need. Working on your own Web site gives you the complete liberty to create exactly what you want, without interference. You can do the job the way you know it should be done and you could do some affiliate marketing to make a little income too, while you practice and fine tune what you've learned. Once you have that SEO comfort level, then you can consider taking on new clients.
I said earlier, that creative thinking is great for the purpose of brainstorming. But next to that comes the element of implementation. Creativity is great but it must go hand in hand with the activity which is essential to see your business become a reality. Attitude and positive thinking are very great to keep motivation up but unless activity is going on you cannot succeed. Creative thinking is great for new idea generation but the other essential half you need is an action plan. Nothing truly exceptional is ever built without dedicated hard work and the mindset of giving it 100% of all you got. You need to stay focused on your plan of action to see you business established, take root and grow.
You need to lift your sights a little higher than just obtaining good rankings these days. You need to know that with each client you take on, you can find ways that will make them profitable with your results. Make that one of your objectives and you will be applying the beginning of wisdom as part of your foundation. This can really accelerate the popularity and the reputation that follows your work. Your client needs profitable results in true sales and conversions too. Being able to make a client profitable is what can build your reputation ultra-quickly. After all, that is the reason 99% of the time they are hiring you. Fulfill this objective over and over again and your services and fame will spread.
Remember that in the search engine marketing business, you want to build your reputation to beyond the clients expectations for every project you handle. You don't want to aim for just an occasional success story....but a stream of success stories one after the other. This can be achieved once you have your comfort level with your skills and then using wisdom in how you grow your business. Once you get a hold of this, it's your reputation and your proven SEM batting average that begins to quickly turn the tides and make a whole new way of doing business for you. The first thing you start to see is referral business. Instead of chasing down new clients - you begin to see your profitable clients referring new business to you.

So what type of an SEO business will you develop?

Will you be creating new types of informational Web sites that bring you affiliate commissions?
Will you want to serve clients as an SEO professional?
Will you be an SEO Consulting Professional who help people manage specific problems through consulting?
Will you seek employment working for some already established firm?
Will your SEO career take you yet in some different direction?

Regardless of your personal preference, there are plenty of opportunities for qualified SEO professionals whichever direction you look. But also as you enter the market you need to learn how to become more aware of what is around you. You will often see opportunities that you might otherwise miss for your business if you develop an awareness with as wide angle view as possible. Be interested in everything that is going on.

As a knowledgeable consultant you are not just some person optimizing pages for keywords and offering the same identical things your competition does. You emerge offering extremely valuable services and because of your successful batting average, people will come to see you as a very trusted resource over time. You are someone with whom the customer knows they can call on for accurate counsel. You are someone who always delivers better results than perhaps they were expecting, each and every time.

This in itself is a whole new lesson. For any successful business this is bound to happen (sooner or later) but, the sooner it happens for your brand new SEO business, the sooner your reputation begins to elevate within the business communities.

One Final Tip...

How much do you enjoy your SEO or Search Engine Marketing work.
How passionate are you about your SEO work?

It is very important to build your business based on some aspect of search engine marketing that you are passionate about. It makes a huge difference when your clients see how much you love your work and as long as it is your business, why not excel in something you enjoy doing. It does not make sense to build a career around something you are not passionate about as long as you have the choice (and you do.)

How can you possibly head in this direction if you may feel you are not equipped or are only partially equipped?

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About John Alexander
John Alexander is Director of Search Engine Academy and Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his team of globally located Search Engine Associates. John has taught SEO skills to people from 87 different countries world wide. John's articles can be read in publications like Search Engine Guide, WEBpro News, Website Magazine and many others.

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The Smartest Tips for Starting a New Career in SEO

Tips for Starting a New Career in SEO

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