SEO
Careers - Are you starting a new SEO business this year?
By John Alexander
Will this be the year you start up your own SEO
business? Let's talk about a few of the things to think about depending
on your directions and goals for starting a new SEO business.
A career in SEO and search marketing can have many different rewards
depending on:
a) The foundation of your SEO skills.
b) Your focus and planning you do to build a reputable
business.
c) and of course your ability to keep up with all the industry
changes.
You might be choosing between a couple of different
type of SEO career paths initially.
For example:
1. A career in affiliate marketing
by using your skills to build your own high quality, authoritative Web sites
that consistently earn you commissions.
2. An SEO career that entails
building a client base and helping others gain top visibility
and become very successful.
We will talk about each of these
separately in a few minutes but first let's step back to those
first three points. Regardless of which type of career you are
building in search marketing, the best way to commence is with
building your own comfort level with your abilities to know
you can positively achieve the results you need.
So many
people seem to be anxious to take on clients and hang their
shingle out before they have that solid foundation that's
going to help them build the solid reputation they need. There are
plenty of ways to begin getting yourself up to speed through a
variety of training organizations, study courses, workshops
etc.
The choice is really entirely up to you based on the
options
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you
prepare yourself with the new skills you need:
-
Be sure to choose a training
organization that is focused on teaching you the genuine
skills and can demonstrate that they actually practice what
they preach. For example Pay Per Click training has its
own benefits to offer but PPC is really more like paid
advertising. There are so many more topics to gain a comfort
level with these days than there was even 5 years ago.
-
Be aware that there are some training companies
out there that say they teach "search marketing
skills" but then in the end you'll find out they are trying
to sell you some special software, some special tool set or
some gimmicky software application. What you should be after are the skills that prepare you for getting the job done
accurately and without a lot of stress. No hidden agendas
should surprise you at the end.
-
Some professional tools are fine (and
there are some good ones to know about,) but in the end if all
you have and all you can rely on is the same tools that
everyone else is using, then where
is your true advantage?
These days, there is far more to
good solid SEO and SEM skills training than just keywords and
Meta tags.
Search marketing skills today entail strategies
that will teach you how to build genuine, authoritative, Web
sites that reflect top visibility amongst competitive
landscapes. There are strategies that involve solutions for
dealing with technical and design challenges, techniques for
preparing for the future trends including Web 2.0 and Social
Media as well as new ways to accurately gather your data and
understanding the full scope of influences that are at your
disposal. There are new ways to examine the data too for both threats
and opportunity analysis and even right down to the specific industry.
SEO Career Variations: Where will you get started?
Okay, so let's get on to talk
about the two most common SEO career variations and their differences as
well as their benefits. Of course once you are on your way
you'll find there are many more than two directions but these
are the most common ways that people get started.
Let's have a
brief look at affiliate marketing first.
1. A career in affiliate marketing
by building your own high quality, authoritative Web sites
that consistently earn you commissions.
Advantages:
-
Complete freedom and flexibility to build your
content the way you know it should be built.
-
No clients to
report to, your time is used for tackling the job productively
with complete freedom and liberty.
-
Develop the kind of high
quality informational sites that will be useful to your
readers and no need to bill clients, try and convince the
client why one recommendation is better than another.
-
You are
100% in charge of all the choices from choice of topic matter to
choices of which
methods and techniques you wish to employ.
You have heard of Web sites that run on auto-pilot. A good affiliate marketer applies a whole range of influences
to their site so that it continues to:
a) Serve readers with engaging and useful information that
satisfy the reason why they searched. (Genuine value)
b) The consumer can place
an order for a quality product and have the order filled.
(Profitability)
c) Have a system in place to measure and benchmark their
customers interests and needs as well as satisfaction level.
d) Have a means for customer interaction, through a related
blog or through polls or other means engaging Web 2.0.
e) Most great authority sites have very original content to serve up
while often the order fulfillment may be done by a third but
reputable party.
Unlimited
income potential even if you remain a sole proprietor:
You can
literally build one project after another and have each
successful project run for years without stress and without
major ongoing time commitments. True affiliate marketing can
generate as many streams of "passive cash flow" as
you wish.
The most
successful affiliate marketers are ones that build their
content based on topic matter that they personally enjoy and
are very knowledgeable about.
This serves three important purposes.
a) If you have expertise in a given topic, you will never run
dry of new topic matter.
b) If you enjoy your selected topics to the point that you
might even say you are passionate about them, then you will
enjoy your work. The advantage here is that if you enjoy your
work enough, it does not even feel so much like work.
c) Most good affiliate marketers understand the value of
building a dedicated readership (over making a fast
buck.)
In other words, they respect their readers and any marketing
they do, comes with the highest respect toward their readers
and individuals that make up their list. This is the ultimate
use of a Web site in my books. To forge genuine and lasting
relationships with other human beings.
Any of the top names in affiliate marketing that I have
personally met, are genuinely caring people. They care about
their readers and in doing so they only distribute what they
believe to be their very best information. I could write much
more on the topic of affiliate marketing and I think I may
just do that in the near future.
But, let's
switch gears now and look at another second possible SEO career
option which is common:
2. An SEO career that entails
building a client base and helping others gain top visibility
and success.
Advantages:
This type of an SEO career will
appeal especially to those who enjoy the reward of helping
others. Not only can you earn exceptional income with the
right skills but you also enjoy the privilege and special
rewards of knowing that your new business is helping
others to prosper. Do not underestimate this "reward value" as
it is pretty amazing, addictive and exceptionally satisfying.
If this is the type of search
marketing business enterprise you want to start up, then it will also serve
you well to fully scope out the full range of services that you or
your company will be offering.
As you may know not all
services are the same and it's up to you to shape and define
the niches at which you wish to excel and become known for. The last thing you want
to be is just another SEO out there amongst the masses. You want to consider ways of
setting yourself apart from the average services that are out there.
It's funny when we ask new students about their Unique Selling
Proposition. They all seem to know they need one, but most
folks never go on to work out exactly how they will be
different.
For a client serving type
business, you should also be aware that there is a limited
ceiling of earning potential (if you intend on remaining a one
person operation.) However, you can grow well beyond your expectations
if you recruit other SEO skilled talent to work for you or
work with you in tandem, so
that you can continue to expand your client base.
Again it is essential that you
build yourself an exceptional reputation for getting genuine
results that contribute to your clients bottom line profits. This
is one industry where building your range of skills properly
really can contribute to building yourself a positive
reputation.
Of course their are other types of career niches that focus
more on programming skills and yet others that head off in the
direction of PR and publicity services and content writing.
2007 and now 2008 is what I think will continue to be the "year of the
writer." For anyone one who knows how to write good
articles and content, but has not made the transition to the
Web yet - this is a perfect time to be getting into the
business. Never before has there been such a
massive demand for original, well written Web content.
So what ever your
interests, the single most important thing is to make up your
mind and decide to "get started" somewhere.
Getting
started is the first step.
TIP: Even if you are
planning to set up a client based business, one great place to begin is
with affiliate marketing to build your own comfort level and
gain the confidence you need first time out and before taking
on any clients. The extra cash flow and income streams
will be helpful. But it is an extremely fast way to gain your
comfort level without any stress BEFORE taking on any clients
who will often bring with them a certain new set of demands.
The old rule applies that practice indeed, does make perfect.
Once you are ready to open your doors, be sure that you have
built your keyword forensics skills to quickly explore the
real marketplace of people's needs (based on their search
behavior.)
You'll want a "quality assurance check"
in place to help you quickly determine the public's true needs
for a service or product based on demands through the most
recent search behavior. This is one of the quickest way to
build a genuine sure fire reputation and some tremendous
referral business.
Getting Started: Where can you
get started?
Be sure to take advantage of
getting your skills up to speed first before taking on any new
clients.
Invest a little time and energy into your own future success with some solid
structural training to demystify and separate the facts from
the fiction. When searching for someone to help build your skills,
and mentor you on the finer points, look to a training organization that has been around for a few
years and has some reputation of its own.
(since 1998) Robin Nobles has been teaching her
online courses - Academy of Web
Specialists and Online Web Training
(since 2002) Search Engine Workshops
has been teaching SEO skills in small limited enrollment
groups that also include a 6 Month Mentoring Program.
(since 2004) Search Engine Academy
SEO skills training and Mentoring Program has been available in local communities across North America
and recently now in Asia.
Of course there are quite a
few other new SEO training companies, seminars and conferences on the scene these days too.
Do a few searches on Google for
common generic terms to see who is actually occupying fair to
top visibility.
Try searching for a few terms
like:
search engine seminars
start SEO career training
search engine
articles
search engine workshops
search engine skills
learn search engine skills
Are you looking for local
community based training?
If you are interested in attending a personalized hands-on
Workshop SEO skills with
a complete 6 month mentoring program, right within your own
local community,
try doing a search on Google for the phrase:
Search
Engine Academy
Or check out this list of certified Search
Engine Academy training centers that are located in local
communities throughout North America and Asia.
Have you already started a new SEO
training company?
Here's another quick tip for you....
Question: Which type of business contacts can send you
EXCELLENT referral business when you do open your doors?
A great place to start is if
you can get a referral from an established accountant
in your business community.
Here is why: They have the
privilege of being able to see how your promotional work can
really contribute to someone's business. The average
accountant has the ability to quite literally measure the
impact of your search marketing efforts in terms of seeing a
difference in their client's business. Of course it is all
confidential, but they see the impact for themselves when you
make some client of theirs really successful.
Plus most accountants
are always focused on the bottom line results. If they see that your
skills vastly improve one of their clients profits, then the
other thing to keep in mind is that most accountants are very
well connected throughout the business community. You'll
tend to get quite a bit of referral work once they have
confidence and can see your efforts and skills are the real
deal.
Would
you like to grab a Free SEO Tip each and every Day?
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Also check out this new release: Wordtracker
Magic Volume 2.0 - Keyword Forensics for SEO
About John Alexander
John Alexander is Co-director of Training at Search
Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his
partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first
comprehensive online search engine marketing courses. John is author of an
e-book called Wordtracker
Magic and has
taught SEO skills to people from 87 different countries world
wide. John is also Director of Search
Engine Academy with localized Search Engine Academy
training centers where the Complete SEO Mastery Workshop and 6
Month Mentoring program is taught locally to business
owners and individuals in
communities across North America and
Internationally in Asia.
