This is the field which didn’t exist in last century; most of the people in developing nations are still unaware of this career option. This is the field which is hybrid of technology as well as marketing and advertising. I am writing about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
With the advent of internet and its commercialization in last decade of 20th century many businesses started exploiting this medium to sell products and services. Now, where there is product advertising is bound to happen. They started setting up websites, but the next question which arises is, How to reach right customers? And question for customers was, How to find the right product on internet?
To provide an answer to these questions search engines came into being. They provided a way for customers to find the right product and an opportunity for businesses to present their products to ever-growing community of new customers.
OK, this might not be exactly how things happened but this is near to the reason explaining why search engines exist.
Now, there are hundreds and thousands of businesses selling products and services online. How would a search engine know which webpage is useful to the searcher? For this they developed algorithms to find most relevant result, well there is no other way though; computers work on algorithms only. This is where search engine optimization came into being. Search engines use certain criteria to find the right webpage and search engine optimizer have to insert right terms or keywords at right places, also known as keyword prominence. I know SEO is much more than this but I am writing for a layman.
If you are thinking about having a career in this vertical of internet marketing then, here are few qualities which I think are important for any search engine optimizer.
Qualities of an SEO
Since search engine optimization is hybrid of technology and marketing an SEO should possess both technical and interpersonal skills.
A Programmer:Although you may get a website developer to execute things like implementing changes suggested by you on a website but at the end of the day you should know how a website functions and for this you should possess some qualities of a developer. There are many technical and non-technical aspects which may hamper proper crawling of your website by search engines, you should be aware of these. According to me an SEO should initially work as website developer for first few months. They should at-least know one markup language which is obviously HTML, one client side scripting language like JavaScript, knowledge of database management system (DBMS) like MySQL, one server-side scripting language like PHP, one CMS say WordPress and some knowledge of Servers. In my initial years I worked on all this for around 3 months.
A Content Writer: In your career as an SEO, you may be asked to write content for the website or at-least for blogging, article marketing or press releases. You are required to write title, meta tags etc. while doing on-page SEO. With advent of social media, overall you should be good at communicating with people also.
An Entrepreneur: As an SEO you may have to optimize websites related to various businesses. Albert Einstein once said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. If you don’t understand the business then you cannot optimize their website. You should possess some entrepreneurial qualities and good business acumen to execute things. You should also possess good communication skills. Not only communication skills play an important part in acquiring links but they are effective in explaining things and convincing clients also.
An Artist: Technology thrives on innovation. Search engines are continuously changing their algorithms to deal with useless content and serve most relevant result to their users. So, search engine optimization is ever evolving and dynamic field. If you want to excel in this field then you should be innovative and artists remain innovative no matter what kind of artist they are. SEO is science as well as art, so you should possess qualities of an artist also.
A Mathematician and Statistician: I know people get nervous breakdown by hearing Math and Stats but at the end of the day you have to show whether your efforts resulted in something or not? Whether internet marketing works for that business or not? For this you should use web analytics tools like Google Analytics. You are required to do calculations, see and predict the trend, give reasons why certain thing worked or why it didn’t work. Based on this data you have to suggest the strategy for next quarter or year as the case may be. This is the reason why an SEO should possess the qualities of mathematician and statistician also.
Besides this, they should also possess good reading skills, reading should be their hobby. Apart from all these they should be passionate about SEO.
I wrote this article and listed qualities for search engine optimizer according to my knowledge, experience and understanding of this field. I know there are many SEO’s out there with much more experience and knowledge of this field. I hope they will add their knowledge to this article, I will be happy to hear their quality comments.
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