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Ok, so as this is my first blog post I thought a good place to start would be to talk about how I got into SEO and hopefully be able to help others who are trying to get into the industry. It can be pretty daunting not knowing where the hell to start and when I started I would have liked to have known how other SEO’ers got into it.

Where It All Started For Me

I was always one of those annoying people who never knew what they wanted to do for a career. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school and even after 4 years of doing various Business and Art and Design A levels at college – I still couldn’t decide what to do! In my last year of college everyone was applying to uni’s but I didn’t want to go to uni, i’d had enough of education, I just wanted to start working. I finally decided that the Internet was the way to go, it interested me and I thought that’s where the money is…so decided I wanted to get into Web Design.

At the time I thought the best way to get into web design without going to uni was to do a home course. It was a 2 year course and was VERY hard! They basically gave me a few lessons, gave me a pile of books and left me to get on with it. I am pleased I did the course otherwise I would never have got into SEO but you do need a lot of motivation and determination to make yourself do a course like that at home! Oh and a good computer and internet connection helps! I was living with my Dad at the time and with his crappy dinosaur computer that would hardly ever connect to the web made it even harder!

So after doing the web design course for 2 years I decided I didn’t want to do web design lol. But the course did touch upon loads of different areas and jobs in the web world – which was where I first heard about SEO. I’d never heard of it before and it interested me more than web design and was the type of thing I could see myself getting into. I liked the idea that you could influence search engine rankings for specific keyphrases which in turn would drive more targeted traffic to a website and ultimately lead to conversions.

So Where to start?!

Well I didn’t know much about SEO, didn’t know who to speak to and didn’t have a degree, the only thing I had kind of related to SEO was my web design qualifications. I did a lot of research into what SEO was and what it involved and how I could get into the industry but at the time I couldn’t actually find much information on where to actually start! A couple of years on and now there is loads of SEO information about!

I started looking for SEO jobs but they all wanted experience so I looked around for trainee or junior roles in SEO and after a lot of looking around and applying to a few jobs 2 of them asked me in for an interview. I went along to both, told them everything I had been doing and how I wanted a chance to get in to the industry. Just a step on the ladder was all I needed. In the end both of them offered me a job! One in London and one in Southampton, both junior roles, so I accepted the one in Southampton as it was closest to me and sounded like it had a lot of training involved.

So that’s how I basically got into the industry and after working there for 2 years I decided it was time to move on to an SEO role more varied, with more learning involved and with more responsibility and once you have a couple of years experience and SEO background behind you, you’ll find it a lot easier to move up the ladder.

What do you do for living?

I had to mention this because I hate it when people ask me this! Whenever people ask me, I say ‘I do SEO’ and then you always get back ‘Erm…what’s that’?! Not many people who work outside of the web industry have ever heard of SEO. I get tired of explaining it now. The usual answer is ‘I help websites get to the top of search engine rankings for particular keyphrases they want to be there for. That usually does the job so they get the gist of what it is anyway, although my mum and dad still don’t get what I actually do!

What is it About SEO?

I think what I like most about SEO is that it’s so varied. Everything is changing all of the time and the most important thing is that you have to make sure you evolve with it. There is always something new to learn and always new strategies and techniques to try out and one of the most important aspects of SEO is keyword research, you need to know what to target, after all why target a phrase that no one searches for?! I never used to like doing keyword research but now I know how important it is, I actually quite like it.

So it’s not actually that hard getting in to the industry, if you have no experience you just need to find a company looking to train you up and there are quite a few out there as companies like to train people up and after investing time and money into you, keep you. So if you’re starting afresh look for trainee or junior roles, ask around, speak to other SEO’ers (there are always lots of SEO peeps on Twitter who would be willing to give advise) or email companies and agencies to see if they would be willing to take you on or know anyone that would. There is a lot of ongoing learning involved in SEO, so if you’re keen, have an analytical and marketing mind then you’ll be what they want and you’ll go far.

Ok, I think I have rambled on enough about how I got in to SEO, I’m hoping that some of you may either find it inspiring that I finally decided what I wanted to do and went for it without having a degree (personally I only know 1 other SEO’er who doesn’t have a degree in some area) and go for it yourself or maybe some of you will be able to get some tips on how to get in to the industry. Or you could just be interested in how another SEO’er got into it, that’s what I’m interested in anyway so please share your stories, how did you get into SEO?