SEO as a Career: Panel of Experts Tell It Like It Is

“SEO as a Career - Where Technology, Design, Copy and Marketing Meet” - that’s the title of an online article recently posted that interviews 6 “successful, famous and established SEO professionals” in 5 nations, including.. yours truly!

I was contacted by journalist Naveen Bala for an interview about how I got into the biz, tips for others and my typical day. My esteemed colleagues - including well-known SEO trainer Aaron Wall and author of industry bible, SEOBook - were all asked the same questions.

Some of my favourite responses (beside my own, natch) include the following:

“Cost. Ability. Past projects. Backlink proposal.” - Kevin Gillett, American SEO.
(The Question: If you were hiring an SEO expert, what would you look for?”)

“Managing and tasking my virtual team; Going over clients accounts in my Webmaster tool, Analytics and the MCC dashboards; 1 hour of self business marketing (PPC, articles, social media, etc.)” - Israeli SEO, David Ratovitch
(The Question: What do you do in a typical day?)

“SEO content has moved on from the days of simple key word stuffing and now goes hand in hand with good original copy.” - Gary Cottam, UK SEO leader
(The Question: Advice for beginners?)

“For me its in-house corporate jobs.. the strategies and techniques that we can use for in house cannot be put on marketing agencies nor in freelancing as they are limited to particular slot of work and activities.” - Nisha Garg of India
(The Question: What do you think is the best career path - freelance, marketing agencies, or in-house corporate jobs?)

“I was 1 of only 2 matches in the Yahoo! Search database for the misspelled version of an online casino back when online gaming was legal… Search engines are much more aggressive with spell correction tools so that opportunity is no longer as strong, but new opportunities open as old ones close.” - Aaron Wall
(The Question: “Any interesting/funny experiences regarding search engines you can share?”)