Where to Start with SEO and How to Get an SEO Job

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Whether you’re looking for your first job or a career change the SEO industry offers you a fantastic opportunity right now. I’ve worked in the industry since 2005 and basically self taught myself all of the necessary and desirable skills using the steps below.

I’ve also recruited a number of individuals into SEO roles over the last 3.5 years, so I like to think I’m well placed to advise on how to become a highly desired SEO candidate.

In all my time recruiting SEO candidates and talking to others in a similar boat, two consistent themes have been ever present through the identification and interview phase:

1. There is lots of people who claim they do SEO, but get found out very quickly.
2. There is very low supply and very high demand for those who clearly do know how to do SEO.

The beauty of the SEO industry today is that learning SEO will broaden your skill set into many other areas that you may specialise in at a later point in time. No longer is SEO simply about knowing the technical requirements that should be embedded into a website, now its about social media and participation, graphic design, content generation and so much more.

How to Get an SEO Job

As someone who has and still does recruit SEO’s take it from me that a standard CV is no longer my primary interest when reviewing candidates. I’m happy to receive a CV, but I’d be just as happy to receive an introduction email that simply points me at a personal website or blog.

If you’re looking to get into SEO and grab yourself an SEO role, these are the steps I would follow:

Get on LinkedIn, Twitter etc

The first thing I’m going to do when reviewing an SEO candidate is search for them on Google. If you don’t show up at all on the first page…..you’ve started badly.

At the very least take some time to fill out a strong LinkedIn profile and build yourself some kind of Twitter background (followers and tweets). These two things alone, if executed effectively will tell me you’re at least slightly web savvy.

Start Your Own Website

Even if you’re completely new to the idea then get learning about the basics of setting up a website because its your best bet for building your personal brand and getting a foot in the door for an SEO gig.

If you’re remotely web savvy then you’ll be able to pick up the basics pretty quickly – this is exactly how I started to develop my own skills over and above my full time job. I’d then take those newly acquired skills and utilise them in my full time role on a much bigger scale.

In order to get started you’ll need to take a few basic steps:

1. Buy a domain name such as www.ben-rush.com preferably from the same company utilised in step 2 for increased simplicity.
2. Buy a hosting package – you should look for one which allows for instant wordpress installation (I’ve used a few and find Bluehost to be decent enough). There is plenty to choose from and instant wordpress installation is usually called out in the benefits pages of each hosting package.
3. Get a good WordPress theme from someone like Themeforest. Spend your time looking for one with good feedback that has strong support documentation so you can play around with some basic HTML/CSS editing in the future.
4. Start generating some content for your new blog and employ the basic SEO practices, which you’ll start picking up if you follow the next section.

Read SEO Articles and Apply Them

Some people might disagree (i.e., those who’ve published SEO books) but please don’t waste your money buying an SEO book. Everything you’d need to get started and develop your SEO knowledge is readily available for free online.

An excellent place to start would be the SEOMoz Beginners Guide to SEO which will give you an excellent introduction into the world of SEO.

Whilst there is many excellent SEO information sources I’d specifically pick out the following as additions to your reading list:

Search Engine Round Table - regularly updated SEO blog with a highly active community.

SEO Book - ran by Aaron Wall, SEO Book has been around for many years and offers plenty of excellent articles, instructional posts and tools.

Search Engine Land - The leading distributor of industry news on search engine marketing. If its worth knowing about, chances are it’ll be on Search Engine Land.

Google Inside Search Blog - Will allow you to stay abreast of any new functional enhancements or algorithm changes that Google publicly admit to.

Matt Cutts - Head of the Google Web Spam team and basically the public face of Google on all things search (at least the organic stuff any way).

I guarantee you’ll get asked a question something along the lines of “which sites, blogs or twitter profiles do you follow to keep abreast of the latest news and techniques?”. Don’t therefore head into an SEO interview without being able to reference the fact you read one or all of these resources regularly and be prepared to discuss something fresh that you’ve picked up and have an opinion on.

This shows you not only read content, but can analyse it and form an opinion on it.

Utilise Google Analytics and Understand How to Analyse and Action Data

As I mentioned in my introduction, learning SEO should drive you into broader areas outside of simply understanding the technical implementation steps. It is widely reported that web analytics skills for example are the most sought after and difficult eCommerce skill set to recruit for right now (as of 2011/12).

So learn web analytics not only because you’ll be a better SEO if you do, but because it makes you significantly more employable in general.

If you’ve got your wordpress site up and running then head over to Google Analytics and sign yourself up for a free account. You’ll then be able to implement your unique analytics code into your wordpress site, which can be done in your admin settings.

Once you’ve confirmed that the data is coming through into your analytics account spend some time playing around and working out what’s what. Head on over to Mashable.com and read their How to Use Google Analytics post for additional guidance.

Understand the Fundamentals of Link Acquisition

Acquiring links from external sites is a critical step in any SEO campaign, so you need to understand the fundamentals at the very least if you want to get an SEO job. If you’re really strong technically then you don’t always need to be a rock star in this area, but it certainly helps if you have a good grasp.

Finding individuals out there who’re good at link building is incredibly challenging. I find most candidates have a grasp of the technical aspects, but lack knowledge and creativity to build links in a natural effective manner.

You’ll pick up a lot of ideas from the sources I identified earlier in this post, but consider these ideas as some inspiration and get your creative juices flowing (there is a ton of other tried and tested methods):

• Generating high quality, unique content that people will naturally have a desire to quote or share on other sites/blogs/forums. Consider for example the links I have in this very article – everyone of those sites is now benefiting in some small way from those links.
• Outreach programmes – offering external influencers, suppliers etc a reason to naturally link to your content or products (think of it like word of mouth, but online!). A great example of this in practice would be offering your products to external bloggers for free, in return for a detailed product review.
• Infographics – taking mundane, heavily duplicated data and putting it into a more desirable, shareable format. Here’s 40 cool infographics to get your mind humming.

Identify and Utilise SEO Tools

Another common interview question I would ask an SEO candidate is what tools they utilise when practising SEO, so be prepared for this type of question and take some time playing around with various industry analysis tools that make the job of an SEO much easier.

There is a broad range of tools that cover all sorts of analysis questions. The most complete tool set is probably over at SEOMoz so I would check that out as a first port of call and just have a play with each of the tools to get a flavour for what they can provide and how you can use them effectively.

A specific area that I would focus on from a tool perspective is the link analysis arena. There is only really three tools worth considering in my opinion:

• Open Site Explorer – ran by SEOMoz
• Majestic SEO - much bigger index size than SEOMoz
• Linkdex – Uses Majestic SEO data, but re-crawls sites for fresher more advanced data output.

You will typically get asked questions around how you would analyse a site for SEO friendliness – being able to highlight specific tools that you’d use in the process will help your case and drive confidence in the interviewer that you understand what you’re doing or have least taken the time to read up and have a play around.

Join SEO Communities and Get Involved

Spend time where possible joining and getting involved with SEO communities because its by far the best method for keeping up to speed and honing your skills. Most of the sources I outlined earlier in the article have highly active communities that would be only to happy to provide knowledge, recommendations and support.

If you can point to specific communities that you’ve become an active member of you can bet yourself I’ll be checking out your profile, posts and comment history to get a flavour of your knowledge, skills and attitude.

Summary

The SEO industry is absolutely thriving – demand is high, supply is low and it is unlikely to be effected by down turns in the economy due to the relative payback that SEO can drive to an organisation.

SEO is absolutely not rocket science, sure there is some geeky aspects to it but you don’t need to be a full on techy in order to achieve in this industry. Take the time to learn some basics, join and read content from some of the more established communities and create your own website to play around.

With the right attitude and evidence of following these steps you’re putting yourself in an excellent position to get offered an SEO role. Just remember not every organisation is looking for people who are all singing and dancing straight off the bat, so providing you can at least demonstrate your enthusiasm for learning then you’ll stand a great chance of landing a role.