SEO as your Career : Really Worth?

I found this very interesting about "SEO as a career". Is it really worth with SEO as career that can make money with SEO services. How important is seo as career to someone that use it to make money online...

what do you all think about that?

 

SEO is a pretty lucrative career -- if you are effective. The nice thing is that everyone needs it, not many people have it (done well at least), and it will continue to be present in the future.

 

Hello,

I would say that having SEO as a career might be a little tougher then just offering your services. However their are no actual degrees that you need so it is pretty easy to do it.

What you are going to need are testimonials to succeed in this business.

Thanks,
Nick

 

Or alternatively confidence in your skills, allowing you to operate on 'pay only for results' basis.

 

I'd divert myself down another career path if I was you, SEO on it's own isn't really a career i'm afraid.

 

It absolutely is, there are plenty of companies who are paying large salaries for SEO managers.

Setting SEO strategies, outsource management, etc are all very valuable and very sought after skills for companies and this will continue to become more and more popular as more companies adapt to the changing economy.

 

I'd strongly advise a newcomer not to waste their time focussing primarliy on SEO, managers are only paying good money for this because they are clueless, once the word gets around you will all be out of a job.

SEO managers, I never knew there was such a thing, it has gone way out of control...

SEO on it's own is nothing, it's a simple technique, which people emphasise to death as though it's some complicated process. Yeah get backlinks, old authorative domains, very complex...

On-top of this you are entirley reliant on what Google decides. Who knows what Google will decide in 10 years.

Learning SEO is key in web development, but this is just part of becoming a web developer, that's what i'd guide somebody towards. SEO on it's own as a career, no way.

 

Hell yes, in the near future everybody doing seo. this is easy as build your own home.

 

I HIGHLY disagree with you (and mind you I don't do SEO for a living).

SEO is not as simply defined as a technique nor is it nothing. SEO has multiple levels and has to be integral to a large majority of business strategies. Even if its not integral it shouldn't be ignored (free customers isn't something to discount or discredit -- everyone likes better profit margins).

SEO strategies are becoming, and will continue to become more and more vital to run a successful business online. As the world continues to become e-commerce centric (we're barely past 10% here folks) The importance of information and how that information is accessed will become even MORE important... a.k.a search engines -- Google, and how does google disseminate that information? By ranking sites for their results.

For a career choice SEO is 100% viable, but you should never limit yourself to a career.

 

You have to be magician.
Because little work is left for SEO while search engines are finding way to decide ranks on their own than external factors.

But its not gonna die, if you know what its really all about then it has good future at least in next couple of years.

 

Who's to say Google won't find another method to provide it's results, obviously we can't name a method they might use, otherwise they'd be using it by now, but in many years time Google will change and SEO can become irrelevant in a instanc depending on the type of change.

Can you please describe to me what an SEO manager does, and what somebody who chooses SEO as a career will do. I know they perform SEO for their clients, but how exactly do they do this? As far as i'm concerned I could get Jack from next door and tell him what to do in 10minutes for me for £5. For a career to be a career, surley it involves some form of skill, and in no way will I ever consider SEO a skill.

 

@wd_2k6: I agree with gwben, SEO is definitely a career. it's called Internet Marketing. You have a very narrow view on things and for your information there are already universities that are starting to have degrees in SEO and Internet Marketing.

The "get links" part is just a narrow aspect of SEO, You have to take into account traffic analysis and conversion funnels plus many other factors. Keep being a programmer, is not like I can outsource a rather good one for peanuts. Can you say the same for SEO?

 

and who's to say in 10 years Sony isn't going to put an implant in your eye that you can browse the web and order your groceries all at the same time all within the blink of an eye?

The future is the future and remains constantly unpredictable.

SEO Managers are responsible for Over-all strategy, implementation, and execution of all aspects of SEO for a site, which include design, copywriting, development, and more. SEO is essentially another means of establishing income for a site and is integral to a more successful site.

You could pay your neighbor 5 bucks to follow some basic SEO, but I bet 100% of the time a professional in the field will destroy your neighbor for helping improve a site ranking.

The reason being is that yes, SEO inherently is reverse engineering an algorithm and applying this to a site at the base level, but understanding that for each element of this algorithm (google uses a couple hundred elements I believe) there are multiple levels of "how" to do things better then your neighbor and in why and which way this affects your site.

 

Since when has Sony ever taken an interest into the WWW? Anyhow even if they did, who would this directly affect (whereby they would be out of buisness)? Nobody because everyone in related careers who it would affect, would have other things to do related to their career.
SEO is far too specific, surley e-marketing (in which SEO is covered) would be a suitable career?

asterixpro you have even mentioned yourself internet marketing, this is fine, it's a geniuine career, how an earth can SEO be a degree, I would consider it as a unit of a module.

I don't understand how it's a narrow view, i'm trying to avoid someone being guided into a "career" of SEO, so they can aim at bigger things and be something more useful. My only point is that SEO is too specific to be considered a career on it's own.

I can outsource my SEO for a minimal fee fyi, i'm not a mug unlike some of the people who don't really understand the concepts.

 

The sony thing was completely hypothetical, and it would impact a lot of peoples career choices, but it doesn't matter.

Just because someone chooses SEO as a career doesn't mean that they are only going to study SEO, just like a developer will not just study php for example. There is always going to be cross-over, evolution, and growth -- otherwise someone will find themselves un-employed regardless.

SEO is a stand alone career choice (there are a lot of people who do this), but; as with anything on the web, an SEO expert will never and can never be a 1 trick pony.

 

I would focus more on Internet Marketing as a whole, rather than limiting yourself solely to SEO. Interesting debate though, the fact that the future of SEO lies solely in the hands of what Google decides it wants to do is something to consider before looking to specialise in SEO

 

as far as I know seo is the most important to the websites after the web design and development, seo the key for the website to earn ROI.

 

Hello Friend,

SEO is the good Job for career, if you want to become a seo then it is a best for career selection and if you want to earn more money then seo is also best .
Start your career in seo.

 

i would say make seo as a career with lots of other services , like site development , search engine marketing that's the future hope so , and also get into development for yourself , make a portfolio of self owned huge sites to earn a living even if at a point you have no clients , all you need is innovation , hard work and moving in with the web world as they move as we say welcome to web 2.0 ,
i think to be in this digital media industry you need to do all types of jobs to survive ....

 

My own personal take on this is we can combine SEO with web development/ web design because they are related fields. However, no one really knows what the future holds for SEO, but from the looks of it now, it's promising and SEO knowledge is definitely a plus.