It’s Wednesday night, and I’m sitting trying desperately to think of something to blog about. I considered doing something about the election & social media, but quickly realised that I am bored to tears by the election, so I’m assuming everyone else is too. That still leaves me with the question of what to blog about. Then it dawned on me, I’m spending my Wednesday night working, I’ve spent every night this week working in fact, and the weekend. This should, really, be a slightly depressing thought, I’m sure for most people it would be, but the fact is, it’s not. The reason it’s not, is that I love what I do, and (I’m sure I’m not alone in this) it’s almost a hobby as much as a job.
I look forward to getting time to catch up on my favourite SEO blogs, I love the challenge of getting stuck into a problem site with no obvious answer, and sometimes I even love writing a sites worth of title tags. I realised that maybe as SEO’s we have the best job in the world, and here are my top 5 reasons why
The debates
There is nothing like an early morning SEO debate to get the blood flowing, whether it’s on the merits of page validation, or the usefulness of the canonical tag, get more than 2 SEO’s in a conversation about, well, anything really, and you have the recipe for an engaging & exciting debate. I admit, very little is ever actually resolved, but it rarely gets (too) nasty.
The changes
It’s an oldie but a goodie, SEO never stands still. While the fundamentals change slowly, there is always something new and shiny to play with. Working in SEO guarantees you a new toy to play with nearly every week, and none of them ever come with instruction manuals, just adding to the endless hours of fun while we all work out just how piece A fits with joint D, oh wait no, that’s the shelving unit I need to put up.
The superiority
We’ve all done it, you watch someone you know trying to start their first blog, and tell you how they are going to get everyone they know to click on it so they can be number one in Google, or someone complains about Google’s results not being relevant, and you launch into a rant about the lack of relevance in their search term. Everyone you know thinks you have some sort of magical power, or just thinks you work in IT, but either way there is a sense of smugness in knowing something most people don’t even realise is there to know
The accomplishment
There is nothing quite like the feeling of finally getting that position for a site that you’ve been working towards. Whether it’s a new project and you’ve made one instinctual change that ramps up the rankings, or a site that you have been working on for months, hitting that number one ranking, is always a high point, and seeing the traffic rolling in is the icing on the cake. In fact, you have to wonder whether the excitement is actually some sort of addictive adrenaline high, because it seems once you have worked that magic on one site, you just keep wanting more, and before you know it, you’re hooked.
SEO folks
I have never come across a bunch of people who, without ever meeting one another, can be so supportive. Even better is that when you do finally meet them, they are just as awesome in real life as they are on twitter, some even more so. I have asked many people, and I can’t find any other industries where competitors will help each other out so freely. I know for instance that I was up against another SEO chick on a recent pitch, did we stop talking, did we stop helping each other out, no, it’s a fact of SEO life that we will come up against each other time & time again, but we still have a huge sense of co-operation & camaraderie. In fact, I think the people in SEO top my list of the things I love about this industry, it wouldn’t be half as much fun without you all!
