7 Things I Wish I Had Known Earlier in my Career in SEO

Check out these things to know about SEO from an SEO expert to shorten the learning curve and advance your career in digital marketing in Amman.

I thought I was a pretty big deal when I was five years into my SEO profession. I had already amassed what looked like a ton of experience, launched my own SEO company (Maps of Arabia), collaborated with well-known companies, and ranked websites in cutthroat markets.

I can now see, though, that I still had a lot to learn. I was not a big deal by any means (and I don’t think I am now), and in fact, my learning curve was flattening.

I could have done so much more to progress as an SEO professional and become more successful looking back on that period.

I’ll outline the top seven SEO tips I’d give my 10-year-old self in this blog. Although I was working for an agency at the time, most of the topics we’ll address today also apply to in-house positions.

Let’s start discussing the most important things to know about SEO!

1. Develop Your Content Writing Skills

I once spent so much time on the technical aspects of SEO that I forgot how crucial having quality content is to its success.

Even worse, it had been so long since I had worked in the trenches that I had forgotten how to produce quality content on my own.

I was proficient at producing generic content ideas, adhering to header structures, and creating effective internal links between pieces. but I only went that far.

I didn’t spend nearly enough time really developing material as I should have. You don’t increase organic traffic by doing that.

I would advise myself to get back to work and obtain more practical writing experience. Writing about SEO is a good place to start.

Examine what functions properly and what does not. Learn how to attract viewers for your content because it’s one of the crucial things to know about SEO and content marketing.

Begin collaborating with competent copywriters to fill this gap concurrently, and pay close attention to what they do and how they do it.

2. Acquire Link-Building Skills

Directory links had a lot of power and were quite simple to obtain ten to fifteen years ago. In low- to medium-competition niches, you could use them to rank sites.

That was essentially my linking strategy when it comes to press releases and link development.

This functioned properly for a time. So I became lazy. I still wasn’t quite aware of human psychology or how to influence bloggers and journalists to connect to me.

And then one day, most of the links I had been creating stopped working.

I was in a difficult situation because I hadn’t been honing my link-earning techniques.

I gradually changed into more of a consultant role where I would only come up with ideas about earning links because I wasn’t coming up with fresh ways to gain links.

I had lost sight of what was actually required to obtain linkages.

What I would tell myself is to forget all you believe you know about link building. Get back into the fight.

Quit your negative habits and spend time learning how to connect with others and what makes them tick. To enhance your link-generating abilities, gain experience, and collaborate with PR professionals.

If you are unable to learn things to know about SEO, consider hiring someone who does.

3. You Shouldn’t Be Writing 50-Page SEO Audits

I cherished creating in-depth, 50-page SEO assessments.

Sending one off to a client felt wonderful, and I was confident it had provided enormous value. What else could a customer ask for?

I had laid up a plan for controlling Google’s SERPs! It’s one of the most important things to know about SEO!

However, the truth is that I had to work quite hard to see my recommendations put into practice. Even though they already knew what was wrong with the site, clients would rarely read the 50-page audit that I had spent days producing.

These 50-page audits turned out to be working against me.

What I would advise myself to do is to put the 50-page audit aside and go where my customer needs me to be.

Give them a straightforward one-pager that has a prioritized task list (with data supported by spreadsheets for further information), the anticipated outcomes, and a timeframe for when to expect those outcomes.

4. Put An Emphasis On Long-Term Clients

Whoever knocked on our door, we would be pleased to cooperate with them.

This meant that we performed a lot of project-based work for clients who had the capacity or financial means to make a long-term commitment.

After some time, we learned which customers would stick around and which ones wouldn’t. However, we still lacked the guts to reject the project-based income that remained tied to the first endeavor.

You’d have to be insane, we reasoned, to turn down money when it knocks on your door.

But in truth, saying yes was foolish on our part.

These projects, for various reasons:

• Less enjoyable to work on.
• Often didn’t yield very lot because you had to get everything perfect at once. Additionally, you were unable to go on to the SEO roadmap’s subsequent phase.
• Compared to long-term commitments, had slim margins.

These projects weren’t beneficial to either the client or us.

What I would advise myself is to concentrate on dealing with clients that you believe have a high likelihood of becoming steadfast customers.

You’ll most likely appreciate working with those people. They’ll give you the best margins and the most education.

5. Make Personal Brand Investments

I made very little investment in developing my personal brand. Despite frequently coming across extremely interesting circumstances that the SEO community would have loved to read about, I didn’t write content and share what I had learned.

Instead of adding content since I wasn’t sure if other people would find these things fascinating, I merely lurked.

As a result, I only had a modest number of followers on social media. Almost nobody even knew who I was.

What I would advise myself to do is to start gaining followers on social media by posting the information you find fascinating. Restart your writing and venture back into the outside world.

Speak at neighborhood meetups, then progress from there. Whatever route you take, that will be very useful in the future. This investment will more than repay itself 1,000 times over.

6. Don’t let customers become fixated on rankings

My clients were ranking-obsessed, like many others.

Although rankings in SEO are undoubtedly crucial, you don’t want meetings to center on why a phrase moved from position 6 to 7.

I did end up having this conversation far too frequently. It was my responsibility; I should have assisted my clients in looking at more than just rankings.

What I would advise myself to do about things to know about SEO: Inform clients that they should ignore trends and concentrate instead on more important metrics like organic traffic, and ideally leads and revenue.

By doing this, you waste less time on pointless conversations and get to spend more time talking about how to expand the company.

7. Allocate less time to reporting and auditing

I was proud to go through a detailed weekly checklist with each client. I would notice every problem and modification, no matter how minor.

However, it significantly reduced the client’s monthly spending. similar to reporting

Looking back, I estimate that auditing and reporting took up 30% of our time.

That’s just too much, I realize now. I would have been able to reduce that 30% to 10% by automating monitoring changes, using Pareto’s 80/20 rule for human auditing activities, and streamlining the reporting procedure.

Given the compounding nature of SEO, the time saved may have been significantly more valuable if it had been used to deliver my clients better results.

What I would tell myself is to focus on the jobs that would provide your clients with the highest return on investment (and thereby for yourself). Spend it actively working on SEO; lessen the time wasted auditing and reporting.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, my decade-younger self will never read this because I don’t have a time machine.

However, you just did!

In order to avoid some of the mistakes, I made along the way and move ahead more quickly than I was able to, hopefully, what I’ve learned and shared of things to know about SEO will be useful to you.