How I got into SEO

When I meet new clients or friends, they always ask me how I got into SEO. I guess it was more luck and right timing than anything else. Anyway, here’s my story… 

After school I decided to get an apprentice at an Estate Agency, it was the most boring 2 years of my life, however I wanted to complete the course just to make mum proud. My mum was fed up with me trying to make a living selling copy DVD’s and what ever else I could get my hands on. After I got my apprentice certificate, I was eager to get a job with a real pay, rather than the 40 pounds per week I was trying to survive off over the last 2 years.  

I accepted a job making tea and sending faxes for a telecommunications company while I continued looking for a job that had real career oportunities. The company provided telephony billing services via mobile and land line on one side of the business and on the other side, they created services to go onto these self billed telephony numbers, such as joke lines, competitions, horoscopes, ring tones, mobile wallpapers, horse racing tips and a lot more. It’s big business, with some clients generating close to a million pounds per month.

Some how I lasted 5 years at the company, working my way up from the office goat to sales and marketing. After a year helping the Sales Director I was given all full time sales position on a commision sales structure. This meant the more money my clients made, the more money I would make. Each sales guy in the department looked after a particular media, so a guy took care of TV clients, another for Radio, a couple of guys for Print media and I was given web based clients, as the web based clients generated the least revenue at that time.

I would visit clients to see what they were up to and how I could get more business from them. I guess the funny thing was that most clients treated me like a kid, not in a bad way, but it gave them a chance to show off in front of someone that they thought would be impressed. I played the kid eager to learn how they come so successfull (The best sales tip I ever learnt: people love to talk about them selves, and there sucess). My clients would show me what they were up to, not really knowing that they were actually teaching me! They showed me their stats, sites and tools they were using to gain extra visitors to there web sites. Nothing beats a big ego! I would then return to the office and let all my other clients know what I just learned so they could benifit from the information. This meant more traffic, more calls and bigger pay for everyone, especially me! It was this technique that made the difference: I was able to get my clients talking about how and what they were doing to generate more traffic/revenue.

With all this SEO and Internet Marketing knowledge I was learning, I wanted to give this game a try for myself. I asked my boss if I could promote the companies services on-line in my spare time. The boss didn’t have a problem as this meant the more people trying to capture a slice of the market using his services, the better it was for him and the business.

After long working days, I would return home to build sites and promote them using an SEO Book and the advice and knowledge I had learned from my clients. 90% of the advice is useless today, as Search Engines and Algorithms are always changing. Although there is one learning machine that is still current, the book that was recommended to me many times over the years and I personally recommend it to any body that is serious about learning SEO: It’s called the SEO Book. The difference between this book and thousands of others is that it’s never gone into paper back, which means the author, a world class SEO expert, can continually edit, update and correct the book. It was this book that really made me understand the basics of SEO that would lead on to other areas of the Internet Marketing world.

So, that’s how I got into SEO!