Top 10 qualities of a great SEO Consultant (or future consultant)
Top 10
1. Avid reader - you will be reading possibly more than you’ve had to read for any other discipline. Even after you “feel” like you understand what is going on or what it takes to drive a website up the SERPs, if you don’t keep up with the news and changes over at Google or if you snooze while another quiet competitor slowly takes over market share, you may lose all job security. You need to stay on top of SEO & marketing trends and must LOVE to read about SEO Technology.
2. Social - either social online or off, you can’t live on an island like Tropical SEO’s Andy Hagan would probably wish he could & do his consulting from (note: Andy must be social given all his reported success). Make friends and collaborate. One of your SEO friends may be the reason why you succeed.
3. Common Sense - need to understand how a consumer would think. Being able to think like the masses gives you what many managers or higher level executives fail to understand. Applying these in websites will probably also get you the masses to click to the sites you manage.
4. Open minded - willing to listen to new techniques or challenges to current assumptions.
5. Analytical - need to sift through tons and tons of data to figure out why you should focus on some keywords even though they weren’t intuitive without the numbers. You need to know the million + potential factors that are allowing one site to jump over another in the SERPs without knowing much about the site except what is available online.
6. Responsive - clients need you to respond as their rankings move quickly up and down the SERPs. Also, there’s MANY others who will take your business away right under your nose. It’s key to constantly be in contact with your clients’ needs.
7. Humble - it will be almost impossible to be the TOP SEO consultant or even one of the best in a specific industry forever. To achieve it once in a lifetime will be an achievement. To obtain the #1 or #2 position for very expensive or popular keywords may be simple luck. You’ll get knocked out of the position and possibly not know why. Pay attention to not only the top experts, but some of the upcoming because the younger or new to the business with a different perspective may teach your or point out something that is either revolutionary or simply just “duh, I should of known that” type of information. Also, understanding and watching your competitors isn’t a bad idea.
8. Ready for change - Google may be #1 currently, but several years before that, it was Yahoo.com and before that, Altavista and honestly, the landscape may change drastically again before we hit the next decade. Who knows? You may be the #1 consultant in 2011 because you were paying attention to the mobile search trends.
9. Industrious - there’s a strong perception that the life of an SEO consultant is work a few hours and make a lot of money. The successful ones who may have this lifestyle now didn’t do it by working only 10 hours a week when they first got into this. They worked 15-18 hours a day and possibly more until their eyes were bloodshot and they were hungry to be better than others and learned their butts off. They went over and beyond the call of duty for their clients — otherwise, their clients wouldn’t be back. You got to work hard for not only maintaining your capabilities in this business, but also making your clients happy — including yourself.
10. A great communicator - hate to write emails? Do you hate to explain the same thing over and over? How about explaining some of the most basic concepts you thought the brightest executives would already know? Well, you may consider leaving the business or not entering it at all. SEO may be intuitive to you, but there’s a reason why “you’re the specialist.” Also, you have to not only be effective, but efficient as well. You have to be able to graphically present yourself. You need to interpret data for a client. You need to explain the most complicated into the most simple — otherwise, why would your client need you?
[Post originally published on our sister site Everything About Search on May 30, 2008; doing a little "Spring Cleaning" between sites & trying to place the right content divided between the two websites. Everything About Search will focus more on Search Engine Optimization Industry issues, stats and people. SEarch Marketing Common Sense will focus more on the implementation and practices that help websites "better market their websites" to customers on the Internet. If you find one website with the wrong post, please feel free to comment.]
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