A Career in SEO? Smart move.

In my previous post I covered 5 reasons why a career in a SEO would be a bad move. I have to admit that I enjoy writing doom and gloom articles which is why I wrote that one first. I also think it's wise to show both sides of the coin hence today's post on what makes a career in SEO a smart move.

Multi-Disciplined
A good search engine optimizer combines the skills of different disciplines. Fortunately, being weak in an area doesn't automatically exclude you from doing SEO. You simply need to recognize this area of weakness and team up with someone that complements your strengths. Together, you become a powerful force. And if you check your ego at the door, this joining of skills gives you an opportunity to learn and better yourself.

The Scorecard
Few tasks come with a scorecard letting you know exactly how you're doing day-to-day. SEO is different though. The search engines and a website's rankings in search results acts as a scorecard. Have a bad score? Change tactics or update your strategy. Have a good score? Make note of what you did and add it to your tool set. This objective feedback from the search engines is quite nice to have.

Satisfaction
The most satisfying part of SEO for me is comparing search traffic and seeing that there's an obvious up trend over time. Put this data in to a graph that compares the before to the after and you have a powerful communication device that resonates with everyone all the way to the top of the food chain.

SEO Skills are Scalable
If you've only optimized small sites you may be worried that there's something you don't know when it comes to large sites. While SEO efforts for large sites does require a little more administration and management, the small site skills are quite transferable. This is a good thing because the path to bigger and more complex projects is open to you as long as you're prepared to step in to the fray.

Financial Backup Plan
If you spend your days doing SEO for clients, you're actually benefiting in two ways. The first is that you're being paid for your work. The second is that you're actually developing a skill set that you can use to develop a backup income stream. If you spend a little of your time every day applying SEO best practices to your own sites you will eventually have an asset that can be monetized in many ways. This income may never replace your main income, but it can certainly come in handy should you ever be fired, laid off, or otherwise find yourself unemployed.

Wrap-Up
So there you have it. Five reasons why I think that doing SEO for a living is good thing. I leave it up to you to decide if these 5 positives out-weigh the 5 negatives I mentioned earlier. And as always, I welcome comments whether they be good or bad.