A Day in the Life of an SEO

What do you do every day?

[Lapizuli]

Tagging off of a thread started by someone new to SEO, [webmasterworld.com...] I thought I'd see if people would be willing to share a hypothetical or real work day in their lives.

What kinds of things do you do?

How is SEO a part of your daily life?

What are a few of your favorite things?

[edited by: Lapizuli at 8:09 pm (utc) on Sep 7, 2010]

[Lapizuli]

To start: I'm not an SEO expert or a webmaster. I'm a writer who has a few tiny websites and who also does on-page SEO for articles published not on my own sites. But here's what a day is like for me, in terms of the search engine optimization part of my (self-employed) job:

Start in morning and repeat throughout the day, in whatever order I feel like:

Moderate comments on my pages. Respond as necessary.

Check earnings in revenue share programs.

Read search engine blogs to stay updated.

Read & reread help pages for the search engines and advertising networks, because I never get it fully the first time or even the second, third, or fourth times, really.

Check and respond to email.

Check that deposits to accounts went through (because it's all voodoo magic and must be seen to be believed).

Check forum threads I'm following. Make sure I didn't sound like I wrote my last posts as though I were also simultaneously playing with my kid, burning something in the kitchen, and losing control of the wheel on my mouse thus crashing my browser (all of which must remain decently hidden from public display). Edit posts that did sound that way.

Write.

Tell family to stop bothering me because I'm writing and just because I'm at home it doesn't mean I'm any good to them.

Out of stress from feeling guilty for not attending to family, stop writing to brainstorm and play around with keyword tools for topic ideas I probably will never end up writing but at least it shows everyone I'm productive.

Optimize articles in development - a tag here, an H2 header there, a title tweak, and I usually feel satisfied even though I couldn't bring myself to actually finish the articles.

Check status of and, if necessary, optimize articles recently published / several months old / very old / unconscious. Besides SEO stuff, this can mean I:

• Rewrite outdated articles.
  
• Add new content to stale articles.
  
• Give a jump start to dead articles by interlinking to my related content. If they don't start, bury them emotionally and hope for resuscitation some time in the future.
  
• Rewrite articles that inadvertently exposed I had no idea what I was talking about. If not possible, pretend I didn't write them. If unable to fool myself (rare), delete them.
  
• Re-read with self-admiration articles that sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Bask in the glory before I wonder why they're my least-visited articles, even though the SEO looks great, and so contemplate a link building campaign, decide it's not worth it, and fix a snack.

And finally...

Wait - for earnings reports to update, messages to be responded to, stats to update, down websites to come back up, etc. More than anything besides writing, this helps the most. For me, doing SEO is like being a chemist. The day is long, and filled with waiting for things to brew.

What do you do?

[wheel]

- Up and at 'em
- check email
- breakfast with as much of the family as I can corral around the table these days.
- check anything urgent
- cycle for a couple hours
- lunch
- marketing/phone calls and sales until dinner time, 5-6pm.
- Back on the phone doing sales from 6-8:30 p.m.. Clean up any loose ends.

To be fair, I don't do SEO for a living. I run a small home based business driven from my website, and I do all my own SEO, so I do SEO but I also have to do some actual work in there as well :).

[jecasc]

- Drive to the office.
- Buy some muffins on the way.
- Be the last to arrive.
- Drink coffee, have breakfast.
- Pretend to be working for some time.
- Leave early.
- Be happy I am the boss or else I would have fired myself long ago.

[Lapizuli]

And one thing I forgot to add, but that Instant Search has reminded me of:

Do test searches on the same keywords using different browsers at different times of the day typing with different fingers, from different orbiting satellites, both holding your towel and not, blindfolded and with one eye closed, then open, after breakfast and before, while simultaneously doing the same search in a parallel universe as a Wookie.

Um...no, I haven't been drinking. Just using Google.

[StoutFiles]

Wake up. Dive into my pool of money. Swim around for 5 hours or so...oh, you didn't mean CEO! Well, as an SEO I update old content, add new content, and stay up to date on new web languages/discoveries. What else can you do? Anything more would be maddening.