In these days, I’m celebrating the fact I’ve been an SEO for 2 years.

I want to share with you some random thoughts.

I love fast people.

I don’t know if it’s about being agile, or if you do fitness and so you are more prepared, or whatever…one thing I learnt during these two years is that I LOVE people who think and act FAST. I prefer to make a mistake, learn something and fix the problem. In the time you are still there to think, I tried 12 times already, and I did something. The world would be a better place if people were a bit faster.

via http://i.imgur.com/bzsws.gif

Community

I’m lucky enough to know quite few people in the SEO community. Now…friend is a really strong world, and it’s totally misused nowadays, but for sure there are SEOs out there (#pimpthis) I respect a lot and they are helping me a lot to understand better this discipline.
What makes me sad a bit (or better, I don’t understand it) is that many SEOs are writing stuff, tweeting only to gain attention that is gonna last like few hours. They are doing EVERYTHING to gain like 13 tweets or retweets more, but I have a question: so what? are you enjoying the thing you are writing and doing? Because to me that’s the most important thing ever. My “Meet your..” series is nothing new, but I like it a lot. You know why? Because I’m doing this for me first. The best thing happening out of those series is not a retweet, or a like, but the comments, and when people starts to follow the person I’m interviewing. It’s like the series is helping to connect people…this is awesome! I don’t have a lot of visits in my blog, but I don’t care too much, because I’m doing something I like. Are you doing the same? And by the way, I’m already thinking to something else. Reinvent yourself.

Focus on what you love

Simple thing, and everyone is saying that. But really, focus on what you love.

I have a theory: everyone could be a great SEO. Because “great” is defined by your brain, and not by how much you take from consulting stuff or on how many conferences you are speaking every year. Great SEOs are great people in general first. If you love something, everything is simpler. When people ask me “if you have to choose one tool to use for your SEO work, which one you are going to choose?” , my answer is : the brain. But then people somehow don’t publish my comment, or ask more, because you need to answer the same shit over and over: “seomoz or ahrefs or searchmetrics”. I use and love those tools too, but why not talk about the human being behind? Tools with no human brain are useless.

Change the status quo.

ALWAYS. You know when you are bored at work, because you are doing the same shit over and over? It’s happening because you are not pushing too much, because you are not trying to exit your comfort zone, you are not questioning the status quo. When you are doing a project and someone is saying to you “we CANNOT do that, because we never did this” , you realize it’s time to move on and fight, and challenge the status quo of things. Doing this makes the day more interesting.

Fuck categories.

“Do you know exactly the names of every Google updates?” . “Hell no, why should I know something I can search on the web right away?” . “Ah OK, sorry then. You don’t fit”.
You know what? I’m glad NOT to fit in your fuckin way of categorize people based on some multiple choice test or whatever.
To agencies, and companies: please don’t be afraid of people who are fast enough, people who are willing to make mistakes for YOU, to learn and make things you never did before. Those are the ones who are able to bring your company to a next level.

Be weird.

ALWAYS. You don’t fit in a group just because a random person, a CEO, a head of, your boss in general is saying that? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I need to see more weird people around, I need to see more magic stuff happening.
Art is what I need to do and see to create something. And if you apply this to SEO, content strategy and all the stuff you are doing, you are gonna see results in a heart beat. And you are going to have fun too.

Have fun.

Have fun in what you are doing. If you are writing something just to have Rand Fishkin or Sean Revell to tweet in reply saying “you did a great job”, well man…you are screw. The passion is the thing we need. Passion for projects, weird stuff, music, SEO. Only in this way we can help companies and clients to do better. Don’t you think? I see too many people without passion in their eyes. I don’t know…to me it’s like wasting time.

Pick yourself.

Many people are saying that. And it’s true. Don’t wait for the people to find you. Write an email, ask, send them a video message, a nice image, help them, whatever….pick yourself. I’m not able to wait for people to ask me about a consultation or a good LP to listen. I prefer to tweet or write about music, or to contact a blogger who is having problems with her blog and she is not even realizing it. Pick yourself and demonstrate your company you can do something great. Pick yourself and challenge the client to go on the streets asking about their product to make a video of people commenting on it. Pick yourself and find new way of create awesome content. Pick yourself and find a nice way to outreach people to have a link.

OK. Done. Thanks a lot for reading this and for celebrating with me two years in the SEO world.

It’s been an awesome journey til now, and I’m sure it’s going to be in the future as well. 2013 is going to be a year where few things will change.

Feel free to comment, to offend me, or whatever you wanna do. No censorship here 😀

Take care my friends.