The truth about working for SEO agencies

SEO, short for search engine optimisation, is a catch-all term for strategies and tactics employed by businesses to increase their visibility in search engines like Google.

From the outside, it may seem like a glamorous job. A modern-day Mad Men role, if you will. You’re helping businesses communicate with their audience, shaping the conversation through the mediums of copy, images and video. You help unlock the power of the web. You also get to understand how Google works. Exciting.

However, when someone asks me if I have tips for starting a career in SEO, which is usually agency side, I have to give them fair warning that it may not be not all it is cracked up to be.

You see, while SEO can greatly help a business become visible online, it’s often not a fruitful career in the long-run.

Why?

The pay is low for the work done

Probably the least attractive thing about working in SEO at all is the salary, which is low, but lowest agency-side. Having spoken to friends who work abroad, this isn’t the case in places like the USA, but in the UK, where I live and work, it’s certainly so.

The average salary in the UK is around £31k at the beginning of 2020. The average SEO role I see advertised for someone with 5+ years of experience in the industry pays around that, give or take 10%.

The graph below breaks down salaries for UK SEO specialists, using data from the Office of National Statistics.

In order to get paid significantly above the median, you will need to land a senior role, probably in-house, but these are very competitive and often not advertised publicly. If the role is agency side, it is likely to have a very high workload. This is why it’s important to create a LinkedIn profile so you can be approached about these roles directly once you have enough experience. These roles pay around £45-55k. The graph above shows a theoretically possible peak of making £70k-odd, but those are outliers, likely based in London, where salaries are higher to compensate for living costs.

When seen in the context of how much value a good SEO professional can add to a business, a median salary of £30k-odd is not fair. That is less than a school teacher. And they get 40 days of holiday, job security and a fantastic pension.

Are you going to have a realistic chance of saving enough to buy property or have enough for a comfortable retirement on that type of money? I think you’ll struggle. SEO is a relatively young, if deceptively mature field, with nobody yet working in it from fresh-faced grad through to retirement age.

Therefore, I would recommend anyone in this industry grow their skillset to include web development, PPC or analytics. I even see jobs advertised where SEO skills are required alongside photo and video editing. If you can provide a broad digital skillset, that will greatly open up your job prospects.

Most people don’t think they can develop a website. Most people don’t think they can correctly tag a website using container tags and data layers. Far too many people think they can do SEO, especially as it overlaps with content strategy.

Just words on a page, right? Meta info, headers, then keywords weaved into the copy. Boom.

As if it’s actually that simple.

This industry has a lot of cowboys, and a flooded market pushes salaries and rates down.

Clients can have unrealistic expectations

Clients can have unrealistic expectations of how much of a traffic increase they can expect and how quickly this can be done.

This is where a good account manager and education of how Google works is important.

The truth is that SEO takes time and effort. Google doesn’t care that you simply have a website, in the same way that an employer doesn’t care that you simply have a university degree. Big deal. So do many people.

You have to make it clear to clients that they need to prove that their website deserves to be on page 1 for the money terms they want to rank for. If you’re starting with a brand-new or long-neglected website, it’s not going to take weeks or months, it’s going to take years. And those are years of hard, constant graft, not just sitting back and waiting for Google’s algorithm to catch up.

The days of being able to rank on page 1 quickly for high-volume search queries with commercial intent – what I consider the Golden Age of SEO – are long gone for established industries.

The websites that are on page 1 right now did not appear there by accident. Most of them have invested in SEO for a considerable amount of time and have ultimately achieved what they have by being the best and most relevant results for those queries.

John Mueller of Google keeps repeating the mantra of “focus on quality content”, which, while an over-simplification, is true. If you can’t honestly say that your client’s website deserves to be one of the top 10 results for a query when judged by Google’s Search Quality Guidelines, you can’t expect it to be a page 1 result.

Just rewriting meta info and adding a few pieces long-form blog content is not going to be enough to dethrone your competition, despite what that Whiteboard Friday from Moz may have lead you to believe.

Unscrupulous gurus and consultants who give the impression that results can be achieved quickly do so because:

1. They know they can make money in the short term. By the time results have failed to materialise, they’ve already gotten paid and are onto the next one.
2. Comforting lies are easier to hear than unforgiving truths. This is observed in many industries. In fitness, science-based experts like Lyle McDonald aren’t as popular as hucksters like V Shred, who sells you on the idea that you can look as great as he does with relatively little effort, relatively quickly.
3. They don’t know any better. There are no standardised exams or governing bodies for SEO professionals, in part because the industry moves on so quickly. Therefore, you can be a semi-competent copywriter with access to a keyword tool and delude yourself into thinking you are a legitimate expert.

Sometimes it’s a combination of all 3.

On the hook for what you can’t deliver

I understand the temptation to tell a client what they want to hear – really, I do.

I would love to tell a client that they can rank on page 1 for “car finance” in 6-8 months when they’re currently on page 5. Telling people good news and seeing the joy on their face feels great. It’s addictive.

I also understand why it’s hard to tell clients it will take time. They want a return on investment, and one that they can hold you to in a reasonable timeframe.

Finance departments and C-suite executives don’t want to hear “it will take 2-3 years of hard work to become the number 1 most visible website for generic searches in our field, but there are no guarantees of rankings or conversions. Google algorithm updates and competitor changes can put a spanner in the works. If we try hard and stay the course, hard-fought rankings will stay with us longer than any paid media.”

They want to hear “in 6 months’ time, we will grow traffic by X% and sales by Y%”.

But this is doing them a disservice in the long run if it is not possible.

Depending on the client’s business, a new customer’s journey can be long, complex and consist of many touch points before they make a decision – search, social media, forums, friends and family and so on. A direct, linear and quick relationship between a particular ranking keyword and sales is awesome, but in many cases is not realistic, nor measurable with 100% accuracy (depending on your product, conversion funnel and tracking).

Yes, rankings help, but rankings alone cannot turn an ailing business around, nor guarantee sales.

For example, if your Trustpilot, Feefo and social media listings paint a picture of a terrible business that neglects customers, the value of increased search traffic will be diminished. Why would new customers hand over their money when they see how badly you treat existing ones? Just because they found you on page 1?

Committing to a sales uplift figure from improved SEO can therefore lead to uncomfortable client conversations in future. Be careful when you do. It is better to underpromise and overdeliver. I hope you have the courage to stand behind this credo as pressure mounts to promise clients what will make them sign on the dotted line.

Not everyone gets to be famous

Do you remember those early seasons of Pop Idol where Simon Cowell would roast the deluded contestants who hadn’t heard from anyone in their life that they couldn’t actually sing?

The reality is that your client may never be able to outrank their competitors, in the same way that they may never be able to outperform them financially. But no website owner will truly know what is possible until they have given SEO a long and concerted effort, not just fixed housekeeping errors identified from an initial site audit.

It’s going to take time and it will happen incrementally. Going from page 10 to page 5 is progress. It’s still not reached the point where it will translate into significant traffic, but it is progress.

And you have to go past page 5 to get to page 1.

The problem is that it can be hard to appreciate that thing are going well when the results haven’t yet bore the fruit of significant generic search traffic. I’ve seen many relationships end at this stage, because the reality of how Google works wasn’t pressed upon the client.

Honest and realistic targets are going to make clients and you happier in the long run.

PPC can steal your thunder

Because PPC does offer instant page 1 rankings for queries with commercial intent, it is often an easier sell for clients.

In X month, they paid Y amount of money for Z terms. Using a conversion window of, say, 6 weeks, we can see how much money came in from straight and assisted conversions and calculate an ROI.

That’s an easier sell to a lot of clients than SEO, in particular ones that are new to working with an agency, who may be nervous about spending money with a new supplier.

PPC also provides more granular data about the terms visitors have used and the (ad) messaging that best resonated with them.

This can lead SEO to be seen as a second-choice option and receive less funds and investment from the client. Why would you put money into something that could create top of funnel traffic some time in the future when you can get top of the funnel traffic to your site today with the same money?

SEO can even be looked down upon inside full-service digital agencies. I actually interviewed for an SEO position with one such establishment.

At my final interview, I asked why they’d left their own website un-optimised for organic search. They said: “Ah, it’s a bit of a political issue. We don’t really use the site for leads anyway, most of our business comes from word of mouth”.

Hold on, did they just let me know they think SEO is pointless? And they actually provide it for their clients? Needless to say, I immediately lost interest in working for them. It would be like selling bibles written by atheists.

Thinking PPC and SEO are mutually exclusive is wrong. PPC tends to work better for commercial queries where there already are many bidders taking up space on page 1. SEO works better for informational queries where there are few or none. Because the click itself didn’t cost anything, there’s not the same need to recoup it.

Moreover, SEO and PPC work well together. Things that improve organic search rankings, such as faster page load speeds and relevant, targeted landing pages, also help Google Ads by improving the Landing Page Experience component of your Quality Score.

PPC work at an agency is actually also quite tough. Typically, you will be somewhat robotically churning out reports, analysing multivariate tests of copy, location targeting and keywords, sometimes with little impact on what happens with the journey you are sending traffic to.

I remember one of my colleagues working on a PPC campaign for a client that sells gas masks for power plants. The client was always irate that changes made to the PPC campaign didn’t bring in enough leads. A much bigger problem was that their website was a confusing and dated mess. It never occurred to them that maybe, just maybe, they should invest in a new website instead of expecting miracles from a different headline in a paid search ad.

Link building is digital cold calling

Links are one of the oldest and most important ranking signals for SEO.

Therefore, building links is something you will need to do at some point in your career, or at least organise. It’s typically one of the first things people do in the industry, and is a bit like dancing – boring, yet difficult.

This is where I got my start, building links relentlessly that, at the time, did translate into high rankings quickly. I would get links from directory and article websites that nobody would visit – that is, except Googlebot. I asked one of my account managers what the point was of building these links, as nobody human would visit a site like Search Turtle. He told me: “don’t worry, it just works”.

This was incredibly lucrative. I was being paid close to minimum wage, articles were often written for a pittance by freelancers and each article cost somewhere around £600. Some clients were spending over £150k a year for my team and I to copypasta all over the web.

Google has since clamped down on this practice, with the Penguin and Panda updates of the early 2010s lowering rankings for sites with thin content and destroying the value of their links.

Today, link building is much tougher and even with the latest automation tools at your disposal, doing it ethically and sustainably is mentally draining.

You will probably run out of quality links quickly. After about 6-12 months or so, chances are, you’ve identified all the important sites to get links from, and have hopefully made a lot of headway acquiring them.

Past that, additional links are likely to offer a diminishing return to scale, but if you are assigned to keep link building for a particular client, you will have to keep finding targets. That means you’ll start building gradually less relevant links until you’re just bloating the internet with links that nobody will ever click on. Like I did. You’re just playing the Waiting Game for the client to end the contract.

The human component should also not be understated. Once you’ve identified suitable targets, you still need to approach the site owner/PR person/media relations, etc, build a relationship and eventually ask for a link. No amount of automation can replace the most crucial part. That requires the ability to persuade people to do something that has no real benefit to them, unless you’re giving them some sort of incentive. This can be kind of shady and is considered a paid link, which Google frowns upon if it is only used to manipulate rankings.

The average link builder lasts somewhere between 12-18 months before moving on to a more satisfying part of SEO like reporting or account management.

Management can have too much power

There are several smaller agencies where the founder/MD is very hands-on, and doubles as one of the main account managers.

This concentration of power is not good. There’s a reason why modern democracies have a separation of powers, using checks and balances to prevent them being misused.

When you are working for a person that has this much power, it can lead to nepotism. I’ve seen staff who add a lot of value be overlooked because they weren’t able or willing to do enough ego massaging. I’ve even pulled them aside and told them that they need to change their ways and start peacocking. People who added a lot less were able to attain senior positions in part because they were good at playing the game.

In this type of environment, you will be in or out of favour, and if you’re out, your days can be very tough.

Another common thread is that the founder/MD/AM hybrid does not appreciate that you, as an employee, are not as invested as they are. For them, working late routinely makes sense. As a company director, they’re no doubt handsomely remunerated, probably in dividends, rather than salary, for the tax efficiencies this affords.

Too often than I care to mention, when I have started packing up my bags at 5:30pm – when the contract I signed said the day was over – I received accusatory looks from said person. A lot of agency employees work far in excess of their contracted hours, and I am sad to say it’s often expected and not appreciated.

We’re not saving lives here. When a new site launch is happening or an emergency occurs, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to ask staff to flex their working hours to accommodate it. But working late every night when there’s not an immediate need is wasted effort and leads to burnout. How can you be fresh and ready to handle emergencies when you’re constantly running at full capacity?

Beer fridge and table tennis instead of actual staff benefits

The quirks of agency life may seem fun at first, but the shine wears off for most.

Socialising is going to be important for you to progress in the company, which, depending on your temperament and interests, may or may not be a good thing. I found it grating after a few months. As much as I got along with most of my colleagues and even made friends along the way, I prefer to disconnect from work in the evening.

Pay reviews may happen less frequently than the company told you during the recruitment process, and the increases themselves can be smaller, too. If you’ve been able to help the company sign big clients or keep them happy, that’s not fair and a common bone of contention for agency staff I know.

My tip to you when applying for a job at an SEO agency is to bargain hard for your starting salary, because it may be hard to make significant improvements.

So why work for an SEO agency?

Learning how Google works is interesting and rewarding.

Depending on the industry, social media and vertical search engines like Amazon and Skyscanner could be more important, but Google is still one of the go-to starting points for learning about something new.

Ethics are what we do when nobody’s watching. Google is where you ask where nobody’s judging.

Or too busy. Too far away. Too expensive.

How could you not want to know how it works?

Working at an agency will give you a good starting point and expose you to many websites quickly. If you enjoy socialising and going out with colleagues, it can be a great place to work, at least for a little while.

Longer term prospects

If you decide to stay in this racket longer-term, you can hopefully find a good in-house role that pays you the kind of salary you deserve. There’s a reason why the lifeblood of agencies are first- and second-jobbers. Businesses that have an in-house SEO function have usually decided to invest in earnest and you will be in a better position to manage stakeholders and see work through.

In-house staff are also seen more as a resource than a cost. If a business experiences leaner times, it is often easier to end a contract with a supplier than make staff redundant.

You could also go on to freelance for yourself. I have dabbled with this in the past and didn’t find it to my liking, but I have friends who do it, love it and make a great living.

In my time, I have also worked with people who went on to work in related fields like UX, UI or development and an understanding of SEO helps all of these.

Even if you choose to move on to something more tangentially related, like systems thinking or service design, it never hurts to understand how Google fits in to your customers’ lives.

Either way, if you do decide to head down the road I did, don’t say I didn’t warn you.