10+1 Things ONLY an SEO Has to Endure

Yes, in the middle of August, without having enjoyed a vacation and enduring clients who write to me from the beach, I thought it was a good time to write a post like this:

11 things that surely have happened to you while working as an SEO. The things this industry endures every day are quite something!

It's not that you're going to learn anything new here, but I'm sure you'll get a laugh or two.

Let's give it a try:

SEO Anecdotes That Happen to All of Us

You can be a very good SEO and do your job very well.

Or you can also be a terrible SEO, have good clients, and still make a living from it.

It doesn't matter what type of SEO you are because the things you have to endure daily, let's admit it, are quite funny when you remember them over time.

And that's precisely what we wanted to do today: remember the 10+1 things that only an SEO has to endure.

Here we go!

1. That your client wants to choose the main keywords

Let's not kid ourselves, everyday people have no idea what SEO is about.

They are determined to rank for words that don't even have searches.

Dear client, without searches, there is no web traffic. It doesn't matter if you rank first for that word if no one is going to search for it.

And you tell them

And you repeat it.

And you emphasize it.

But nothing.

2. That they argue with you that their ranking is good

But if I type my company name in Google and I come up first

Very well, kid, you got it.

Statements like these are what you have to endure almost daily when you do SEO positioning for companies.

3. That they come from another previous SEO

When they have already had “SEO” done before... things happen.

You may get clients who have been paying 500 euros a month for SEO for 4 years and don't even have a sitemap (real case)

Or clients who want link building by weight:

• Same anchor to the same URL 4 times in the same article.

Don't tell them no.

They will listen to your arguments, but they won't pay any attention to you.

4. Worse yet: that they bring their own CMS

How many clients come to you with their own CMS that only their IT person knows how to handle and don't want to change it?

It takes you forever to convince them and convince the IT person, who also feels that you are undervaluing their work.

A good soap opera, which usually ends happily, but gives you a few headaches.

5. That other SEOs ruin a link that was perfect

I'm sorry for the language, but too many links get “ruined” for us, don't they?

You find a perfect themed forum to link to your website.

You open a new thread and, to avoid being obvious and not to be a spammer, you put in a lot of effort.

You publish and wait a few days to then come back and place your link.

When you return, the thread has 4 pages full of outgoing links from SEOs who spammed before you.

Wonderful.

You could be the dumbest SEO in history, but since no one knows who you are, nothing has happened here.

Keep looking for links.

You can also open a thread and have a spammer SEO come and take advantage of it before you even place your link in the forum:

6. What I call “the Alex Navarro Factor”

You surely remember Alex Navarro's Seonautas course.

Many SEOs were shocked when it came out because Alex and David were going to explain how they set up their famous diet niche.

Do you know what happened next?

The same old story.

A bunch of people starting diet niches.

(If you are one of those affected who at that time had a diet niche, you can thank Alex in the comments section)

Be careful because it can also happen that you start a niche and find out that you have Alex Navarro as competition. Do you continue or not with the niche? Personally, I think about it, just in case he releases another course 😛

7. That they pull your niches by email or IP and come to ask you

It's very common to spy on other SEOs' niches and try to extract all their websites from an email or an IP.

But hasn't it ever happened to you that they come to tell you they have the same niche as you?

Yes, you are a bit taken aback because:

1.- You don't like being spied on.

2.- You don't understand why they come to tell you they are your competition.

Well, yes. I think it happens to all of us.

8. The problem with writers

Finding a good writer is a complicated task.

Either they don't know how to optimize and send you texts with keyword stuffing.

Or they don't meet deadlines.

Or they send you the test article and it's great, but the following ones are of poor quality and aren't even good for tiers.

Or, even better. The first one is done by him/her and the rest are subcontracted, and the quality... well, you know.

In short, when you find a good writer, you don't let them go.

9. The fear of sysadmins and migrations

Don't deny it, not all of us know how to do migrations and we need the help of a sysadmin.

But there's too much at stake.

Even switching from http to https, which is something super simple for a sysadmin, generates stress, anxiety, fear, and panic for you.

Just like with writers, if you find a reliable sysadmin who is an expert in what they do, don't let them slip away.

The problem is that it usually isn't like that, and we always have issues.

We argue a lot with sysadmins and programmers in general, don't you think?

And their rates ALWAYS seem ridiculously high to us. Always.

Because yes, every professional defends their interests and knowledge, and SEO always goes down a different path. Patience, it's possible to reach a common ground, but at the beginning, we feel very alone. Misunderstood forever.

10. First niches, mistakes everywhere

If you are a competent SEO, this no longer happens to you. But when you are starting, you make many mistakes of this kind.

Your first niches were full of mistakes.

For example, deleting content without making redirects or without waiting for them to deindex.

Or the famous Hello World!...

I'm sure you can think of many more.

Extra Bonus: That an Update comes and changes your life (for the worse)

The last update in August has taken down a lot of projects that have lost ranking and traffic.

As an SEO, you spend a lot of time and money growing your projects, but you are just waiting to see what happens when Google decides to introduce improvements or modifications to its algorithm that affect its ranking. That uncertainty will always accompany us.

Have you identified with these anecdotes? We have compiled them among all the members of the Unancor team. I'm sure you have many more, so feel free to leave us a comment down here and let's keep the laughs going.