Do You Work At Home As An SEO Or Have An Office?
-
I'm curious how many of you all work at home or mostly at home either through an company or freelance. Or are most of you employed at a corporation?
My company was recently bought by a very large global company. Recently I found out that all the SEO and web design is contracted through outside sources. With the headquarters in Europe, this being my primary job function I kinda feel well you know.... down..
Websites I put my life into for the last 7 years are going to be handed over to a corporation to do with whatever they feel they should. I know they were never really mine, but when you spend so much of your life to making them the best you can, so much so to attract the attention of a global billion dollar company, you should feel great right? But I feel like my dog just died.
I don't have a bad impression of the company but the shift of moving me to the IT guy has begun. Normal web updates I would have done, are now being pushed aside. I don't hate IT I like helping others, but I really loved being able to make a difference through the web.
Now I'm left contemplating my future, big corporations have so much bs, I just don't feel comfortable. I would really appreciate you all giving me your thoughts and tell me about any similar experiences you have had in your life.
Cheers,
Don
-
I really appreciate all of you taking the time to tell me about your experiences.
I am only sorry I could only mark 3 of you as good answers. All your input was welcomed and helpful to me in one way or another.
I hope to continue to see you on the boards, maybe just not as much.
Don
-
Don, sorry to hear you are having a tough time. You are so good at what you do, don't let the man get you down
I started working in SEO as a hobby because I loved to write content. I did it for free for my friends' businesses and then started teaching myself some of the technical stuff. Now I work in house as the online marketing director. I hate being the only one in the company who knows anything about SEO and AdWords. I feel like I am always speaking Chinese to these guys. I have a few consultants, but it isn't the same as having a team of people to bounce ideas off of or double check my strategies. That is kind of why I like the Moz Q&A so much, it is like my team away from home lol.
It is a tough decision, the rebel in me wants to find out if you considered starting your own shop and taking your clients with you because I know you could handle it. And if ever something came up that you couldn't tackle you could find answers online; Moz, Search Engine Land, or any other resource. That is kind of the beauty of SEO, you can find the answers without getting out of your pajamas.
Again, sorry to hear this is weighing you down.Good luck!
-
I've been running my agency from a home office for the last 14 years. Those on my team all work remotely, and it works out well. With a digital agency, there isn't much that you can do in an office that you can't do remotely. I'm very spoiled, so it would take a lot to get me to commute to an office every day. On the other hand, I like to attend networking events and conferences to keep from becoming a total recluse.
Of course, there's a downside to working from home. I don't recommend it if you're an extrovert, which I'm not. I don't recommend it if you can't manage your time and resist distractions. You also have to be able to resist the urge to work all the time.
-
Hey,
I own a blog, and except the contributors, there is nobody else working for me, for now.
BUT, I **work from office all the time. **My dad owns a company, and he lets me come and work there because I really enjoy the atmosphere.
In other works, when I am in the office, I don't have anything else to do but work.
If I work from home, there are thousands distraction that may come in my way.
Good day,
-
I run an in house team for a large ecommorce company in the UK. We all work from the same office. I love having the team around me to bounce ideas of and debate new ways of solving problems.
I can fully understand how you feel, yes they are not yours and the site I work for I don't own - but I have put it a lot of long hours making the site as good as an experience as possible - I would hate for someone to come in and take control.
-
I work in a large agency (we have 3 floors in our building) and I understand your concern. Often I have "pet projects" that do well and go live out to everyone. Then I have to worry about whether someone will "mess up" the way I had it working perfectly.
On the other hand, I used to work at home alone in my own agency. I found it quieter but less productive. I get more done with a bit of interaction and people asking me questions. I like having more people around and I've decided if my pet projects go live, I have to assume I'll lose a bit of control but hopefully add something excellent to the business.
You sound like you've done a fantastic job at attracting a mammoth business to love your work. I think if you can fit into their plans you would enjoy that. You may not control 100% everything but if they can see the value in what you do, hopefully they can move you into a role that controls a piece of a much larger company and you can contribute that way.
-
I work at an office. My office with a couple employees.
I started making websites while working at a full time job. Eventually I had to quit something and quit the job.
You sound like a dedicated person. I respect the posts that you make here. You are obviously good at your work.
So, think about building a couple websites of your own. You might need to work for someone else while you do this but eventually you might be able to work entirely for yourself.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Great SEO Agency
Hi again all, I have appreciated all the help from the community as we are rebuilding our site. Currently we are looking for a great SEO consulting firm to help us with a number of key SEO related tasks and strategies. I have looked through the recommended list MOZ provides: http://moz.com/community/recommended, but I wanted to get everyone's take on who they thought was the "best" - on that list or otherwise. We are looking for an agency that can help us optimize the site, create an ongoing strategy, help with link building, help with sitemap creation and management (5 million + pages, primarily dynamic) and possibly help with content. Anyone have recommendations they could share? Thanks David
Industry News | | BestRide0 -
Looking For A reliable Japanese Based SEO Agency
Hey everyone, my company is looking for a reliable SEO agency to help with our Japanese site. I was wondering if anyone had any possible positive experiences with one? Carl
Industry News | | geekdesign0 -
SEO Risks for redirecting sites
Hey Everyone, I've tried searching for this question, but am not exactly sure what keywords to search for so I'm probably missing the resources if they already exist... My client has had duplicated sites for years, and after multiple penalizations of those sites I was finally able to convince him to consolidate them into a "mega-site". Currently, he has a main domain, a geo-subdomain for each office location under the main domain, and a geo-domain for each office location. We plan on redirecting each geo-domain to the corresponding geo-subdomain. So, the final result will be one main domain, and a sub-domain for each office location. I'm looking for any information regarding tracking SEO data after the redirects are in place, how to guard against potential drops in SERPs, what's the smartest strategy to implement, etc... My client is very sensitive to his sites' SEO data, so if anyone has any SEO-related advice regarding redirecting sites it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Industry News | | Level2Designs0 -
Looking for Freelance SEO'ers
Hi, I wouldn't normally post a request for freelancers here, but I noticed someone else has done it and its not against the rules! so here goes... We are looking for Freelancers to help with our work load. In particular we are searching for Link Builders who can establish links on various websites through the use of article writing/blog content posting and other methods. Also, we require general SEOs who can perform the usual technical tasks such as creating 301's, canonicals and SEO audit reports on client websites. Ideally we only want UK based, white hatters with at least 2 years SEO experience. Please pm me if this interests you. Thanks Aran
Industry News | | Chiefblob0 -
Post your favorite SEOs for Mom and Pop Shops
I'm trying to compile a list of SEOs and/or Inbound Marketers that specialize in helping micro-businesses. For the purposes of this study 'micro' means any business with 5 or fewer employees. Names are great. Website URLs would be Fab. Twitter accounts would be super Fab. For instance: David Mihm http://www.davidmihm.com/ @davidmihm I'd be happy to share the final list with anyone who provides a name.
Industry News | | JesseCWalker0 -
Where do i find Local SEO Clients?
Hey, So i've been doing SEO for a while now and know a lot of tactics and a lot of ways to get my/others sites hire. I know good software (and have that software with full licenses and know the methods to use it in whitehat ways that will work well), internal content linking, title/description, webmaster tools (both google and bing), sitemaps etc... I have clients and my own sites that i have managed to get high in google, as well as my own local site that is number 1 in Google for my hometown + SEO, but that only gets about 80 searches a month and gets me very little if any phone calls a week. I've also just ordered 250 high quality business cards, that i spent ages designing to look awesome.. If these work well i'll print some more and stick all over the place... I currently have 2 local clients, 1 is a local web agency who every client they have they pay me a specific amount to boost that company in Google and the other is just a family friend who pays me a small amount a month to build links for him. I'd like to have 10-15+ clients all on my payroll with a nice amount of income that i can live off. I just finished full-time school and am just coming into the big wide world and have for paid for my new laptop, desktop, 2 monitors, SEO software licenses and SEOMoz account from niche blogs, software and SEO coaching and such.. I've built a brilliant online portfolio for people and have had a lot of great feedback from online clients. But i can only earn around $10-$110 per online client for SEO and around $8/hour for coaching... I'd like to be able to make that a LOT more. I do web/graphic design as well and have built a nice portfolio for that as well. So back to the main question, how did you and how do i get local clients? Thanks!
Industry News | | pompano210 -
What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated. Option: 1 If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page. Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used. Option: 2
Industry News | | webbroi
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement. This agreement rests on the following: The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme. For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed. The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results. In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide. Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab https://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=357690 -
Help needed compiling SEO career resources!
We're looking to put together all the best resources out there that offer advice to those thinking of starting a career in SEO and internet marketing, particuarly for graduates. So far we've got Rand's Whiteboard Friday and this post here: http://www.eatsleepsearch.com/2011/07/17/how-to-land-a-graduate-job-in-seo/ Can anyone point me in the direction of a few more good ones? I'm sure there'll be absolutely loads out there!
Industry News | | 9xbmarketing0