How to create an SEO career plan in three steps

Most people don’t have a plan for their career, which is why they get stuck and frustrated.

Here’s how you develop a realistic career plan based on three simple choices, no matter whether you work in-house, freelance, or for agency:

1. Goal setting
2. Role progression
3. Core skills

Goal setting​

It’s important to aim for something when building a vision for yourself. It’s totally legit to set goals you truly care about: title, salary, lifestyle, accomplishments. You don’t always have to save the world or become president of the United States. Setting goals that look good make no one happy.

Try to be as precise as possible when setting a goal, especially when aiming for a lifestyle or specific accomplishments.

• Bad goal: “make a lot of money while having fun” or “learn new things”
• Good goal: “make $15K a month from consulting SaaS companies in the self-serve B2B space while working 4 hours a day”

The goal is actually a vision you aim for. Write it down so you can see it every day.

The vision allows you to work backwards and think about your role progression.

Role progression​

After you set your goal, you need to think about how your role is going to progress over time. In-house SEOs in particular should think about their preferred career paths and map it to the roles/levels of the company they work at.

For example: Jnr technical SEO → SEO specialist → Snr SEO → SEO Lead → Head of SEO → Director of SEO → VP SEO

Roles and requirements will vary from company to company. But when you carve out your own path, you can have a conversation with your manager about what a progression could look like over the next X years. Don’t forget, they’re interested in you progressing, too!

Paths rarely play out as planned, but it’s good to have a rough idea so you know what skills you need to build and experience to collect to make it to the next step.

Core skills​

Every role has required skills you need to master in order to jump to the next higher role. One of the best things you can do for yourself is mapping required skills to different role progressions.

Show this plan to your manager/mentor and ask for feedback to:

• Validate you’re optimizing for skills that matter
• Show you’re hungry for more
• Demonstrate that you can think long-term
• Get better guidance
• Ask stronger questions

Now that you know what skills you need to build out for each step toward your vision, you can create a plan for how to acquire each skill. Sometimes, it’s accomplishing a specific project. Others, it’s spending a certain time in a role or function. Whatever skills you aim for, have a regular conversation with your manager about your progress. Ask for feedback, learn, and refine your approach.

The most successful people take responsibility for their careers and don’t wait for managers to come and save them.

You’re ahead of 99% of people if you make each of the three choices above consciously and intentionally.

I’ll end on three more tips:

1. Review your progress against your vision every quarter
2. Find a mentor to guide you
3. Ask for 360 degree feedback (from your manager, peers, and direct-reports) on specific skills

I remember reading about writing your goals and tasks on a sheet of paper vs. on a digital notepad (phone, computer, etc.). Personally - writing my goals on a notebook can improve my productivity drastically. As for mentors - be careful with who you trust!

Great share, @Geasy

Above all, it's a waiting game. Patience is key.
Spicy write-up

I will come back to this later. Thanks for the share man.

Nice share mate.
In SEO field, proper goal setting and moving towards it with patience is must.
But nowadays, some ppl without proper goal and proper path travel along and finally drop out, frustrated, exhausted.