Why you should have your own site as an SEO

To be a successful SEO, you need to know how a website works, where code is added, what tweaks are needed. And it’s best and easiest to do this on your own website, where testing and breaking aren’t the end of the world, rather than doing this at your workplace.

Even if you're just starting in Digital Marketing and everything seems daunting, it's useful to have a website. You can use a CMS like Squarespace, Wordpress, or Wix. And having a website can help you in many ways, from practising your writing to learning the basics of Tech SEO. I started working in SEO by chance, specialising soon after my first Marketing job.

1. Your website can be your online portfolio for work, skills, and interests.

I've had my current site since around September 2016 - that's when my first blog on this site was published. But since I always take ages to create, change, and tweak stuff, I most likely started way before. I distinctly remember having a link to my site on my CV when I applied to the job I started in October 2016. And since then, whenever I applied to jobs, a lot of the applications asked for a Twitter handle and a personal website link. Having both of these updated semi-regularly has definitely helped.

2. You can practice writing

You're going to need to write at work - from tweets to emails to blogs, you're going to have to learn to adapt your writing to different markets, topics, and audiences. Writing about the latest rose gold trend will have to sound different than content about the latest boxing match between YouTubers (it's a thing, look it up). You can use free keyword tools to practice making your blogs SEO-friendly.

3. You can learn the basics of Google Analytics.

After you're satisfied with your design, you should add Google Analytics tracking to your site. You won't get that much traffic at first (if any), but it's still good to add it as early as possible so you can start gathering data. All these CMS services will have a guide on how to install it and it will generally be pretty easy. You can see which content gets the most views, what locations readers come from, and more. For example, I found out that this week my top blog was my May 2017 "Ways a Night Owl Gets Ready for Work" blog - and I'm not proud of that content so now I'm planning to tweak it or write a "proper" one!

4. You can practice coding

Knowing basic HTML skills is a must for SEO - even better if you also learn CSS, and the best if you also learn JavaScript! You can try to tweak parts of your website by adding colours, changing font-sizes, adding extra links, adding semi-transparent backgrounds - the list is endless! And if you break the design, you can always delete what you've done and start again, without worrying you've broken the website at your workplace. You can also inspect your pages (ctrl+shift+i in Chrome) and see what's going on "under the hood" and see what code is used for each part. Familiarise yourself with this as it will come in handy when you have to present Tech SEO recommendations to the developer.

5. You can learn the basics of Google Search Console

You can easily track your website, just like with Google Analytics. Add it as quickly as you can, so you can start to gather data. You can learn about indexed pages, pagespeed, and what different types of crawling issues mean. Writing this, I've realised I have quite a few issues that I need to look into - and this task will definitely enhance my professional skills!