Are You a Successful SEO? Prove it.

I have been in search marketing for a little over two years now, and when I first started, I constantly found myself asking peers and experienced SEOs about the industry. I have been confused as to what the different job descriptions and tasks performed are between people who work in-house vs. an agency or those who are strictly consultants. I wondered if I was missing out on some key piece of information that would help me unlock the secrets of search, build a personal brand and gain notoriety and knowledge all at the same time. I felt as if there was something else, some big, important task that I should be doing that others were doing that helped them win clients and write awesome and insightful blog posts. In layman's terms, I felt really unsuccessful.

Over time, I learned that there is no secret to search. SEO is just like anything else; if you want to win and be the best, it takes hard work, a desire to learn, and some serious hustle. I've grown over the years to know that there is no fast track to any of these things, and I've also learned that there is no way to accurately measure success on the whole. If there was, we would all be pawns playing against the Rand Fishkins and Matt Cutts that seem to have infinite knowledge and power in the SEO world. Comparing yourself is a good way to get you down. It is, however, a great way to help develop goals and find examples of how you want to be in one, three, or five years. Because of the difficulty I have had in determining success, I've comprised a list of 10 metrics that I feel are a good test to measure yourself against to see if you are learning and growing.

1. Ranking – I'm going to come out and say it: Ranking is a terrible way to measure if you are successful. Your clients may want you to win the easiest keywords in the world, and others may have extremely challenging ones they want you to work on. I would focus instead on gains/losses that are incurred because of your SEO work. Did your client rank on page five for "Fuzzy Mittens" previously? Did you write some content, build some links and develop a social network and now they rank on page two? I'd say that's a pretty good start. Direct rankings as correlation to how successful you are is bad, overall impact is good.

2. Links – Another sketchy way to measure success. How many links are you building? Honestly, it doesn't even matter. Consider how many quality links you are building. Did you work your butt off all week and get five links that are totally related and are super high domain and page authority? Or did you put in a few hours and get a couple dozen directory submissions and comment spams? Think about how powerful the value is that your links are passing. Is Google seeing you as a high quality resource with a strong back link profile or are you setting of their spam radar?

3. Content – Are you a good writer? How do you know? Have you ever let other people read your content before it goes live or are you worried they are going to tell you it's terrible? Has anything you have ever written gone viral? Try using an online proofreader like Paper Rater to proofread your articles and check for plagiarism issues before you go live with your new content. Another really simple snuff test is to copy and paste a large section of your content and search for it in Google. Is there another site that has lots of similar content? You may want to consider revising.

4. Your Personal Site – Your personal site is a great place to start when measuring your success. There is no better place to experiment than on your own site. How are your title tags? URLs? Do you still write meta descriptions and keywords out of best practice or are you lazy? Is the site design clean and user friendly? If you didn't own your site and you visited it, would you be interested in hiring yourself based on experience? These are all great things to consider when doing a site audit on your own site. Set everything up yourself and then get somebody who is more experienced that you to help you out and give you tips. This is a great way to see if you caught all the basics and if you need some help on the more advanced aspects of site auditing.

5. Past Client Referrals – If you have worked as a consultant in the past, how are your relationships with past clients? Did you perform good, honest work and leave the client satisfied? Or did you goof around and waste some time and money and burn a bridge? I think the best way to tell if you are successful based on prior experience is if your clients give you referrals. This is the ultimate sign of trust and satisfaction. Have you ever been referred?

6. Site Penalization – Now, this is clearly something you want to avoid, and I realize I might get some flak for this. However, many veterans say that they have learned the most by getting punished by the big G. Having a site dropped from Google's index can be a terrible experience, but can also be a fantastic way to learn from your mistakes. The ultimate test, however, is have you ever had a site banned and then regain rankings later on based on good, clean, white hat SEO? Consider that a huge success.

7. Black Hat – Honestly, black hat is a huge part of SEO. There are countless sites these days getting banned because of paid links and other common tactics. This point is not whether or not you can do black hat without getting caught, but rather, how much do you know about black hat and understand? Most importantly, do you know the implications of getting caught doing black hat SEO? If you can't face the facts about black hat, then you don't know how to work around it and beat it. Do you know how to recognize a link profile that looks spammy or suspicious?

8. White Hat – One of the true tests of SEO: Can you SEO a site using 100% white hat tactics and be successful? It takes time and patience to do well at SEO. Can you resist the pull of the easy, quick paid links and build a strong site following Google's Webmaster guidelines?

9. Goals – Have you set personal goals for yourself? Are you disciplined in your pursuit of these goals and how are you working to achieve them? The biggest part, did you write your goal down or just think it? A goal in the mind is a goal forgotten, in my opinion. Write it down, and make a timeline and a plan. If you want to know how others have become good at SEO, find a way to interview somebody who is well known in this industry. People love talking about themselves, and people love giving advice. A few emails asking people to talk about themselves and give advice will yield some pretty high return. Check in on yourself every few weeks and measure progress.

10. The True Test – Do you love what you do? If you hate waking up and going to work or firing up the computer and getting busy hustling links for clients, you probably will never be a successful SEO. A certain measure of passion and interest is necessary to be good at anything you do. Do you think that these guys hate basketball? Doubtful. Find something you like and do it. Don't be afraid to accept the fact that you really might not like SEO. If you don't, find something you love.

I have found that when I use these parameters to measure my personal success, I have found areas that I fall short in and can make changes to improve. This is a great way to track changes and see how you have improved over time. Speak with other professionals that you respect via Twitter and email. Network and find out what other people are doing in various SEO areas, such as agencies and in-house. Most importantly, DO NOT GET DISCOURAGED! Set realistic goals and reward yourself when you achieve benchmarks. Have fun!