Living in an SEO world can be strange at times; forget about the internal politics of black hats, white hats, and no hats, I’m talking about being on the inside looking out, an SEO Professional in a corporate environment, professional title: Link Developer. I can’t say I’m getting used to it, but I have always taken this question in stride, “What do you do …exactly?” I understand that there is a lot of confusion, mystery even, when it comes to my role. I try and explain as best I can what I do and what I bring to the company, but what my colleagues fully grasp when they walk away is always left as an uncertain.
For me, I gravitated to SEO. It just made sense; I came from a marketing and sales background, and I quickly delved into all things SEO, without thinking twice. I champion SEO when and where I can, and some colleagues and supervisors get it, and others don’t. Ah, the learning curve.
Today, in a meeting with the design team, we were discussing a project, and I kept referring to anchor text in the meeting and briefs. Finally, the Lead asked, “You mean Anchor Tags?”, as in the anchor hrefs that point to a named attribute, and I had the opportunity to educate what anchor text means.
What I am learning is that different departments do not always see eye to eye, and I must think not only in SEO terms, but also how a designer can “frame” things, for example. This doesn’t just speak to potato “pototo,” but also to greater concepts, such as page levels, where “sub pages” of “sub pages” to a designer are not necessarily so to me.
It would be great if the nicety could be returned, but I understand that without the SEO knowledge, it just isn’t possible. One thing we see eye to eye on is image replacement, and thank the SEO gods for that! (note to self: I better make sure they avoid using spans!)
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