Meet Jack
“SEO today, compared to three or four years ago... it’s changed a lot. There’s still the core fundamentals, but things are constantly moving.”
Jack with co-worker Lenny.
Jack’s journey into SEO is what he calls a funny one - a little bit lazy, a little bit lucky and highly unpredictable, our resident optimisation fanatic was a bad student and a disengaged numbers man before he met digital marketing for the first time. Jack, like a lot of students, fell into a career right out of high school. Unlike a lot of students though, he didn’t enjoy the Bachelor of Commerce that underpinned his gig as junior accountant.
Twist one came knocking when he ditched the accounting gig and tried his hand at a teaching degree. However, he quickly discovered that it wasn't the commerce that he didn’t like, it was tertiary education in general.
“I wasn’t very good at Uni. I ended up just being like: Nah I’m not doing that,” Jack admits with a laugh.
Keen for a challenge to drive his appetite, Jack filled his days with TAFE, landing on a Cert IV in Marketing. While this course was much more interesting than his previous studies, something clicked when he started the website building aspect of the course. Jack found the whole process “really simple”.
“I started building small websites as a freelancer, but I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the digital world,” he says.
While he was getting his feet wet, Jack applied for junior roles, eventually finding a place at an agency in Adelaide. While some new-starters feel like a position is deserved, Jack felt lucky - so lucky that he was able to mould his website development gig into an SEO-only role only two weeks after entering the business. The company found itself without a SEO specialist and Jack was ready to fill the gap.
“I kind of fell into SEO a little bit, but I always found it interesting. It’s one of those ones that once you’re into it and willing to learn, it’s pretty exciting. It’s a really cool career, I reckon.”
Without a direct path into the field - especially when it comes to formal education - Jack says the way he fell into SEO is a similar story for a lot of people.
“You can maybe do marketing which will help you understand a few of the concepts around the broader sort of elements of SEO and digital marketing in general. But there’s no direct path so that’s why you’ll hear a lot of people fall into SEO in different ways.”
Jack might have (accidently) found something he enjoyed, but he didn’t want to stay still for too long. His new SEO skills led him to Melbourne where he started his second freelancing stint. He was growing his skills in sales, account management and client management, but he still wanted more.
“I was getting a bit sick of freelancing with late payments and the budgets. I was dealing with clients that were relatively small in the budget, so it was hard to get some really good things done.”
Armed with an arsenal of new skills, he cast his net wider and found Full Measure Digital (FMD).
“They had a really good quiz. I saw that and I was like ‘yeah these guys know what they're talking about’,” Jack admits with a shrug of his shoulders. “FMD seemed way more advanced than what I had dealt with in the past and that got me excited. I thought I’d be able to bring some things to the table but also be able to learn a lot as well. I applied and the rest is history.”
He was set up in Melbourne, and while he might have been calling it home, Jack wasn’t sure where he actually wanted to live.
This time around, he didn’t have the constraints of a traditional job. Instead, the flexibility of FMD’s approach to remote work meant that he could move practically anywhere in Australia.
“It was weird because I didn’t even have to think about work. When I messaged the team and said we’ve decided to move back to Adelaide, they were just like ‘yeah okay cool’. You can’t say that about many jobs when you’re moving interstate and work just doesn’t get impacted.”
Now settled in Adelaide, Jack says he finds a lot of variety in his work which keeps things exciting and new.
“A typical day can be anything from solving emergency issues to running through strategies to having meetings about how we can improve things. We work with a range of clients so there’s a mixture that makes things refreshing and exciting. It gets your brain ticking over.”
While his path may have veered away from teaching, Jack says he still finds some of his previous interests creeping into his work as Senior SEO Specialist, finding particular joy in passing on his SEO knowledge.
“I think SEO is cool. I always felt like it wasn’t super hard to learn, it’s just a lot of common sense, right? I find it quite simple to teach people. It’s not all rocket science. I enjoy seeing those “ah-huh” moments,” he says.
It’s not all just about the internal team though. Jack is passionate about passing on knowledge to his clients, ensuring they have everything they need to have a conversation about SEO.
“If you can get clients on board and help them understand the importance of SEO and why things are the way they are, you can help them implement things on their end. You’re all on the same page.”
He may have left his study days behind him, but Jack says that doesn’t mean he’s ever stopped learning, especially during his time with FMD.
“SEO is a funny one because I can learn it a certain way and then meet someone who’s learned it a completely different way. It’s about taking from each other and learning from each other. We build our knowledge together.”