The seo industry is a fast moving, thrill seeking adrenalin roller coaster for die hard search engine junkies. Opinions can change by the hour, discoveries can be made known within minutes and discussions can last months. So who works in this madness we call search engine optimization?

Personally I have worked online for years and specifically in seo in the last few, but I have noticed some of the online attitudes of fellow junkies who like me are after the thrill and excitement. However not everyone in this industry are bunny rabbits and smiles, this is where the seo life cycle comes into effect.

From my experience in real life and online the seo life cycle seems to play out like this:

1. You are born – you learn for the first time that search engine optimization stands for seo.
2. You learn to walk – you read books from the library or articles online, not all of it true but you don’t know any better.
3. You try to run – you think that after a few weeks of reading “John blogs blog” that you now a trained seo engineer and you can do it all.
4. You fall hard and graze your knee – you realise that after changing some titles, Meta keywords and descriptions you are not the all knowing genius you thought you were.
5. You go to school – You start learning about different techniques because your resources online have opened up, you make friends and enemies but start to progress through the ranks of seo skills.
6. You start collage – You know your stuff in seo, you can optimise a page with some varied results, you start to try new things and experiment with unknown substances.
7. You fall in love – You quickly start realising that you are spending way too much time on the internet, checking you “site stats” as much as possible, making sure your website is being fed enough fresh content as possible.
8. You buy a car – You realise you need some capital to start either your very own PPC campaign or you buy into some crazy new “web technology” in the hope of finding the next best thing that can take you to new places. As it’s usually your first purchase it’s never as easy as other people say it is and you usually fail or crash.
9. You get your first full time job – Whether it’s for a digital company or you decide to work for yourself you start a real job in the seo sector. You quickly realise that all the information you’ve learnt in the last few years is only the tip of the iceberg, your theories are quickly dismissed as “fun” and you start back at square one.
10. You get a promotion – After collaborating with like minded seosters you start understanding that seo is so varied and vast that you are never going to know everything. Your “fun” ideas are now recognised as proper methods of seo.
11. You buy a house – Feeling confident in the industry you now work in you start looking at the bigger picture in seo, you become more valuable to the industry and you start looking at “strategies” more that the actual seo itself.
12. You get married – You settle down and get set in your ways. You get in a comfortable position, hand out sound advice and get paid well for it.
13. You have a kid – Your industry requires you to bring in extra workers, people that are of the “new” era, people who can think outside of the box, they are young but they will learn. (sorry star wars fans, just had to)
14. You learn from your kid – Because you have been comfortable in your ways for so long you are reluctant to listen to “possible new seo methods”, you keep up to date with all the latest blogs, if there’s something new on the horizon you would have heard about it first, or would you?
15. You get old – You are a respected individual in the industry but times change and all of a sudden there is a new method or marketing tactic that you have only just started to understand, but 12 million people have understood it before you.
16. You have a decision to make, to die or to be re-born – Not very nice I know but someone or something decides that seo will move in another direction, less emphasis on what you are good at, there is a major shake up, you need to go back in time and start your seo life cycle again.

The different search engines branded on the web seem to be developing personalities of their own. How you may ask? Well you first take the look and feel of the search engine, the way it displays results, the quality of those results, how the public warm to these results and so on and so on.

Google (Arnold Schwarzenegger)

The king pin of the search engine world. One of the oldest and most reliable search engines, occasionally not bringing you exactly what you were looking for but close. Last few years has moved out of just the “search engine” medium and tried themselves at all kinds of different applications. Taking over the internet altogether? Possibly, whatever happens, they’ll be back!

Yahoo (Bruce Willis)

Always been a big hitter in the mainstream and has been very successful, never really been viewed as the “best” by the users. Are gradually maturing and become more cultured and offering style, go for it yippee-kay-eh – yahoo.

Msn (Mel Gibson)

Has again always been an important player in the search engine world, possibly considered “one of the top 3″. Microsoft obviously knows what they are doing online and through larger scale operations are very successful. Once loved company now starting to lose out after some bizarre behavior and domination plans. Lethal!

Ask (Sylvester Stallone)

Was very popular back in the day and of course was called something different – “Ask Jeeves”. Would sometimes produce random results, not always relevant and often quite boring. A recent facelift and PR campaign is once again making them popular within the industry, but for how long ADRIAN!

Altavista (Wesley Snipes)

Maybe seven or eight years ago some people would be right in thinking these guys are going to be big! One of the most popular search engines in the late nineties but has made bad decisions and not moved forward, very Blade decision.

Lycos (Jean-Claude Van Damme)

It wasn’t so long a go that these guys were everywhere – online, on TV and in magazines. Still considered to be of good heritage but getting old, maybe needs a new facelift and a new business goal to mend this broken arrow.

As seo is a constant moving industry it’s important to stay in touch with “what’s new” in seo. So I have put together a list of list of sites I visit like clockwork, every morning.

1. Seomoz – I recently wrote a blog piece criticizing some of the recent blog posts not being relevant but after a response from the Seomoz team it made me think I rely on their posts a bit too heavily. They do however provide good quality findings and it’s 100% worth 10 minutes of my time in the morning.
2. Sphinn – The social bookmarking website for the seo users and webmasters, providing quality and humorous posts about the seo world and any new developments. If an seo blogger finds something worthwhile within the community you can guarantee it will be on the front page of Sphinn by noon. I can spend up to 30 minutes reading stories on Sphinn.
3. Digital Point – I’ve been a member on this site for quite some time now and it does seem recently that a lot of spammy posts are being created but occasionally you will find some juicy story on there. You might find a nice domain name on the cheap or even a site to buy in your niche. Another 10 minutes of my life every day is spent on this site.
4. Digg – I know the majority of stories on digg are meant for entertainment but again you will find an seo or web related gem, add another 5 minutes to the clock!
5. Matt Cutts – I will check every day to see if there are any new Google developments, spend around 2 minutes perhaps if Matt isn’t too busy.
6. Search Engine Journal – Have some good relationships with key figures in the world of seo, if there’s a new discovery related to a search engine you can guarantee it will be posted within minutes – 2 minutes more (not long left to go in my busy morning)
7. Andy Beard – Nice blog to finish off my hour of seo news in the morning, usually something worthwhile being posted on a daily bases – the final 1 minute.

That’s how I spend each day of the week to keep me up-to-date with seo, I would love to hear some more suggestions to take up more of my valuable time in the morning.

Thanks