Real SEO (Seach Engine Optimization) Life as a Sr. digital marketing specialist is not the magic silver bullet it once was.

Those Google Gold Rush Cowboy days died a long time ago.

But people still look at the SEO industry, or getting ranked in Google specifically, to be something magical.

There still seems to be a perception that to master SEO they need to posses dark art secrets only obtained from guru genies.

The perception may linger because SEO has become very technical to a degree, and techy stuff holds its own kind of voodoo magic to some.

Although that's completely not true today.

It was very much true in the early days of Google.

The Legendary Golden Years of SEO Were Real

In 2001 I left behind my corporate marketing director position in packaging manufacturing to learn web development from home. 

I can't say that I cashed in on the SEO wild west gold rush. 

I made a solid living.

But I was too green during the peak of it and didn't learn until much later at another ad agency, just how valuable my SEO skills were.

Today's SEO that actually WORKS, has become a day to day endless grind of nuts & bolts mechanics. 

That's not to say, like with any professional trade, that a level of mastery is not attainable.

As with any discipline, a level of skill can be achieved to the degree that SEO becomes more of an art than profession.

The gradual evolution from the Golden Era of SEO to the more recent blue collar SEO grind means achieving mastery is more about consistent day to day nuts and bolts quality website marketing mechanics than some secret bag of SEO tricks.

Enter the 2024 era of AI Veils. What is Real and not Real Online?