Hey, so it would be great to get some perspective from professionals in SEO and/or marketing about my situation.
I'm in the UK and started an 'SEO Apprenticeship' around 6 months ago, and got another 6 months to go, I get paid around £10k a year. I was interested in SEO before starting despite my complete lack of inexperience - I did a few courses and read more about it in preparation for my interview.
So the company is a small but popular e-commerce company, and there's actually me and another apprentice working there right now under a fairly inexperienced 'SEO Manager' (in my opinion). He previously worked in the store for years as a kind of customer service assistant with some good product knowledge, then he somehow helped the company with their SEO (writing product descriptions) then a couple of months later the CEO asked if he wanted to be SEO Manager.
After 6 months it feels like it's a complete dead end. The office is extremely casual which is good sometimes, but despite never working in an office before, it feels pretty unprofessional sometimes. I work with the other apprentice, the SEO Manager and a few other marketing people in an office. My boss will regularly turn up late, anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes, and THEN go and make coffee. They sometimes say inappropriate things such as swearing and inappropriate topics, play some bad (some good, too) music quite loud that's hard to read/write copy sometimes, and I am almost certain my boss does very little work in a day as there's nobody to really check up on him daily. I like to have a laugh, but I feel they cross the line with the amount of time they spend chatting, doing stupid voices and singing when they're supposed to be doing work.
In the beginning, I tried in vain to get my boss to show me things, but he either doesn't know himself or won't share stuff (can't be bothered). All I do is write incredibly boring product descriptions, adds some images and some related products for customers to buy. Most of my work is rarely checked, or at best they're hastily checked with hardly any useful feedback.
We finally got read and review access to Google Analytics after I asked a few times, but nobody expects us to use it, and my boss didn't really show us how to use it much - I think because he doesn't really know either. We just do the product descriptions. We finally got SEMRush accounts but it's the same thing - we're shown the basics but it's never really our job to do much with it.
My boss mentioned recently that 'you can move up (in the company) but you have to be really patient'. It's a small company, they want people to do product descriptions, and everyone else has their place. I am not at all interested in continuing to do what little I do - it seems people there are quite happy to just be able to go to work and chat with their friends. and aren't interested in moving up.
Doing these mindless product descriptions for the last 6 months has made me have zero interest in SEO anymore, and I just hate going there to hear my colleagues talk a load of bull while I try and muster up a tiny bit of motivation to write copy for products. I'm questioning if I want to do SEO in the future, or even marketing because of this.
So my questions are:
- Is it normal for entry-level SEO people to just be writing product and brand descriptions?
- Should I make a lot more effort to get more out of working there, or cut my losses? I'd feel a little bad if I were to leave this apprenticeship early.
- What would you expect an entry-level SEO assistant to be doing in their first 6 months or year?
- Are all office environments like this?
Thanks in advance for any advice and tips on what I could learn or start doing.
tl;dr - I just write boring product descriptions in my entry-level SEO apprenticeship, while working in what I think is an unprofessional environment with little learning or progression opportunities. Is my job normal for entry-level?
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from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/npvf8z/doing_an_seo_apprenticeship_need_some_perspective/>
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