The SEO Girl

If you’re lucky enough to be part of a thriving SEO company, you’re likely going to be working long hours. If you don’t love the industry and the work you’re doing, you’re going to resent it, just like you would with any industry, even if you worked at it just 4 hours a day. I work an easy 50 hours a week at my not-so-easy SEO job, and usually log another 4 hours throughout the weekend. Yet, I’m happy as a clam (okay, not every second, but overall I’m a pretty happy SEO girl).

What sets us apart is that we love our SEO jobs. We’re part of an industry that’s always changing and questioning preconceived ideas, along with being lucky to have some great people in our industry. The days are long and results are never immediate, but loving the work you’re doing goes a long way towards maintaining your happiness level. There’s always going to be those difficult days and even more difficult clients, but have faith that you’re in an industry that’s going places and evolving.

I’ve been told I work too much and that I’m a workaholic more times than I can count, but I still have that smile on my face and excitement to keep going, even after almost 4 years of being in this industry. It hasn’t been easy and clients try my patience all the time, but there’s a big difference from working just for a paycheck and working because you love what you do. I’m lucky to have the latter.

This post takes a bit of a detour from my usual SEO/social media related posts, but they’ll be back soon!

I’ve adored coffee since I was 16, but over the last few months the taste has been growing just a bit blasé to me. I found myself absorbed in the wonderful loose leaf tea blends of Teavana.com one evening, and in the months since, enjoying the taste and soothing ability of tea so much more than coffee. Since then, it’s been love! Recently, while browsing the site, I hit their 404 error page, the dreaded “concrete wall” in online user experience. This time was different, and instead of the regular old “Page Not Found” text, the following met my delighted eyes:

The text reads:

You found an error on our site, so perhaps it’s a good time to enjoy a cup of tea. We will start working to fix the problem now. If you were trying to view our homepage, it’s likely the entire site is down. However, if this wasn’t the homepage, it is probably just this page that is down.

So you can try to move forward with some of the links to the left or below or call us at 1-877-TEAVANA for immediate help. Or just type a keyword in our search box above and we’ll try diligently to find a page that works.
Not only does the text capture the soothing and somewhat witty personality of their site, but it makes me feel like I’ve just done Teavana a favor by tripping over this page, as if I’m somehow reporting the problem page to them. Plus, including a few of their most popular products on their error page keeps me wanting to browse around the site, rather than immediately bouncing and visiting one of their competitors’ sites.

In the time it takes you to enjoy a cup of their heavenly Tiki Twilight tea, you can plan out a creative 404 error page that might even attract a few quality links and get people chatting about your site. It’s time to break away from those tired old error pages, and blend something new!