I didn’t start my career with a plan to work in SEO.
In fact, when I first stepped into digital, SEO wasn’t really on my radar. I was interested in websites and technology. I wanted to build things.
It was only after I started asking what happens after a website goes live that everything began to change.
It started with an internship
One of the most important opportunities early in my career came when I joined BOOST Fellowship in Zimbabwe as a web developer intern.
I’ll always be grateful that they took a chance on me.
In particular, my boss at the time, Busi Marandure, had a vision for technology and digital marketing that I didn’t fully appreciate when I first arrived.
IT wasn’t necessarily seen as one of the organisation’s most important departments.
Busi saw things differently.
She understood that if we used technology properly, it could do much more than keep computers running or maintain a website.
It could help tell the organisation’s story.
It could help us reach more people.
It could showcase the work being done.
And ultimately, better digital visibility could help the organisation attract attention and potentially secure more funding.
Looking back, that way of thinking had a huge influence on me.
Building the website wasn’t enough
As a web developer, getting a website live felt like the finish line.
You design it.
You build it.
You test everything.
Then eventually you hit publish.
Job done.
Except I started wondering what happened next.
We had built this website, but how were people supposed to find it?
You could have the best-looking website in the world, but what did that matter if nobody visited it?
That question sent me down a rabbit hole.
And somewhere in that rabbit hole, I discovered SEO.
I became curious about search
At first, I wasn’t thinking about becoming an SEO specialist.
I simply wanted to understand how websites attracted visitors.
Why did Google show one website above another?
What were keywords?
Why did the words we used on a page matter?
How did Google even discover a new website?
The more questions I answered, the more questions I had.
That curiosity slowly changed the way I thought about websites.
I stopped seeing a website as something you simply designed, developed and launched.
A website had a job to do.
It needed to be discovered.
It needed to communicate.
It needed to help someone.
And, particularly for an organisation like BOOST Fellowship, it needed to tell a story to people who might otherwise never know the work was happening.
Web development led me to digital marketing
That curiosity eventually took me beyond SEO too.
I wanted to understand digital marketing more broadly: content, analytics, social media, paid advertising and how all these different pieces worked together.
My career started moving away from simply building websites towards understanding how businesses and organisations could actually use them to achieve something.
SEO became an increasingly important part of that.
Eventually, it became my career.
But there was never a moment where I sat down and decided:
“I’m going to become an SEO.”
It happened gradually.
One question led to another opportunity, which led to another skill, which led to another job.
Curiosity has probably been my career strategy
Years later, I still think about that early experience.
My career has taken me from web development into digital marketing, SEO, international agency work, SEO strategy and eventually SEO management.
But the habit that started it hasn’t changed much.
I still ask questions.
Right now, those questions are taking me deeper into AI, cybersecurity and Python.
I don’t know exactly where all of that will lead either.
And maybe that’s the point.
If you’re a student or someone at the beginning of your career, there can be a lot of pressure to have everything figured out.
I certainly didn’t.
Sometimes your career starts with somebody believing in you before you have all the experience.
Sometimes it starts with being curious enough to ask one more question.
For me, that question was:
What happens after the website goes live?
I’ve been trying to understand the answer ever since.
