You’ll look back at this and laugh
Tuesday, I received a voicemail from my client at 9pm: “What the hell have you done! You’ve destroyed our SEO and we’re losing top positions in Google’s search results! Call me back immediately!” I remember thinking this is bad. Really bad. I could feel my stomach turning. This will probably get me fired tomorrow.
I was interning at a digital agency. My client wanted to improve their SEO as fast as possible. I was young, inexperienced, ambitious, and wanted to impress. So I updated all of their 1,200 page titles and meta descriptions in one day. Little did I know then, that updating them could create temporary fluctuations in their positions. And I’ve just updated every single page on their website.
I came into the office early next morning, awaiting my fate. A few minutes later the general manager came to my desk and asked if I had a minute to chat. I guess this is it. I’m getting fired for being a giant noob. Instead he smiled at me and told me something I’d remember for the rest of my career: “Don’t worry about it. In 6 months you’ll look back at this and laugh.”
It turns out, he was right. The SEO stabilized with great improvements and the client was over the moon. A few months later, I looked back at the situation and laughed to myself. Everyone makes mistakes at work and in the heat of the moment, we tend to be too hard on ourselves. The next time you feel bad over a mistake you’ve made just remember: in 6 months you’ll look back at this and laugh.
