Rushang Patel

Okay, the title is kinda misleading.

I was an “e-commerce executive” before I was a writer. Sorry about that. It’s just that “writer to SEO” fits the narrative way better than “e-commerce to SEO.” Sounds more apt, right?

Allow me back up a bit. I actually studied computer science in college. Yes, I know – this is getting confusing. What can I say? Life’s weird.

After I graduated, I honestly had no clue what to do with my life. I mean, I could code and everything, but I couldn’t see myself doing it long-term – cue Interstellar scene where Matthew McConaughey is trying to stop his past self from leaving – I wish I had just stuck with coding, but oh well. So I started looking for something interesting and I found it. Spoiler: It wasn’t interesting. It was data entry.

Eventually I moved up to e-commerce because luckily my team shifted projects.

The job was fine. Nothing special. I wrote product descriptions, managed inventory, dealt with customer complaints. Basic stuff. But somewhere in there, writing all those descriptions, I started paying attention to which ones actually worked. Like, REALLY worked.

Some products would sell like crazy with the right words, others would just sit there no matter what we did. It wasn’t random. There was a pattern.

That’s when I realized I might actually be decent at writing. Not the kafka kind – the kind that makes people buy stuff.

So I did that for a while. Product descriptions became my thing. I got comfortable, didn’t earn enough, didn’t have everything I needed. It sucked.

I switched jobs and landed somewhere that did long-form blog writing. This was new territory for me. Sure, I was still writing product descriptions, but now I had to write these massive blog posts too. Like, 2000-word monsters about dogs and cats.

Writing those blogs is what got me into SEO. Had to learn it, you know? Can’t just write and hope people find it.

That’s when things got interesting.

The more I learned about SEO, the more I realized I was falling out of love with writing. Sounds backwards, but hear me out. SEO was like this whole universe I didn’t know existed. So I got a digital marketing certification and started bugging my organization to move me over to their SEO team.

Took a year and a half of asking. A YEAR AND A HALF. But it finally happened. I sold my soul to SEO and honestly? I don’t have any regrets.

I know how that sounds. SEO? Really? That’s what gets you up in the morning? But hear me out.

It’s like everything I’ve been doing suddenly makes sense. All that coding knowledge from college? Turns out I need it. The writing skills from product descriptions and blogs? I use those every day. Even the boring data entry job taught me how to spot patterns in spreadsheets.

What I love about SEO is that it covers everything. One day I’m learning and using code, the next I’m thinking about marketing psychology. Then there’s all the AI shenanigans happening right now that’s basically changing how EVERYTHING works. But mostly, it’s about people. How they think, what they search for, what they actually want versus what they say they want.

It’s literally everything rolled into one job and somehow my brain just… gets it.

I spend hours trying to figure out what someone actually means when they type certain words into Google. It’s messy and weird and there’s no perfect answer. Kind of like everything else I’ve done, actually.

The funny thing is, I thought I was bouncing around between random jobs for years. Turns out I was just taking the long way to get here. And for once, I’m not looking for the exit.

So yeah, that’s how I ended up here. From computer science to data entry to product descriptions to blogs to SEO. Makes no sense on paper, but somehow it all connects. All those random jobs taught me something I use now.

Turns out my weird, messy career path was actually preparing me for something I didn’t even know existed. Who would have thought?

Song of the week: