DailySEO ID Podcast Ep. 8: SEO Career and International Remote Work

I was a guest on DailySEO ID Podcast, hosted by Ilman Akbar and Maulana. In this episode, we talked for over an hour about my career journey from journalist to working in global SEO with a fully remote setup.

From Journalist to SEO

My background is in History from Universitas Hasanuddin in Makassar. I started my career as a reporter and writer across various media: Tribun Timur, Gatra magazine, Historia magazine, and The Jakarta Post.

The turning point came when I realized that writing skills could be applied to a much broader range of fields, including the digital world. In 2019, I resigned from Gatra and shifted to digital marketing. I joined InboundID, one of Indonesia's oldest digital agencies, as a Content Editor. That is where I started learning SEO seriously: studying constantly, asking the technical team lots of questions, and connecting the logic of journalism to how search engines work.

Landing International Remote Work via LinkedIn

My remote work journey started during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, joining Admiral Markets based in Estonia as an SEO Specialist. Since then, every international opportunity has come through the same channel: LinkedIn.

The secret was not a wide network or years of experience. The secret was applying SEO principles to the LinkedIn profile itself. I deliberately used specific keywords in my title and description:

"SEO" and "Search Engine Optimization" with a Z for the US market
"Search Engine Optimisation" with an S for Singapore and European markets
Specific keywords like "Fintech", "Web3", "Crypto", and "Indonesian/Asian Localizer"

One more thing I consider the most powerful weapon: LinkedIn Recommendations. Written recommendations from colleagues and former clients are far more convincing to international recruiters than hundreds of connections.

Why Crypto

I now focus on SEO for finance, fintech, and specifically crypto exchanges. The reasoning is straightforward: the industry offers brutal SEO competition (meaning real challenge), exponential growth, and honestly, the highest pay of any industry I have worked in.

But there is one insight I shared in the podcast that the hosts called "expensive insight." Many of the world's largest crypto companies are backed by investors from mainland China. The problem is that crypto is banned in China, and people there are used to Baidu, not Google. This is a golden opportunity for SEO practitioners from Southeast Asia who already use Google every day. We have a structural advantage that many of us do not even recognize.

Leading a Cross-Country Team

As Director of SEO for a Dubai-based crypto exchange, I lead a team spread across London, Paris, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Beijing. This is not just about technical SEO capability. It is about cross-cultural communication, time zone differences, and building trust without face-to-face interaction.

For anyone who wants to enter this space: English is an absolute requirement, prove it with an IELTS or TOEFL score. But if you want to open even bigger doors in the Web3 ecosystem, learn Mandarin. Many founders and investors in this industry speak Mandarin, and that is a huge opportunity sitting right there.

Never Stop Learning

The message I gave at the end of the podcast applies to anyone building a career in SEO: never stop learning. Even though my background is writing, I still learned HTML and technical fundamentals from scratch. SEO keeps evolving, especially now with AI. Following credible sources and continuously experimenting is what it takes to survive and succeed at a global level.

This podcast is hosted by Ilman Akbar and Maulana from DailySEO ID.