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The Down the Mountain framework comes to life

Written by: Noah Learner Tags: community, jobs-career

Published: Mar 17, 2025  |  Last Updated: May 6, 2025

My personal framework for getting ahead in one's career, that I call the Down the Mountain framework, is something I've been working on for the past 3 years.

It's based on my own career and those of the folks I really look up to in our field.

I've shared it publicly a few times, including recently on March 27, 2025 as part of the SEO for Paws Charity event. If you missed it, you can still donate to the charity.

Four pillars make up the mountain framework

1. Going wide
2. Going deep
3. Going big
4. Giving back

Throughlines that put the pillars into action

• Developing the hard skills to excel at the craft. This is the baseline expectation of you as you make your way. If you don't seek to excel, you'll eventually be automated out of a job. Going wide and going deep are all about developing these skills in the earlier phase of your career
• Developing the soft skills that will be necessary to motivate others to act. The Going big and giving back portions are all about developing these skills which will be the primary thing that determines your success in the later phases of your career.
• Increasing the surface area of those who know about your hard and soft skillsets. The more people who know about them, the more opportunities you'll get.

Going wide

Going wide is about breadth — early in our career it's about the fundamentals, and especially later as we learn how to innovate and evolve. 

• It's all about gaining experience in as many different parts of our industry as you can.
• It's about learning as much as you can about technical SEO, local SEO, e-commerce SEO, content, and how AI and LLM's work.
• It's about learning and developing real competency with foundational concepts like critical thinking, data analysis, and clear compelling writing.
• It's about learning how to leverage the different tools that we use in our everyday work life like Screaming Frog, ahrefs, Google Sheets, project management tools, and many others too.
• It's about learning how webpages are constructed (HTML, CSS and Javascript) and learning a bit about the plumbing of the web.

In essence, you're developing context awareness for what you will encounter on the job day-to-day.

This phase is about exposing yourself to many new fundamental skills that you'll leverage throughout your career. 

Going deep

In the process of going wide, you'll be exposed to a ton of different aspects to our industry. In that process, you'll find yourself naturally gravitating towards a few if not, one particular specialty or skill. 

This is 100% normal and expected. You'll know when you start to get interested and explore deeper on your own — are you following certain blogs, articles, or authors writing about a specific topic area? If you had Fridays totally free to work on any project that adds value to the organization, where would you gravitate?

• This is your inner self guiding you toward your T-shape skill.
• This is the thing that you should invest time and energy into.
• The reason why is that down the road this is likely to become your superpower.
• The earlier you start reinforcing that superpower the faster and stronger it will become down the road.

Going deep: 

Read as much as you can on the topic. Get as many projects that focus on the topic. Follow the people who are the best in the world at that particular topic and pay attention to how they ask good questions. 

Utilize your professional development budget if you have one. 

This phase is about mastering the skills necessary to gain real expertise in your topic area of choice. 

Going big

In the process of going deep, you'll start to build a little bit of a name for yourself inside your organization, in your city, regionally or even internationally around that particular topic.

This is exactly what you want, because knowing the right people and being in the right place at the right time is what can lead to more opportunities. 

And that happens by going big:

Going big is all about figuring out how to increase the surface area of people who know about what you're capable of and also know, like, and trust you to execute on that thing at an extremely high level. 

How you increase that surface area is entirely up to you. Be authentic, help others, share your perspective and experience, make connections, write, and anything else that increases the number of authentic interactions (and therefore relationships) you have with others. 

Your mileage may vary: Keep in mind that we're all built differently, and you're gonna have to find what works for you.

Some of these ideas work extremely well for those of us who are extroverted. They might also work extremely poorly for those of us who are introverted.

Try a few things and repeat what works for you.

Writing

If you like to write, jump in with both feet into the world of creating helpful useful articles around your topic area of choice. Each article will be an opportunity for you to go deep into the topic area that you love. You'll learn more and more as you share information with our industry. In so doing you'll build up an audience of folks who know like and trust you.

Articles can even become books. Books become powerful assets that you can use to drive your career. Eli Schwartz has done a masterful job of this with his packaging of knowledge into the Product-Led SEO book.

This is perfect for those of us who would describe ourselves as being introverted.

YouTube channel + podcasting

Having your own YouTube channel is kind of magical because you can meet the folks who are working at the highest levels on the topic area that you care about.

This means that you can build relationships with the folks who are already doing the thing that you wanna do with your career.

And by shining the light on them and their dreams and goals, you'll be able to build your network of people who care about you, your career, and your future.

Learning how to host will also teach you critically important communication skills that apply to almost every area of life.

You'll learn how to become a better listener, and also how to communicate more while saying less.

And for giggles, this might also lead to a knowledge panel.

YouTube channel visibility can often lead into speaking opportunities as well.

Speaking

Speaking in public is one of the scarier things that any of us can do. It's also one of the most powerful accelerants on one's career.

Start small.

Find a local meet up (like Toastmasters) that has five people in the room.

Before you give your talk, learn about box breathing so that your first few speaking engagements set the tone for future engagements.

The concept of speaking in public fills most of us with high levels of anxiety when we enter a sympathetic response which feels a lot like the fight or flight response.

Box breathing allows us to turn a scary response into something calming, relaxed and enjoyable known as the parasympathetic nervous system.

According to the Healthline.com:

The [Box Breathing's] slow breath holding allows carbon dioxide (CO2) to temporarily build in your blood, decreasing your heart rate and stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system, according to the American Heart AssociationTrusted Source. This produces a calm and relaxed feeling in your mind and body.

Box Breathing is THE cheat code.

Once you master this, the rest will fall into place.

The benefits of speaking are that you'll be exposed to a lot more people who will know, like, and trust you to do the work you want to focus on.

This also means your value will grow inside your organization as a trusted communicator – and doors open for those who are confident to consistently present. 

Community

Becoming active in community is the most powerful way I know to radically increase the surface area of people who know, like and trust you. 

Reach out to folks and find ways to help others.

Your relationships are a lot like a garden in that if you keep watering it, it will produce.

The more you put into others, the more opportunities will come your way.

If you don't see the community you want to join, build your own.

It's why I started The SEO Community and would love for you to join us. 

Giving Back

Giving back comes in many shapes.

It could be coaching.

It could be mentoring.

It could be creating your own community. This has become my way to give back. It didn't start that way, but I've come to find that it's my vehicle to live out my mission, which is to positively impact the lives and careers of as many people and their careers as possible.

Give early and give often and in so doing you'll discover what is most enjoyable for you. Exercise that giving spirit and you'll find that your career will be enjoyable because it will be filled with meaning. 

Building momentum as we travel down the mountain

The essence of the framework is that one thing can easily lead to another, and we build momentum as we go wide and deep. It's organic and semi structured. It's a lot like making your way down a ski mountain. One trail will lead to another. Your surface area work will help reveal new paths. You might fall. Get back up. Keep skiing.

Do you have a story of putting the framework to use? Reach out if you want to share how the framework has reflected in your life – whether in SEO, or whatever's next.