How I Went from Physicist to SEO Consultant
What a physics degree is really for, a career tip from an Oxford physicist, and how reading data like a physicist turned me into an SEO consultant.
Snell Rojas
I wrote this post in Spanish in 2022 and adapted it to English in 2026.
The university graduates professionals of free practice.
Those were the words my thesis advisor repeated every time I ran into him. Back then I was a young physics student at the school of science and technology, and I didn't really get what he meant. Now I do, and that's why I want to explain it to you.
What is a professional? #
A professional is someone with a degree in something, whether that's engineering, law, medicine or whatever their profession is.
In other words, in the sense we're using the word here (university graduates), having a degree in a profession is enough to be a professional.
I won't get into whether a self-taught person who makes a living from what they taught themselves is a professional or not, because that's not the point.
I'm talking, and pay attention to this, only about what my advisor meant with that phrase he kept repeating.
What does that degree stand for?
It tells you that the person who holds it knows the field, and that professionals of a higher "rank" in that field (master's, PhD) vouch for them.
What does "free practice" mean?
This principle is the difference between a university and a trade academy. For example, if you go to the police academy, you graduate as a police officer. And what does a police officer work as? Well... a police officer!
On the other hand, if you go to university and get a physics degree, one day you can work as a video game developer.
Being a professional of free practice means you can work in whatever you want once you finish your studies.
What does a physicist do? #
Magic...
When I did my internship, my supervisor at the time told us:
"We scientists are in charge of expanding the frontiers of human knowledge."
Strong words... Strong and baffling! For a bunch of young people who were barely getting through their training.
That would be the goal, or rather the job, of a physicist who goes into academia and research. However... the "contamination" reaches you from the strangest places...
The internship went so well that it turned into a scientific paper, which we presented at an international conference.
At that conference I met "Rafa". He was a physicist too, from Mexico, working as a professor and researcher at the University of Oxford...
Yes, that super important university with almost a thousand years of history, lol.
He told me, "Stay away from academia, research and being a traditional physicist. My colleagues work at banks, and what I make in a year, they make in a month..."
Again, strong words... Strong and baffling!
A physicist could work at a bank?
How much does a physicist get paid there?
What else can a physicist do, besides expanding the frontiers of human knowledge?
Can you make a lot of money as a physicist?
All those questions started wreaking havoc in my brain.
I had to feed my need to know. I had to stamp out every last bit of curiosity. So I started researching.
Jobs related to physics #
The difference between a physicist and a mathematician is that, when you train as a physicist, they focus on teaching you that all the math you're using has to make sense in the real world.
In other words, even if you're drawing squiggles, they have to be plausible and explain a phenomenon.
That is extremely useful in way too many fields.
One physics-related job that I personally love is measuring investment risk.
When you know physics, spotting patterns in statistical data and making sense of them in the real world is something you can do easily.
What is studying physics good for? As a physicist, you can:
- Trade futures, crypto or stocks.
- Measure investment risk.
- Develop video games.
- Work in digital marketing.
- Be an SEO consultant.
- Be a copywriter.
- Develop apps and websites.
- Etc.
- Etc.
My goal isn't to leave you an endless list. It's to show you the range of jobs you can go for, and how knowing physics will change the way you see things.
What do I do? #
These days I'm an SEO consultant specializing in technology.
What's an SEO consultant? The people who help your website show up first on Google (give or take a few words).
How has knowing physics helped me? #
SEO is about (at least the way I see it) spotting patterns in a website's statistics, understanding what they're trying to tell you, and then fixing those "errors".
Because I know physics, I understand a lot about charts and how to read them so the information carries over to the real world.
What should anyone study, or keep learning? #
As I told my 10-year-old nephew when he asked me, "Snell, what can someone as smart as me study?":
Kid, when I was your age, the job I have today didn't exist. So the best advice I can give you is: learn new technologies, learn blockchain, and look into big data.
And to you, reading this because you wanted to know more about me, I give the same advice: learn about these topics. Big data, and everything you can learn about digital businesses. The internet is the future, and these are ideal options for facing the future that's coming.
That's what I did: I used my base knowledge to explore other careers. I didn't feel "tied" to the degree I studied. I chose to reinvent my life, using the skills I'd already built as a platform.
Like I said before, understanding charts and making sense of them beyond the data helped me a lot, and thinking outside the box turned me into an SEO with creative solutions.
Want one last thought?
You get good at what you do, and the money will come on its own...
Was he right? I say yes. That doesn't mean you shouldn't look for work. It means that once you're an expert, in whatever it is you do, you'll make good money.
