How to Rebuild an SEO Career From Layoff to Comeback

In this week’s episode of Voices of Search, we spoke with Paul Andre de Vera, founder of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO.so) and host of the SEO Video Show. Paul spent 15 years in enterprise SEO at companies including Workday, Stripe, and Anaplan before navigating one of the hardest professional stretches in the industry: a layoff during the pandemic that turned into roughly two years of unemployment, six figures of debt, and a complete career rebuild.

Our conversation covered what actually got him through that period, the specific tactics he used to become memorable to employers, and how those same principles—personal branding, content creation, and a “search everywhere” mindset—apply directly to how SEOs need to operate today.

Key Takeaways From This Episode:

• Marketing roles are often the first cut during downturns. Paul experienced this firsthand after leaving a stable five-year role at Workday for a startup that folded within eight months.
• Staying visible during unemployment—through podcasting, LinkedIn activity, and an owned platform—keeps you connected to the industry and generates inbound opportunities, even without active applications.
• The biggest networking advice for anyone navigating a layoff: drop the ego, apply broadly, and treat every interview as a chance to build a relationship with a recruiter who may move companies and reach back out later.
• SEO is shifting toward “search everywhere optimization,” requiring practitioners to understand social, video, PR, and content creation rather than specializing narrowly in technical SEO.
• Content freshness is now doing double duty—improving both traditional rankings and AI visibility—but a real refresh means restructuring the page, not changing the publish date.

A Stable Job, a New House, and a Layoff All at Once

Paul’s path to unemployment started with what looked like a good decision. After five years at Workday, he felt stuck and took a more senior role at a startup. The timing could not have been worse. “I was at the time I was actually at Workday. I didn’t get laid off at Workday,” he said. “I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I decided to get a higher position at a startup company… and within about eight months I was let go.”

The layoff landed in the middle of a major life transition:

• He’d just bought a house and gutted it for a remodel. “I was literally living in between plastic curtains,” he said.
• What followed was nearly two years without steady work.
• He accumulated roughly $100,000 in debt during the gap.

“Marketing is usually one of the first people that they usually cut,” he noted—a pattern that’s become familiar across the industry through multiple waves of layoffs since.

Building a Backup Plan While Staying in the Game

Rather than waiting passively, Paul pursued several paths at once:

• He got a real estate license as a financial fallback.
• He read voraciously—over 250 books in a single year, by his account—leaning on older self-help and business titles to reset his mindset.
• He kept producing content. The SEO Video Show, which he started during this period, became both a coping mechanism and a professional lifeline.

“My only connection with the world was through this podcast,” he said. “It really helped me, you know, kind of like just keep myself sane.” It also kept him visible. Companies noticed his consistent LinkedIn activity and the podcast itself, which occasionally generated small contract opportunities even while he was still searching for full-time work.

The Interview That Paid Off a Year Later

One of the more striking parts of the conversation was how Paul eventually landed his next full-time role—not through a fast turnaround, but through patience and a strong first impression that outlasted the gap.

“Believe it or not, I actually interviewed with the company a year… I didn’t get hired until a year later,” he said. “But the thing is, they remembered my whole presentation. I overdelivered on my interview, so that I was memorable, and they called me back a year later.”

Over-Delivering as a Strategy, Not a One-Off

This wasn’t a fluke. Paul described a consistent habit of offering something tangible before ever asking for anything in return:

• With companies he interviewed with directly, he prepared specific, demonstrable proof of what he could do for them.
• With companies that reached out to him first, he still did the work before replying. In one case, he audited a CEO’s site, found the company wasn’t ranking for a term they were trying to own, and got them to the top spot within 24 hours.
• He estimated that unsolicited work was worth roughly $5,000—delivered before any formal conversation about the role had even started.

“I replied back to the CEO: Hey, if you hire me, check out what I can do in 24 hours if you have me full-time,” he said.

A $20 Ad Campaign Aimed at One Hiring Manager

Perhaps the clearest example of Paul applying his own skill set to his own career came from how he landed a global web marketing role at Anaplan. After hearing the company was hiring for the position, he built a hyper-targeted paid search campaign aimed at exactly one audience: whoever inside that company might be searching for a candidate.

“I targeted San Francisco,” he said. “The person who was searching it would see the live ad that I produced: ‘Hire me, Paul Andre de Vera, your next digital marketer.'” The entire campaign cost him about $20. “I was hyper-targeted,” he said. “You’ve got to understand the planning of the whole thing.”

The lesson he draws from it: SEOs and marketers have an underused advantage in being able to apply their own professional skill set directly to their own job search and personal brand, rather than treating those skills as something that only gets deployed for clients or employers.

From Introvert to Toastmasters President

Not every obstacle Paul faced was about employment status. Earlier in his career, he was passed over for a promotion specifically because of how he communicated. “I was denied a promotion because of the way I spoke,” he said. “I wasn’t clear enough. I had the ums… I wasn’t organized.”

Treating Communication as a Skill to Build, Not a Trait to Accept

Rather than accept that as a fixed limitation, he treated it as a gap to close:

• He took improv classes, which he describes as one of the most fun things he’s done as an adult and credits with breaking him out of his shell.
• He joined Toastmasters and eventually became president of an internal chapter at Workday.
• That training laid the groundwork for skills he now uses constantly, including hosting a live-streamed video show.

“I still consider myself an introvert,” he said, “but I’m also an extrovert.” He extended the same logic to networking at conferences, a setting that can be especially difficult for introverts. His workaround: bring a camera. “It gives me a purpose to just talk to people,” he said. “You don’t have to pretend… people love being on camera.” The camera becomes a built-in reason to approach someone, removing the awkwardness of cold small talk.

The Two Things Every Layoff Conversation Should Be Doing

When asked what advice he’d most want to leave with listeners navigating a layoff, Paul didn’t hesitate: drop the ego and apply broadly.

“Don’t have an ego, because apply for every single job you can,” he said. “You may not make the same amount you made before… but the more interviews you can get, the more practice you get.” 

He frames every interview as serving two purposes simultaneously:

• Building interview reps. Even applying for roles he might not actually want gives him practice and confidence on camera and in conversation.
• Building a network of recruiters. Those relationships often outlast any single job search. “When they move companies, and if you make an impression, they will actually reach back out to you for other opportunities.”

Why SEOs Need to Become T-Shaped Marketers

Asked what skill is becoming more valuable because of AI, Paul’s answer reflects how much his own career has already had to expand. “I like to say search everywhere, and optimization is now,” he said. “It’s pulling things from everywhere—it’s pulling videos, it’s pulling shorts, it’s pulling things from Reddit.”

He recommends that SEOs become more T-shaped, broad enough to understand several adjacent disciplines even without specializing in each:

• Social strategy and platform-native content
• Video creation and production
• PR and digital outreach
• Long-form and short-form content writing

“You have to be a social marketer, you have to be a content creator, you will now be a content writer,” he said—and he sees that shift as both necessary and, with the help of AI tools, more achievable than it used to be.

Refreshing Content for Two Audiences at Once

One of the more tactical insights Paul shared was about content freshness, which he says has become more important specifically because of AI. “I’m actually refreshing more content for clients than creating new content,” he said. The payoff is dual: refreshed content tends to recover traditional rankings while also becoming more useful to AI systems that favor clearly structured, current information.

But he was direct that a real refresh means restructuring, not cosmetic editing. A genuine refresh involves:

• Changing the actual structure of the page, not just updating the publish date
• Making subheadings declarative rather than vague
• Adding fresh stats, data points, and frequently asked questions
• Running the page through a content optimization tool to account for shifts in the search results

“That’s not a refresh,” he said of simply updating a date. “I’m talking about you changing the structure of the page.” Tools can guide part of the process, but the deeper work—understanding what AI systems are actually looking for—still has to be learned and applied deliberately.

Turning SEO Into a Personal Lifeline

Paul Andre de Vera’s journey proves that the ultimate professional safety net is your own brand. When a layoff pulled the floor out from under him, he treated his career like an enterprise SEO account—optimizing for visibility, running hyper-targeted campaigns, and consistently over-delivering value before a contract was even signed.

As search transitions into a “search everywhere” reality, the exact same skills that make someone effective at SEO—visibility, positioning, authority, and consistent signal over time—apply directly to building a resilient career. The tactics evolve, but the underlying discipline of turning your optimization skills inward doesn’t change. 

By treating your personal brand as your most important asset, you ensure that no matter how the algorithms or job markets shift, your talent remains remarkably findable, memorable, and unforgettable.

Voices of Search is a daily SEO and content marketing podcast hosted by Jordan Koene and Tyson Stockton. The show delivers actionable strategies and data-driven insights to help marketers navigate the ever-evolving world of search engine optimization and content marketing. New episodes air weekly, covering everything from technical SEO to AI discovery, featuring industry leaders and practitioners sharing real-world frameworks and proven tactics.

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