SEM and SEO Careers

Original cartoon from bLaugh

Even if you don't own property and don't often pay attention to economic-related news, you can't possibly have missed credit woes that many financial institutions are dealing with these days. Not just in the US, but across the globe. But things in the SEO world are just peachy so why worry about such things, right? Well, having been a web developer prior to the dot-com boom and subsequent bust, I highly recommend you prepare for a day when SEO jobs became hard to come by and new contracts all but disappear.

Search engine marketers often center their work around the concept of a conversion funnel. The concept is simple with the first step being to fill the top of the funnel with people that have a broad interest in a product or service. As people move through the buying life-cycle, the numbers that make it deeper and deeper into the funnel will decrease until a small (usually) percentage complete a transaction.

I'm not a sales guy by trade or interest for that matter, but I do enjoy pitching to prospects once the various pre-qualification steps have been taken. Being involved in the process keeps me on my toes because while the prospect may need SEO or SEM 101, you'll need to go above and beyond that to stand out amongst the vendors you're competing with. The trick with pitches is going big but remaining realistic; focusing more on strategy and less on tactics; and following through after the initial pitch. I like to think I'm getting better at all of these things, but I certainly have room for improvement.

I was instant messaging with a friend the other day and he wrote that he thought the SEO/SEM job market was hot right now i.e. a lot of open positions. Having gone through a job search a couple of times in a little over a year, I had a different take on the situation. I feel that while there openings, they aren't as numerous as people think and they aren't necessarily increasing by leaps and bounds as some people suggest. Here's why...

In grade school a common technique for winning an argument was to declare that you were smarter and therefore you were right. Yeah, it wasn't a particularly profound way to win people over, but hey you can't expect all that much from a grade schooler during a 15 minute recess. Unfortunately, it seems that some people didn't quite move on from that style and make frequent use of I have a degree and therefore I'm right. This is silly.

Interviewing and hiring SEOs has been on my mind recently as my team has been actively looking to expand. Such thoughts are part of what prompted me to update and re-publish an old post of mine on why a career in SEO may be a bad move. I'm not sure that all of the people that read my article also read my counter argument on why a career in SEO can also be a good move, but it certainly inspired some discussion, mostly disagreement. If you're inclined to pursue an SEO career either in-house or at an agency, one of the most important obstacles you'll need to overcome is making a good impression when interviewing and so I present 55 questions you may have to answer.

In large companies where there may be multiple people handling search engine optimization and marketing efforts for multiple sites, there may be an inclination to decentralize the efforts. The theory is that decentralizing allows the people closest to a particular site to make decisions based on their knowledge which should be more accurate than anyone else not as close to the site in question. There is a common flaw in this arrangement.

I spent this evening having drinks with co-workers in a bar of a hotel that was a client of my previous employer talking about how my first week at my current company involved creating a ranking report for a gourmet chocolate company who's product my current company sent to an ex-employer when I was an in-house SEO as a thank you for being given the opportunity to pitch for an SEO contract.

Crazy, ain't it?

If you're finding the world of search engine optimization (SEO) interesting and considering stepping in to it as a career, you should really give it some serious thought. The profession is maturing now and is full of challenges that you may not find so exciting. After reading this you may wonder why I do SEO for a living. I guess I'm just a sucker for punishment.

If you're a hungry SEO living in New York, send me your resume. My employer (an SEO/SEM agency) is hiring and we keep a kitchen stocked with food. Sure you'll get to work on great SEO projects with a great SEO team, but we all know the real reason for joining is the free food and drink you'll have access to.

Are you more inclined to hire a personal trainer that is fit or a couch potato? Would you take diet advice from someone that is 25 pounds overweight? Or would you ask the fashion advice of a store worker that dressed in rags? Probably not. At least, I wouldn't. So why then do companies that sell SEO services have such poorly optimized web sites?

Deciding whether it makes sense to hire an agency to handle your web site's SEO or more sense to build a team internally isn't always easy. It's also difficult to get unbiased input from others since vendors will want to sell their services and current management may just want to build their empires with additional headcount. I can't promise that they're unbiased, but here are my thoughts on the matter. For context, note that I've been an in-house SEO as well as having worked at a couple of SEO agencies.

It's 7:30am and I'm thinking about SEO. You'll have to believe me when I say that isn't typical. Especially on a Saturday. But my employer has just landed a new client and I'm excited about the unique challenges of this soon-to-start SEO campaign. I didn't realize how mundane recent projects had been until this one came along causing the mouse in my head to once again step in to its wheel.

One of my current projects has the goal of creating a series of charts and graphs that would allow my SEO team to intelligently show progress of client projects. Sure we could, just like everyone else, show rankings and traffic, but I'm looking for creative ways to combine data to provide deeper insight. This got me to thinking about the lies often associated with SEO statistics.

If you're not a recent coworker of mine, you can stop reading this right now. I promise there's nothing of interest here.

A funny thing happened late last week. It started off with me being contacted by a company looking for an in-house SEO. This person said she had found my name from a Top In-House SEO list. I wasn't sure if she was stroking my ego or if this list actually existed, so I asked her to forward the link to me. And she did.

In my previous post I covered 5 reasons why a career in a SEO would be a bad move. I have to admit that I enjoy writing doom and gloom articles which is why I wrote that one first. I also think it's wise to show both sides of the coin hence today's post on what makes a career in SEO a smart move.

In yesterday's post about Dave Pasternack I provided my own opinion on whether search engine optimization (SEO) was rocket science. This got me thinking about how I could expand on a previous post on why paid and organic search efforts should be done together.

I've always thought it made sense for search engine optimization (SEO) teams and search engine marketing (SEM) teams (i.e. those paying for traffic) to work together and share, at the very least, their keyword lists. I'm finding out now that such cooperation is actually not the norm, but rather the exception. A recent discussion with a fellow search professional got me to thinking about how one might pitch to upper management the need to bring the SEO and SEM teams together. Here are the three arguments I'd start with.

DMNews is reported (link no longer valid) that, "A decision not to pursue search engine optimization at FTD Group Inc. cost the multichannel floral marketer sales during the second quarter of fiscal year 2006."