“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau
When Henry Thoreau said this, he was living in a different time, a time before the internet existed. It would be impossible for David Thoreau to understand metadata and link building, but he still saw an ultimate truth. The fact that it is not the real appearance that matters, but how it is perceived by others is what really counts. For search engine optimization, this is an important concept. There are a lot of these in SEO could be seen, but what counts is what is perceived. It matters more that a website is perceived as popular than whether it really is or not. However, it seems that the opposite is true for SEO as a career. Some see it in an unfavorable light, but there is great opportunity for those who seize it. In reality, search engine optimization is a viable, profitable and promising career choice.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing a website to rank high in major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. (1) SEO is a subset of internet marketing and is actually a process of optimizing a website for each user (or robot) that visits it. Comparable to optimizing a brick and mortar store by putting up signs and getting more foot traffic and inevitably more sales because the new sign made the store more visible. That’s how SEO is, except the store is a website and the signs, traffic, and visibility are all virtual.
With the increasing use of the internet and search engines, the role of SEO in marketing and advertising has become vital to business success. Because of this, SEO has become an indelible part of the overall strategy of any business. As long as search engines or the internet don’t go away, there will always be some form of optimization. There is some speculation that search engines will evolve into a personalized, individualized, and segmented search that may only include sites that either paid to be there or collaborated with the search service in some way. Although this may also be true in this scenario, an “intermediary” is needed. Someone to help business owners with websites and users find each other.
career opportunities
Since the growth of the search industry has been tremendous and is expected to increase at the same growth rate, the need for SEO professionals has increased dramatically. Additionally, since the industry is relatively new, there is no official school to learn SEO. Therefore, there are not enough trained SEO experts to fill the labor demand. This sounds bad, but for someone interested in SEO as a career, this is a great thing. Not only are there many different SEO positions to choose from, but they all offer great salaries. And while it’s encouraged, a college degree isn’t required.
There is a huge disconnect in the search engine world about what SEOs should be doing in different positions. The consensus is that a baseline minimum should be around $30,000 per year. For an entry-level position, this salary would most likely be representative of a content/copywriter, link builder, SEO researcher, or customer relations coordinator. Pay for these positions can be as high as $75,000 per year and in some cases up to $100,000. An SEO with a bit more experience can earn a base salary of $50,000 per year in positions such as search engine specialist, SEO director, search engine marketing consultant or campaign manager and can earn up to $100,000 and even $200,000 per year depending on the company consultant for search engine marketing.
Those salaries are steep, and an SEO professional can fill positions like Team Manager, Director/Manager of Organic Search, or VP/Director of Search Marketing. Extremely high salaries are expected in a position like this, typically starting at around $80,000 and going up to $200,000 to $300,000 per year in wages.
Aside from the extremely high salary level for SEO professionals, the educational requirements are extremely lax. In view of this, formal training does not teach SEO at all; People without a degree have a unique opportunity to get high-paying and secure jobs. Additionally, many things you learn along the way on duty will give you skills and talents for the future should you decide SEO isn’t for you. Some of the skills that every SEO will learn are: writing, effective communication, organization, marketing methods/techniques, generally advanced computer skills, team building/leadership, and discipline (time management or self-motivation).
How to learn SEO
Since there is no “School of SEO” or anything like that, there is some confusion about how to learn search engine optimization. Many wonder how the original professionals learned all of the methods that are widely used today. In the beginning, the OG’s learned through a combination of trial & error and study. Back then there weren’t the kind of readily available resources that we have today. You would read best practices from major search engines and experiment.
Trial and error is involved now, but there are accelerated learning methods that make the process easier. The best way to learn SEO is to subscribe to the most popular blogs such as SEOmoz, Bruce Clay, SEObook, Andy Hagan, Matt Cutts and sites like search engine monitoring , Organic SEO, round table, search engine country. There are many resources available beyond this short list and anyone interested in SEO is encouraged to read up on everything that is available.
There are also hardly any seminars and workshops that spring up like e.g search engine strategies And Search engine marketing expo. As the industry grows there will be expanded opportunities for workshops, seminars and courses and it is beneficial to attend as many of these as possible. In the future there will be cheaper, more accessible and richer content programs and eventually there will even be a career path for those who can teach SEO.
Finally, there is the absolute best way to learn; practice. If you’re a fast learner and want to put what you’ve learned into practice even faster, an entry-level job at an SEO firm or large corporation with in-house SEO staff is the best way to go. Although you should educate yourself privately and read a lot, learning from a job is the best way to learn as you have the advantage of learning condensed knowledge as you learn more faster. This route also helps avoid much of the trial and error process and you will make fewer big mistakes since your teachers should have already made them. Furthermore, there is simply no substitute for human interaction; Learning from an experienced SEO is like learning from a private tutor.
Search engine optimization careers are still in their infancy, but one thing is for sure. Search engine optimization is a viable, profitable and promising career choice. There will always be SEO specialists, their job description and pay may change, but their service is so important to current and future international business operations that this whole SEO is not hype and another dot-com bubble. The great Internet era that is and is yet to come only amplifies the need for various marketing services. Competition is low; The salaries are high and the opportunities are even higher. The risks are small and the benefits are great. As Robert James Waller called, “In a universe of ambiguity, that kind of certainty comes only once; no matter how many lives you live“.
