UK Search Engine Marketing Industry is Bigger than ever
As the recession creeps in and the news continues to fill with stories of companies making more and more redundancies, there is one exemplary winner in the economy...the search engine marketing industry.
I’m going to talk a little about the SEO labour market in particular, as this is quite obviously the market that I know best, but
I’d love to hear your thoughts on changes to the SEM markets in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, or anywhere else for that matter. So please leave your comments at the end.
All Fields Require SEO Services
The demand for SEO comes from clients. As the mass media talks so extensively now about the search engines and the opportunities that exist online, more and more industry fellows are seeing the organic SERPs as a media channel opportunity that must be explored more. This trickles down the ladder and as such demand for labour is created.
Clients are asking their digital, PR, marketing, media and web design agencies about SEO; making these owners think about their offerings to their clients...and so demand for SEO labour is created once again.
As such, the demand in the industry for fresh and experiences SEO recruits is phenomenal...
This is not set to change any time soon either. The eConsultancy recently published a report with Guava, available for free here. Makes fascinating reading.
A key factor that supports this demand is that 55% of respondents expected their search engine optimisation budgets to increase over the next 12 months.
The demand trend for SEO specialists is therefore on the up and as supply cannot meet this demand and the value of SEO is starting to be understood, salaries are on the rise too...
The average salary of £33,000 is not bad for an industry in its infancy. This is about 40% more than the national average by the way.
I know that there have been some instances of redundancies in the marketing and media industry, but it seems that the SEO industry is one of the more positive stories to come out of recent times.
Education and Demand
With any technological industry, and new marketing channel, we rely on mass media channels to help us SEO’s demystify the opportunities that exist, minimising the perception of any hocus pocus.
As stated, there has been masses of coverage in the broadsheets, bombarding top executives and decision-makers, for quite some time now...all helping to integrate SEO into the decision-making process.
What SEO Skills are needed?
There is no pre-determined set of SEO skills that make you a fully-fledged specialist. I have a traditional marketing background, others have been or maybe still are webmasters, web developers, PR specialists or business development guys. All-in -all, you can read what technical SEO skills you might need, but please bear-in-mind, there’s a load of fluffy marketing and management skills around those areas that make you a real pro! 😉
Search Marketing Job Resources
If you’re looking for a job or preparing for interviews you might need a few resources. I built a custom search engine that amalgamated a load of SEO, PPC and social media job boards but have also found David Harry’s post on getting an SEO job interesting reading and preparation questions for SEO interviews are also available.
I keep trying to sell the idea of moving into the SEO market to my friends as I can think of no other that moves quite so fast or is half as interesting. So far, to no avail but I'm working on it!
What are your thoughts? Do you see similar growth in your industry?
Stats & graphs republished with kind permission from IT Jobs Watch UK