hiee dis is [name withheld to protect the silly] n i hav got over 4 years of experience in Internet mktg n in overall SEO n SEM operations? n wud like to serve u people with my efforts? M luking for any work at home opportunities Related with the SEO n SEM operations, Or anything related with an Internet Marketing, n when i works, u can c the results ASAP, I know exactly, how to improve the website’s Rank Rapidly n quickly on search engines, cos I hav got the Creative ideas n diff n innovative techniques by which We can deliver tons of traffic everyday to any website. so i can ensure the quality work for u people? So for further details u can hav a luk to my CV In Attachment. hope n wish to hear positive frm u people Thanx Regards [name]

I don’t like to make fun of people, so I held onto this email for a few days, but then I decided it was just too good to not share.

Please post anonymously (unless you really want to reveal who you are) the following information:

Yearly salary / compensation
Years of SEO experience
Inhouse SEO vs SEO agency
Brief job description (management, business development, specialist, all around expert, etc.)

Oh, and if you don’t live in Utah, still feel free to post your information, just let us know what state your work in.

A few years ago I was running my web design firm here in Salt Lake City, Utah, and SEO was the furthest thing from my mind. Nobody ever asked us about it, we never overheard anybody talking about it, and although I knew what it was I had no interest to get into it because there didn’t seem to be any money in it. That is, there didn’t seem to be any clients who wanted it, but there was money in it in another sense.

I started tinkering with MWI’s website and soon we started ranking better for keyword phrases like “utah web design” and we started getting more phone calls and email requests for proposals. The more I worked on the site and improved our rankings the more business came in the door, so I kept tinkering. I had started reading a few online publications that covered SEO and started becoming more educated about the process.

Then along came a client who asked us if we could do SEO work on their site. I realized I probably knew as much about SEO as anyone else in the state, so I said sure, we can do that. Then along came another client, and another, and another, and so forth. I wasn’t always the only person at MWI doing SEO, but I’m certainly in the thick of it now, and you know what? It’s not that hard. The Pareto principle certainly applies here in that 20% or less of the SEO knowledge out there will give you 80% or more of the results that will make your clients happy. Although SEO can get quite sophisticated and more similar to rocket science than not, you don’t need to be terribly sophisticated or experienced yourself to do a decent job.

Here’s what it takes to become a competent SEO professional. First, there are two things you need to have, then there are two things you need to do.

1. Passion. If you don’t find it interesting, fun, and exciting, then don’t even get started. If you’re only looking to make money then you won’t do a good job and you’ll end up wasting your time.

2. Basic HTML experience. You don’t have to be an expert with HTML or CSS in order to do SEO. You don’t even need to know how to build out a website. But you do need to know enough to be able to access a website, edit HTML files, and know what you’re doing.

3. Start reading. Read up on the large body of SEO information available. Some of my favorite sites are SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, SEO Book, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Watch.

Reading on these websites will give you virtually all the information you need to become an SEO consultant, and the faster you read, the faster you’ll get up to speed. You could become a decent professional within one month if you really applied yourself.

4. Play around. Get your own website and play around with it. Figure out what keywords you want it to rank for and then start looking at your competitors, apply the research you’ve done, and just try things out and see what sticks. There’s no teacher like experience.

If you follow these steps I guarantee you can become an SEO professional pulling in $50-100K or more within six months. Notice I don’t guarantee you will be pulling in that much, but you’ll be capable of it. Other basic factors such as your ability to market yourself and sell your skills, your ability to communicate well with others, and your personal hygiene also exert a large influence.

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I’m going to assume that when you say “marketing” you are referring specifically to search engine marketing and such.

1) What surprised you the most when you started your career in marketing?

How much money was being made by people who weren’t good at their jobs. I learned quickly that firms, agencies, and individuals aren’t compensated strictly for the quality or results of their work, but that other factors are at work such as salesmanship (presentation skills), personal connections (it’s who you know not what you know), and snake oil (the temptation of clients to go with whoever tells the best story, regardless of whether it’s true).

In other words, doing good marketing on behalf of your clients is not enough. You also have to market yourself well.

2) What has been your most valuable learning resource, aside from trial-and error?

Blogs. The information contained in industry publications is often filtered, cleansed, stripped, reviewed, corrected, and dated. By the time it gets to you it’s no longer relevant. Blogs are the opposite, and I’ve gained insights into my competitors and the industry from them I would never have received through a professional publication.

3) What range of salary should I expect when entering a marketing job right out of school?

$30,000 to $50,000, depending on location, experience, and who’s doing the hiring. Notice I didn’t mention GPA. They might care about that at a large company, but smaller companies care more about experience and proven results.

4) What advice would you give a person who is about to start his/her first marketing job?

If we’re speaking specifically about search engine marketing, the thing to understand is that nobody cares about your schooling, they only care whether you can get the job done. That may seem to contradict #1 above, so let me say it another way. Employers only care about whether they believe you can get the job done, and generally they recognize that your schooling will have done nothing to prepare you for a job doing search engine marketing. However, if you have learned something about SEM in school then you can certainly use that to your advantage.

5) When Google updates its search algorithm, how seriously does that affect your work? Do you optimize for other search engines?

The changing algorithm is not what makes SEO an ongoing type of service. The algorithm doesn’t change that often, and when it does it is interesting and sometimes exciting to try and figure out exactly what has changed, but the day to day challenge of SEO is due to the competitive nature of SEO. Google doesn’t change every day, but the websites you are competing against do.

We focus primarily on Google, but we also look at Yahoo and MSN. There would have to be a special reason for us to optimize a client’s website for any other search engine.

6) Are you ever able to make guarantees for first page search engine placement for certain key-phrases or terms?

No. Anybody who makes guarantees regarding rankings is either ignorant or lying. Even when we are 99% positive we can get somebody a first-page ranking we still don’t guarantee it. We might be able to guarantee somebody certain results and achieve those results, but it won’t happen all the time and when it doesn’t it will become clear we have guaranteed something we didn’t have complete control over.

What we do promise our clients is that we are honest, we work hard, and if it can be done then we can do as good of a job as anybody else out there. Beyond that we communicate quite a bit with our clients and do a lot of research before they sign an agreement so that we can set accurate expectations.

7) I am currently working toward a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication Technology. I have also worked as the marketing director of A-Systems Corporation for almost a year and have spent most of that time learning about and performing SEO. What other qualifications would be necessary for me to be employed at your firm or other similar firms?

In this field your title and schooling will only matter to those who don’t know much about the field themselves, i.e. large corporations with bureaucracies to match. If you want to work at a firm that specializes in SEO/SEM then you’re going to have to show experience and results. If you’ve done SEO/SEM for multiple sites that’s ideal, but even if you’ve only done it for one site that is something if you can show positive results based on your actions, and if you can talk like an expert.

If I were you and I were interviewing for an SEO job, I would print out reports that show where a website was ranking for certain keywords when you started, where it ranks now, be able to explain the specific techniques you used to get those results (and they had better be techniques that aren’t out-dated), and especially show how those rankings translated into increased sales for your employer, because that’s what really matters.

I would also be prepared to explain how you keep up on the ever-changing world of SEO. Which blogs do you read? Which websites do you visit? Have you attended any of the conferences? Do you know who the big players are?

Do you have any other advice that you think I should know that I have not covered in these questions?

The best SEO firms are not looking for established SEO experts who know everything and have done it all. They are looking for fresh minds that have the basic abilities and that are teachable. Somebody who is proud or over-confident is a red flag, at least in my book. If you can show positive past performance then you don’t need to put on an act, you just explain yourself and the record will speak for itself.

However, you might have better luck posting in our newly active forums. There is a forum just for posting information about SEO jobs / employment there.

If you have any questions post a comment.