SEO: Career or Skillset?
Posted on April 23, 2007
Filed Under Search Engine Marketing |
Here’s a comprehensive article on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) careers.
It contains a lot of relevant information relating to the skills and resources required in order to pursue a career in SEM. The article makes heavy use of referencing and lists numerous links to useful sites as well as providing an outline for preparing interview questions and responses.
I found it through a comment on this article over at SEO Chat where the author was raising the issue of whether SEO should be considered a career in and of itself or as a skill set to be included in a broader Marketing portfolio. I’d say that access to quality automated tools and info products means the barriers for business owners to take SEO inhouse are steadily being eroded.
The saturation of Information Marketing educational products signals to me that an increase in access to employees with knowledge of SEO is already occurring. The supply of labour is increasing faster than demand for services. To this end, employers (particularly small business owners) could argue that much of the benefit of SEO can be achieved in far less time than a fulltime role. Common SEO tasks that constitute the 80/20 of results can be automated or outsourced cheaply if you shop around or find a reliable, up-to-date source of information. Greater access to multiskilled job applicants also allows the possibility of combining the administration of SEO campaigns with other roles, such as Web Development, Graphic Design, Marketing and Administration.
I’m not a big fan of crowds and I don’t want to invest too heavily in a career that can be cheaply outsourced. Consequently, I’m of the opinion that my fascination for education should shift from developing my SEO talents to complimentary Internet Marketing and broader Strategic Marketing skillsets.
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3 Responses to “SEO: Career or Skillset?”
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Hi Joe - interesting post. Your shift from specialist tactical skillsets to a broader strategic marketing focus is a wise one, in my opinion. Good strategists are few and far between, and because of their scarcity they can’t be outsourced easily.
In-the-trenches SEO techniques is important for an online marketer, but what is even more valuable is the ability to synthesise techniques into one overall strategy - then *you* can outsource the nuts-and-bolts implementation to others.
A couple of good books on strategy that I recommend are “Smart Strategy” by Richard Koch and “Blue Ocean Strategy”.
Will
Hey Will, great to hear from you!
I agree that SEO plays a valuable role in developing an overall online marketing skillset (copywriting being another, as you so gracefully exhibit) and I very much like the idea of being non-outsourcable (for want of a better word).
When tools like SEODigger emerge and rekindle my SEO leanings I have to realise that greater automation of SEO tasks not only narrows the gap for non-SEO workers to incorporate basic tasks into their skillsets but also presents an opportunity to move ahead by incorporating such resources into a more holistic marketing approach.
Thanks for the comment and thanks also for the book recommendations!
Cheers,
Joe
Hey Joe - yes, it’s a great strategic/career goal to be “non-outsourcable”. I think it’s useful to draw a distinction between “what to do” and “how to do”. Few people know “what to do” in order to produce results. Many people (e.g. copywriters, coders, SEOers etc) know “how to do” (i.e. how to implement) once the path has been decided. I aim to be a “what to do” guy.