Considering A Job In Search Engine Marketing?

Although the title of this article is “Considering a career in search engine marketing”, it is important to note that there are actually two different areas within “research”, namely: search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising on search engines.

Industry experts have conflicting opinions on how to define “research”, but for the purposes of this article, search engine marketing covers both search engine optimization (also known as natural search) and search engine advertising (also known as pay per click, sponsored or paid search).

Context of search engine growth
It seems that the Internet has always existed and that the use of a search engine to search for information is now a normal daily activity. However, it’s easy to forget that Yahoo! celebrated its twelfth birthday only in March 2007 and that Google celebrated its tenth birthday in September 2007. You just have to look at the number of additional products and services they both offer today to see how much the industry has grown!

When search engines were first launched, their results pages were based on their own proprietary algorithms. As the importance of search engines for website owners increases, so does the desire to be highly ranked in search engine results. This has led to the growth of SEO companies that would offer a service to optimize a website to maximize search engine rankings.

Following the launch of the first Pay Per Click search engine by Goto.com in 1998 (renamed Overture and now owned by Yahoo Search Marketing), this has led SEO companies the opportunity to add another service by managing campaigns Pay Per Click for their customers. Furthermore, it has also started new Search Engine Marketing (SEM) companies specialized in the management of Pay Per Click campaigns.

Obviously, wherever there is growth in a sector, there are also opportunities and nothing more than job opportunities that are now created following the phenomenal growth of the Internet and search engines.

Where are the job opportunities?
In addition to job opportunities within search engine marketing companies, it is becoming more common to see some traditional marketing and advertising agencies offer jobs related to search engines. Furthermore, there are now companies specializing in digital media that provide search engine marketing services. Corporate employers are also starting to recruit their search engine marketing specialists to work internally and this trend should continue to grow.

What kind of skills and attributes will you need?
The type of skills and attributes required will depend a lot on how specialized the role of the job is and also on the level of work. Although many companies want to have experience in work discipline, others will seek well-motivated and flexible individuals with both the ability and the desire to learn quickly.

For more technical roles (such as a search engine optimization specialist) a technical background in HTML, programming or IT may be required, although the required background level will vary from one company to another.

Leave a Comment