Posts related to: Search Engine Watch


Search Marketing Has a Bright Future

January 11, 2008 – 6:52 pm
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I came across an article today called “Search Marketing: A Rewarding Career Path ” on Search Engine Watch today. It basically was discussing the results of a new survey of in-house SEMs conducted by SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization . Some very interesting facts from the article:

  • ~64 percent of respondents had five years of SEM experience or less.
  • For those with 0-3 years of experience…
    • 8.0% made over $100K
    • 48.8% made between $50-100K
    • 43.2% made less than $50K
  • For those with 5-7 years of experience…
    • …they make significantly more.
    • The majority (56.4%) make more than $80,000 a year. Of this, 4.4% reported earning more than $200,000 and 30.3% make between $100,000 and $200,000.
  • Few senior management roles for Search as of now - Only 4% had VP titles and 10% had Director titles.

Some very interesting numbers and figures, especially considering that SEM is a relatively new field of marketing. Simple supply and demand theory implies that salaries should be decent for both inexperienced and experienced hires. How many graduating college students have degrees or concentrations in Internet Marketing? Yes, exactly.

Of course, in the next 3-5 years this will obviously change. I recently took an Internet Marketing class as part of my MBA curriculum at USC Marshall. A few years ago it was an experimental class; today its a regularly listed elective. We all should expect more colleges and universities to offer courses like this. It’s hard to deny the fact that the Internet is an important channel for any marketer to get a grasp on. It will definitely be a competitive advantage going forward for any company and individual who gets it.


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Link Building Trends and Challenges for ‘08

January 10, 2008 – 12:15 pm
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Part of my daily news reading for the morning, I came across this interesting article, Top 5 SEO and Link Building Challenges for 2008, by Justilien Gaspard of Search Engine Watch.  Paraphrasing, Justilien identifies his top trends and challenges that SEOs, link builders and webmasters will face in 2008:

  1. Webmasters Scared to Link Out
  2. Overuse and Abuse of NoFollow Tags
  3. Neglected Link Building Destroys Top Rankings
  4. Google Paid Links Assault: Collateral Damage
  5. Scarcity of Link Building Resources

I’ve been working on a couple pet projects and can attest that link building is extremely difficult.  Not only is it time consuming but the hit rate can be also demoralizing.  Perhaps it is the trend that webmasters are scared to link out or the fact (as the article points out) that most people’s lives don’t revolve around search engines.    I can see the value that Google places on these hard earned links.  In my opinion, link building is like having great content on your website - it’s something that takes time and effort to build up,  something where shortcuts do not tend to be effective, and something that must be a focal point for your ongoing strategy. 


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