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You know, what we do here (SEO) is a real combination of art and science. We all combine technical skills with creative writing, marketing etc. I got a little motivated (I must say) when I looked at the next (Big Daddy?) Google results at 66.294.93.104, which Matt Cutts says will stabilize around the end of March, and noticed that I had many pages come up Top-10 for a lot of lucrative gambling-related terms. It just reaffirmed to me that I know what I’m doing and even with the new rules, the SandBox, etc etc., the skills that I have developed to succeed as an affiliate marketer and Search Engine Optimization specialist are still valid. I dont cheat, I dont use black-hat techniques, I dont even link that much.
So I started wondering, Do real Fortune 500 companies, or any companies looking to expand their Web presence, realize the value of a good SEO engineer (other than online dating sites and casinos?) It does not seem so!
I don’t see a lot of job openings for such a person, but I think what we all do here is a viable skill, but without a MARKETPLACE. Will companies OTHER THAN online casinos/dating sites etc. ever hire people to do this work? I would like to make the business of SEO my full-time career (not just a side gig for promoting the usual aff-type sites) and I find it very satisfying when after almost a year of HARD WORK, my pages start ranking and ranking well. This is a skill I have developed which I think is valuable, but does anybody else?
I think I (and you all) have the skills that a large company SHOULD pay dearly for
but I don’t see any companies willing to shell out the bucks for this type of work–WHY NOT? Occasionally I’ll even go to another site and offer my services, but when I ask for 20-30K for a few months to do this work, people laugh and call me an idiot and think they will be able to do this overnight. I spend sometimes 10-12 hours a day for many days at a stretch before I take a break and I’m sure you all do too. It’s hard work!I’ve NEVER seen a job listing like this: Fortune 500 company seeks Search Engine Optimization Specialist to expand company’s Web presence. Salary 250K + Bonus. Why Not?
But I sure as heck would like to see a listing like the above! So what are all your opinions, are companies simply happy to pay Overcrap hundreds of thousands of dollars per month for temporary results or pay someone like us a good salary of lets say 200-250K per year for permanent long-term results? I mean, I dont care how much anybody knows about Web Design or how pretty you can make a site look, traffic=money. The people who can generate the traffic are the people who should make the big bucks. Period.
Companies, take notice!
You don’t see alot of those job listings because this isn’t a well defined field and their corporate HR wouldn’t know how to ask for that skillset. You do see a ton of postings on Craigs List for smaller companies looking for SEO help.
Most of the Fortune 500 who are pursuing SEO strategies are doing it through highly paid consultants. I have a friend who was recently employed by a mid-sized consulting company and they were doing a very healty business in SEO and SEM. Well into the millions of dollars. There biggest issue was finding people who could do the daily tactical stuff that was needed. They were pretty much resorting to hiring several people out of college to do the mundane day-to-day stuff while being managed by someone who knew their s#!t.
One important thing to take note of though is that the Fortune 500s don’t use the same tactics we do in the gambling industry, or in other mom and pop sized industries. Some of the important things we do is set up link directories on our sites, exchange links and compromise our copy to be search engine friendly. The Fortune 500 don’t generally do these things, so they need different sorts of tactics.
interesting
Being fairly new to Seo, I am a little confused as to exactly what you did to see how your pages will be coming up in the top 10 results for certain keywords on the next update. Is there possibly a link that I could run such tests, or better yet, just a simple phrase to search for so I can do a little research on how you did this. I dont even know what to research, but it seems like it could prove to be valuable to me. Maybe you would be kind enough to elaborate a bit for me.
geek, i did put it on my site http://www.elgoog.nl
enjoy:)Most SEOs don’t want to give you the blueprint for how they achieved their rankings. There are several rules of thumb to follow, but the main things are optimizing your on-page content to focus on desired keywords and then to gain as many high-quality and relevant links to your site as possible with the link text containing those keywords.
If you are feeling confused I will point you to the articles and forums at seochat.com. Spend a few weeks reading up on everything there. At first you will be more confused, but after reading enough posts and the advice from quality forum members, you will start to form a clear enough picture. After that it is all trial and error. SEO is a long-term activity, I fully expect it to take 3 years to take full advantage of the strategy I am pursuing.
As for tools for checking things out, I can recommend seomoz.org or digitalpoint.com as places to start.
geek,
Just put: 66.294.93.104 in your address bar. This is the next version of the Google SERP results. They appear sporadically now, but should stabilize according to Matt Cutts by end March. This datacenter has been live at google.com for about 15-30 minutes a day as they test. But you can always go directly to it by putting in the IP Address–I believe they are calling this ‘Big Daddy’–Also a lot less Spam in our area too, not gone but a lot of those sites like crap.russia.slots.ru or gamble.online.12345.it etc. that were previously 888 Spam are gone.
webber,
I appreciate your response, but I have a few comments…
1) The only thing I have seen Major Companies do to expand their Web presence (i.e. garner traffic) from an SEO perspective is waste a bunch of money on Overcrap. Now, of course I am not talking about the kind of companies that could pay Yahoo pr Google hundreds of millions of dollars to appear in their generic SERPs – if this even happens.
2) How could some fresh-out college students ever duplicate what we do? It’s a learned skill that takes a long time (at least for me) to master (and I definitely have NOT mastered it!!). But, I mean I can literally create 3 different articles and use techniques (including Web Design techniques) that will make, lets say Article #1 a potential winner in Yahoo, Article # 2 a potential Top-10 page in Google and article #3 a potential winner in MSN.
How would a college kid with no experience know what Keyword Density even was much less how to use it?
3) I have been saying for the past 2 years that linking, or at least the IMPORTANCE placed on linking, has to be abolished by the SEs, especially Google. It allows spamsters to totally manipulate the results. Although I do some linking, I have many results in Big Daddy that, based on their positions, have seemingly been given credit based on their content. I say this because my minimally linked sites are coming up with results far ahead of sites with hundreds or even thousands of incoming links. My only conclusion is that new Algo changes *MAY BE* reducing the weight given to links–just an opinion, but I would think this HAD TO HAPPEN. I mean the Google results of recent times are mostly crap, other than a few content sites that always seem to be there near the top, like casino.com or Doms site etc.
So what techniques do these companies employ and how different can they be from what you or I do? Just my 2 cents.
Thanks Voodoo for taking the time. And webber, thanks for the reply. I wasnt asking for any tricks or how rankings were achieved nor do I think its fair to ask that. Im not looking to give away any of my secretes either, however I see no problem in giving basic help. If someone is diligent in making an effort to learn or research something, I dont mind giving him a few road signs on where to look just like you recommended seochat to me. However, I wasnt looking to cut any corners or for anyone to give away their secrete recipe, I was simply looking to see how he was able to check future rankings. I think perhaps you misunderstood my post, but nevertheless I can respect your sentiments on it.
geek,
Now I AM confused. I explained how to check future rankings above. Just use the IP address of Big Daddy–its no secret. As far as secrets for obtaining rankings? Its just hard work. I dont do much linking but I have won several awards for Creative Writing. As I may have mentioned before, I am a writer and a software developer–usually technical people cannot write and writers aren’t the most technical of individuals. I think this combination is what helps me in this business.
For example, let’s say you have a business that sells widgets. I could write 500 words on ‘Blue Widgets’ for your Blue Widgets product page and 500 DIFFERENT AND UNIQUE words on ‘Red Widgets’ for your Red Widgets products page etc. I am not trying to pat myself on the back, but I think this is a talent that not a lot of people have. And 200 colors of widgets later, I will have written several volumes on widgets for your widgets website and your widgets pages will be ranking well. I will also tweak the HTML so that the keyword density, Title and Descriptions are perfect for whatever SE we are optimizing for.
So here’s a way to get traffic in this business: Review every online slot machine (I think there are something like 2000 of them) and create an optimized page of about 350-600 words for each one. Get back to us in ten years and let us know how it went!
Say you are not into slots, poker then? You could write for the rest of your life and not cover poker! Tournament results, games, strategies, blogs, you name it?
You just need to be creative.
In closing I like to ‘trick’ myself into thinking that each page I create will be an extra $10/month -on average-in income for life. This doesn’t sound like much, big deal $10/month but when I have 100 pages completed and ranked, well there’s $1000/month and I never have to create those pages again. Now, this is just a ballpark, but in this area its very attainable. As we all know, you may get a couple pages that rank well and bring in most of your income, and the average per month could be well higher than $10/month and some never rank at all. This is just a figure I use to motivate myself because its an easily attainable goal. If you are NOT making at least $10/month per page of your sites after about 18 months, I would say you could be doing better.
This motivates me when I am developing, writing etc etc for months on end without seeing any results. Finally, I spend 95% of my time writing and 5% linking. This is the business model I use because I think the importance of linking must be reduced in the future-so I dont focus a ton on it now-how else can these SEs fight spam? I mean they have 2 choices, either drastically reduce the importance of linking OR go site by site to weed out the offenders. I mean, what would be easier?
Hope this helps.
No voodoo, I was just explaining to webber that I thought he may have misunderstood my post. When he referred to no webmaster wants to give a blueprint, I thought he was referring to me and my request for what you kindly gave me. Just a misunderstanding. No biggie.
Most industry leading really big dot com companies have there own little SEO teams that work for them just like a programers or writers. I am currently working as an SEO for a well known dot com company and let me tell you there are a lot of advantages working here. I now eat, drink, breathe, sleep SEO! :1circling
The best SEO’s are $500+/hour – many of them are not even interested in hour/payment but work with aff. programs or are hired on commision basis.
Almost all admins on SEO forums are full time SEO professionals…SEO takes years to master – I have google pretty much under controle, next goal is yahoo :woohoo:
Any good links for yahoo optimization would be great :wavey:
I think 500/hour is reasonable for what a good SEO can do, but I would take 200/hour at a company with benefits, health insurance etc. Why don’t many companies employee full-time SEOs? I haven’t really seen an acceptable answer to this question here yet!
Why does it seem like all SEO work is short-term, contracted work and something that NOBODY is willing to pay the bucks for? I mean, go to Sitepoint and advertise your service for 200/hour–you’ll get flamed like you wouldn’t believe!
Voodoo, I think you misunderstood my post. First of all, I agree with you, this is a burgeoning industry that will become key to the marketing success of just about any company in the future. What I was meaning to explain about the college kids is the company I was talking about. They have a really good head of SEO in their company (they are a consultant to mid-sized companies, many of their clients you would recognize), what he has trouble finding is people willing to do the grunt work of gaining links. He hires 2 or 3 new out of college types every quarter to work the day-to-day stuff.
The point I guess is that yes SEO is extremely time consuming and I would see more monetary benefit from doing it for yourself than for a Fortune 500 that will pay you maybe $50 per hour plus benefits. If you can get a $400,000 a year salary, (approx. $200/hour) maybe that’s another story. I’m not saying it is beyond possibility, heck I used to bill out at $225 an hour to clients, but that was the heyday of the Web, and I was doing things that hardly anyone else knew how to do. We are at that point right now with SEO, but the learning curve will quickly catch up, so it might be a small window of opportunity.
In any case, my day job is as an Internet consultant, and we are already offering this service to our smaller clients as a test offering. Our first site hit the top 10 in Google in 3 weeks. It’s nice doing this in a less competitive industry and for a site that is 6+ years old. Makes SEO a breeze.
You can absolutely charge more for these services than you can for design or web development. Where there is mystery there is margin.
Hi webber,
Yes, I did misunderstand your last post! I now understand where you are coming from. I guess part of my rant was fueled by seeing some mid-large sized companies seemingly spend a ton of money on Overcrap results, which are usually junk/fake when they could be paying you or I 250K per year to achieve solid, long-term results and even at that hefty salary still save a ton of money and achieve longer-lasting results. And I was motivated, in part, by seeing some of my results in Big Daddy and wondered why major companies wouldnt want some one like me or you to do this for them, while online casinos/dating programs are knocking down our doors to be an affiliate of theirs.
As far as college kids: I mean, as far as I am concerned a good SEO will know that Search phrase 1, which may get less traffic, will convert better than Search phrase 2, 3 or 4 combined and will use their expertise to drive traffic and the right kind of traffic to their company website using SEO techniques, development, creative writing etc. Now, I agree with you there may be some college kids doing grunt linking and maybe managing an Overcrap account, but these are temporary solutions, whereas a good SEO can achieve a better long-term solution at a lower cost (even at some crazy salary).
Thanks for all your comments and to everybody else who has participated in this thread.
