voodooman asked 4 years agoSo 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 
” title=”” class=”bbcode_smiley” /> 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!
PokerBoy answered 4 years ago
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:
voodooman answered 4 years ago
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!
webber286 answered 4 years ago
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.
voodooman answered 4 years ago
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.
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