Bright Spots in the Job Market – Search-Engine Gurus #3

This Sunday’s Parade Magazine, as found in the Washington Post, highlighted its regular feature “What People Earn”. Aside from the ridiculous earnings attributed to professional sports and actors, most of those surveyed indicated their average salaries (assumed they kept their jobs) continued to slightly rise – with the better outlooks being in schools, hospitals and government services – vs. manufacturing, construction, retail and finance. The Washington DC region is certainly suffering – but perhaps less so than other regions, particularly because of (1) its association with the Federal Government job market and (2) its very high numbers of small businesses providing technology or technical-associated services.

One such service is Internet Marketing, also termed “Search Engine Optimization”, “Search Engine Marketing” and/or “Social Media Optimization” – depending on the business case. Parade Magazine indicates the following “Bright Spots” in the job market, nationwide:

1 – Police Officers
2 – Speech Therapists
3 – Search-Engine Gurus
4 – Registered Nurses
5 – Internal Auditors

This is probably the first time that this job category “Search Engine Gurus” has been recognized so publically; while the industry’s been around a while, and growing very strong, the combination of difficult economic conditions, loss of marketing budgets, and growth of online activity by consumers paired with great new social media and Web 2.0 tools is making this profession very attractive, very quickly.

There’s a catch, though – it’s not so easy to quickly learn, and the fundamental skills are a unique pairing that’s not easily found – good writing and marketing acumen, paired with decent web programming and statistical analysis.

Good help is also very hard to find overseas, through outsourcing via “Elance” for example – especially for marketing businesses in North America. South Asian-based bidders on USA-based projects through Elance typically provide at least 75% of the responses, but usually don’t demonstrate proficiency in written English either in their proposals or their own websites. Here’s a recent example, from a bid for SEO services: “You may surly ignore our resent feedback as we were close for renovation”. This bidder is asking the hiring manager (1) to ignore negative feedback, (2) to to actually understand this sentence, and (3) to ostensibly overlook the very bad grammar and hire this firm for their writing skills.

Therefore, there does exist a lot of great opportunity in this market, and this profession – especially if you’re a decent writer, have a modicum of web skills, and a real drive to succeed in a services-based industry; and most work is online, virtual, out of your home! Great jobs for ex-professional Moms, in particular.

Read more about Search Engine Marketing from the local Washington DC-area Search Engine and Social Media gurus at KME Internet Marketing (Loudoun, VA); there’s also an immediate need for SEO help from those looking to leverage their skills and background into this very “bright” profession.