SEO or Search Engine Optimization is fast emerging as a lucrative career option. It gives you the flexibility to either opt for a full time job or freelance as a SEO Manager.
The Internet is our biggest source of information, whether we're looking to buy something, book a vacation, renovate our homes, or even complete our projects. Businesses, organizations, schools, movies, and even celebrities have websites today. These websites do more than just provide information; they are a source of income as well and play a crucial role in marketing.
With an estimated 185 million websites in existence today, there is a constant struggle to be on top and stand out. This is where the job of an SEO or Search Engine Optimization Manager comes in. Not so long ago, it was the webmaster who would perform the tasks of an SEO manager, like adding optimized keywords, adding links to search engines, etc; all to ensure that the website gets more traffic and generates revenue. These days, however, due to the cut-throat competition and increasing number of websites, there is a need for a dedicated specialist to perform these tasks.
Jagadeesh Mohan Kumar Nambiar is an SEO professional who has been working in the web field for the past ten years, and has been specializing in SEO for six years. Jagadeesh shares his insights about a career as a SEO manager.
Why is a SEO manager needed?
SEO helps website owners to maximize their web page visibility in organic search for their consumers to find them through search queries (normally called keywords or key phrases). The world now depends a lot on the Internet and people like to use their favorite search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to find information they need. With SEO, you find what your customers search for and you can bring an online presence to your web pages based on your customers’ search queries. Having a well designed service or product site without an online presence is of no use. With SEO, we can have long term results and greater return on investment.
There are many SEO professionals who may do SEO benchmark reports, on-page SEO, competitor and keyword reports, off-page SEO, SEO ROI progress reports, SEO consultation, analytics, and so on. Someone who has knowledge in all these areas with various industries expertise, technical knowledge, and the ability to forecast the online business growth can qualify as a SEO Manager.
How different is it from the job of a webmaster?
The main difference is that a qualified SEO professional has the ability get his client’s site visibility to their customers by finding online competition, desired search keywords and user behavior with the site. User behavior is as important as getting them to the sites and it leads to sales conversion.
What does the job of a SEO professional entail?
Understanding industry standards, advising clients on the latest trends to improve online presence, training the team with the latest industry updates, managing the campaign handled by the SEO team, client communication, and reporting on the work done.
Other tasks include evaluating the existing website structure, competitor analysis, keyword analysis and research, search engine marketing report, right keyword identification according to targeted audience related to website, improving web page presentation, improving the HTML structure, adding links to the identified search engines, business directories and websites, continuous link building to achieve page rank, configuring analytics, monitoring inbound links, monitoring search results for optimized pages as well as ongoing SEO campaign report with analytics observation and ROI.
What are the challenges involved to achieve high hits?
First of all, you need to ensure that you have web statistics. Google Analytics does a good job and the interesting thing is that it is a free service. The main challenge is to get to know your online business competition and analyze the competitor’s sites for their targeted search keywords and get to know where their websites are listed for referrals. The core area you need to focus on is the content that sells your business service and products, having a relevant page title with unique meta tags, images with 'alt' attribute that represent the content and to get good amount of quality links to your site from directories (like dmoz, Botw), articles, news, press releases, blogs and social sites.
SEO is a long term process and we can see good progress within six months or one year. Over the long term, we can generate mass quality traffic even for a single keyword term.
What are the technical qualifications required?
Understanding search engine-friendly code is the key qualification. That includes HTML, and knowledge of CSS, JS, PHP, .Net and other platforms. Server side and internal protocol knowledge is an added advantage. Not many companies know about the advantages of an SEO manager. But now I see a good amount of demand and good pay packages being offered for SEO managers in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Cochin. Also many people undertake SEO as freelance by working on on-page and off-page optimization methods. Others offer consultation services on client sites and on their online business growth. These people are called SEO consultants.
What is the job ladder and growth prospect like?
Job ladder, growth and salary differ based on the organization and the location. Here is a general view:
SEO Trainee – up to Rs 7,500 per month
SEO Analyst/Link Analyst - up to Rs 15,000 per month
Senior SEO Analyst/Strategist - up to Rs 25,000 per month
SEO Manager - up to Rs 50,000
Senior SEO Manager/Account Manager - up to Rs 75,000
SEO Director - Rs 1,00,000 and above
There are companies that pay much better than stated above, and I see good growth for SEO, because due to the recession, more SEO projects from the US and Europe are being outsourced to India than ever before. SEO is one of the industries that were not down in India during recession.
What is your advice for people considering a career in SEO?
Initially, the person needs to know how the search engine behaves on listing sites. That includes site tags, quality content relevancy, internal links, search engine-friendly code format. He must know how links point to sites. Website popularity increases as it gets more backlinks. To the search engine, backlinks are like votes in the site’s favor. Apart from that, participating in forums like Search Engine Watch and Cre8asite is a great way to learn fast.
