Niche Internet Careers: SEO Jobs

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a field of endeavor related to Internet marketing, website management, web design and writing for the Internet. The fundamental purpose of SEO is to improve the ability of searchers using web browsers to find your material based on the keywords entered into the search field. You want searchers who use those keywords to stumble across your site listed nice and high in the results eventuating from the search.

High rankings: sounds easy, right? It's not so easy. Search Engine Optimization is a niche field jostling with every extreme from those who think they know how it all works, to complete shonks who have no idea but profess to know it all, through to the genuine web gurus who know all the legitimate tricks to put a website on the map (or at least on Google).

A multifaceted field
To become a true SEO guru, you need to have knowledge and experience across some pretty diverse fields: marketing; sales; copywriting for the web; technical and design focused Internet skills and a mind for statistical analysis.

Top players in the field typically arrive via the quest to improve one's own page ranking or that of a client, or out of technical interest in the way that the web functions.

More than just promotional benefits
Getting a good page rank on a major search engine is more than a nice feeling and a pat on the back; high rankings yield financial rewards. Many sites are monetized with pay-per-click or pay-per-view (impressions) advertising. People make entire livings from this kind of revenue, making SEO a key part of their earning strategy. SEO is big business and can be a lucrative field.

It starts with great content
The importance of fresh, original content which has value to the reader cannot be overestimated. The aforementioned 'shonks' can often be identified by their utter disregard for the quality of the site being optimized. They mistakenly believe that large quantities of low quality work will assist SEO efforts; it won't. Google and other search engines make every effort to identify poor quality, low value sites and drop down the ranking accordingly.

I'll take mine without keyword stuffing thanks
'Keyword stuffing' refers to the practice of inserting as many times as possible a particular word, series of words or phrase. Keywords are important in matching the Internet consumer's quest for information with the website you have so loving prepared which houses that particular information; but overdoing anything is usually a mistake.

Excessively keyword stuffed articles lose their sentence structure and devolve into unintelligible nonsense. The search browsers know that an article which mentions one idea 30%, 40% or 50% of the time (or even more, believe it or not) is not a quality article. Excessive keyword stuffing is detrimental to search engine rankings, not beneficial.

Keywords used with restraint, however, in naturally flowing sentences with real content, are a great tool in boosting search engine rankings.

Backlinks
Links which are all above board (other sites who promote your site of their own free will) are touted as one of the best SEO strategies around. Forging successful partnerships is an important part of SEO process management.

Tags and other technical stuff
SEO specialists will take your copy and flag it as much as possible to be optimally available to the intended audience via search engine browsers. Poor quality SEO jobs will offer to provide keyword stuffed articles but will fail to mention the important technical details.

If you want to pursue SEO jobs and don't know where to begin: a great start is a grassroots training in Marketing or Web Design / Programming as disciplines. From a core set of related skills, the additional ingredients that make a great SEO specialist can be added as you learn.

About the Author

James Copper is a writer for http://www.thebigagency.co.ukhttp://www.thebigagency.co.uk