Archive for the 'SEO Industry' Category
SEOmoz Knows How to Lure Hire Top Talent!
Sometimes we talk about the SEO and high tech job market here in Canada and compare it to the UK and the USA. But Rand over at SEOmoz.com sure knows how to get the word out when he wants top quality staff! Check-out the sweet offer below!
We’re seeking 4-5 very talented engineers (possibly more) with experience handling large-scale problems like machine learning, web crawling, building and optimizing web services (APIs), coping with large quantities of data and dealing in massively distributed systems.
Why should you send your engineer friends to SEOmoz? Three big reasons:
- They’ll be joining an amazing team at a great company earning top salaries at a place that values their contributions (see below)
- You’ll get $12,000 in cash* (OK, probably a check, but still!)
- They’ll also get $12,000 in cash**
As part of this process, we’re making things interesting for talented engineers, too:
- If you refer/apply yourself, you’ll receive a $12,000 cash hiring bonus**
- If you’re not in the Seattle area, we can offer up to $10,000 to help you (and your family) move to the area
- If you make it to our final interview round (for a chat with our full team), you’ll walk out with a free iPad
- Start your new job right with a $5,000 shopping budget to spend on the hardware/software/accessories of your choice (for either home or office!). Need a new desk and chair set for you spare bedroom to work those odd hours in comfort? Go for it. New laptop? No problem.
- Salaries for engineers at SEOmoz are substantively above the average/median for Seattle (according to Payscale, Glassdoor, SimplyHired). We’ll be on par with the offers you get from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. in cash, and we’re even better on stock.
- Benefits at SEOmoz rock – we have a great health and dental plan (for you and your family / S.O.), we’ll cover your home Internet and your cellphone bill, 20 days of vacation time annually, transportation options, 401K plans and more.
Seattle also sounds like a great place to work. Especially it being -15 below here today!
OK, so who can answer this question…what search engine shows 11 sponsored results and only 4 organic results on the first page??
?
?
The answer is GOOGLE!!! These keywords are very expensive, so less organic results equals more clicks and more money in Google’s pockets.
I do realize this could just be some testing but if it is a sign of things to come, my feeling is it will translate into a very poor user experience…
One of the main digs against Google is that it has been very slow in reacting to content farms that ad little to zero to the search results. Sure Google has chased down some little guys over the past few years but they have continually shied away from bombing the really big content farms. But Rich Skrenta, Blekko’s CEO has confirmed the ban. He told searchengineland.com, Blekko has decided to ban the “top 20 spam sites from blekko’s index entirely, based on our users click /spam on results.” This includes ehow.com, one of Demand Media’s top revenue generating web sites.
Skrenta explained this came up after listening to Danny on This Week In Google. Rich hacked together a reverse slashtag named -/contentfarms that allowed searches to remove these sites from their searchers. Today, Blekko decided to drop the sites completely from their index, making the slashtag irrelevant.
The top 20 sites Blekko removed from their index include ehow.com, experts-exchange.com, naymz.com, activehotels.com, robtex.com, encyclopedia.com, fixya.com, chacha.com, 123people.com, download3k.com, petitionspot.com, thefreedictionary.com, networkedblogs.com, buzzillions.com, shopwiki.com, wowxos.com, answerbag.com, allexperts.com, freewebs.com, and copygator.com.
Gutsy move by Blekko and it will be interesting to see if Google follows suit with some major moves. But let’s remember that Google makes a tons of cash from many of these sites because they show Adsense.
Typically most SEO’s will begin with a new website by optimizing the home page because that is usually your best starting page in terms of current search engine visibility but many beginners neglect the power of inner page conversions. Inner pages can be so valuable because often the traffic that you send there is laser targeted and will therefore convert at a very high rate. I have found it common to see inner pages with bounce rate and/or conversion rates that are 5-10 times higher better than home pages.
Here are a few results I pulled from a client that has been with us for the past two years and it can give you a good idea on the growth potential of inner pages.
The moral of this post is that you should always make sure the search professional that is working for you has a holistic approach to your search engine success. Focusing solely on the home page will leave a lot of visitors and money on the table.
I started 2011 off by getting two strikes on my first two bowling balls of the year, so that should mean a stellar year for me personally?! Here are some of my thoughts and predictions for this year.
In Search
- Google will face some more heavy anti-trust lawsuits and will start to back-off on their greed factor. Google has now pushed organic (natural) listings down past the fold, squeezing out online directories and information providers (weather and sports score sites) and have implemented ads right inside emails.
They are so aggressive in their quest to earn another few billion that soon, everyday folks will start realizing that they might not be the best search alternative. The big question is, can a new search engine or one of the older ones step-up and do something that will help the mainstream searchers switch over? I predict that besides the rough ride Google might have with anti-trust issues they will remain dominant and retain most of their market share.
In Tech
- Apple will come out with an iPad Lite or iPad Jr. – iPads have been very popular but they sure are big! I think Apple will have an option for a smaller more compact iPad this year. My guess is the new version will have a 7.7 inch screen so it will be roughly 20% smaller.
Other Stuff
- A terrorist attack in the USA will succeed on a much smaller scale than 9/11. I predict something like a bombing in the downtown core of a major US city in CA or NY. My guess is that many plots over the last few years have been foiled but the crazy, sick terrorists will continue trying.
- The US government will announce increased rebates for purchasers of electric cars. The current rebate of $7,500 will be increased to at least $8,000 and maybe as high as $10,000. The USA and in fact all of North America needs to start ending its love affair with fossil fuels and electric cars are a big part of this solution.
- Similar to the above I predict a breakthrough this year in electric car batteries that will allow for a 25% increase in travel distances and a similar decrease in charging times.
Long Term Prediction
- This one might come across as more science fiction than science but I predict by the year 2050 we will be utilizing solar and lightning power for 90% of the worlds energy needs.
Sometimes I come across the most interesting pages. Things were so different a decade ago when I was first getting into online marketing. Something like this was a common sight *http://www.mvdn.com/exit.htm* (sorry, but please cut and paste, I don’t have the willpower to make this link live) and it actually worked!! I notice the page rank bar on this page has a 3, I wonder if after a certain amount of time Google still allows juice to flow from a page like this? Maybe the logic is that if it has lasted online for this long it is somewhat legitimate?
Let’s just hope it really doesn’t pass on any authority, but even if it does I guess it is watered down between the 200 or so outgoing links on the page. Oh to be an SEO in another decade, would be so easy!
It seems like Google is no longer happy with just pushing the organic listings down further on the page, they seem to have gotten rid of them all together. Many local searches are showing 7 Google Places listings and that is it!
Actually many of my test searches have been getting an interesting page like below:
Now that is a what I call stealth results! But seriously, how are they going to decide who is in the 7 Google Places spots? With those being the only listings on the first page, how long till they are selling these for $1000′s a month. When is a new search engine going to step up and show organic results again? I understand the concept of a ‘level playing field’ but dropping a nuclear bomb on the land to level it, is not really fair in my opinion.
Want to advertise your brand on the cheap to a specific qualified demographic? Sure, don’t we all!! Here is a peek behind the scenes of my newest Facebook advertising campaign and the bang-for-the-buck is spectacular! I thought the one million impression mark was a good time to sit down and figure out the value of this test project.
As you can see we got over 1 million impressions for less than $100 and I was able to laser target many of these. You might notice that the clickthru rate is not that high but that is not really the purpose of these campaigns. In my judgment any click was cream on top of the great brand promotion I got for the amount of money invested. Truth is that one conversion could equal $200-$300 profit so this campaign has not only increased the reach of my clients brand but likely made them some decent coin as well! We even put our phone number in the ads so we don’t need to always depend on a click to get a conversion.
Bottom line is that Facebook advertising right now is in the ‘sweet-spot’, lots of potential customers and we are able to reach them and expand our local brand at a low-price.
So I have been happy to report over the past couple of years that Canada, in particular my neck of these woods, Ontario has been catching up to the UK and USA by offering good starting salary for valuable Search Engine professionals. But a quick look at Craislist today makes me wonder what is going on. Not only have good paying SEO jobs been a rare occurrence the past few months, there are some really jokers offering peanuts and I can’t image what kind of specialist or professionals they are expecting to get. Just a few weeks ago I saw an ad for an experienced link builder starting at $60k per year plus benefits – then today:
looking for a hard working (very very hard working) individual to help promote our business with twitter, facebook (various social media sites), SEO etc. Compensation: $24,000 per year + stock options
Yikes! And this one:
In-House, Full Time PPC Specialist Position!
You must have knowledge and experience of managing and running multiple PPC campaigns ( AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search & Microsoft Ad Center) , have client oriented approach, ability to manage numerous and changing project priorities, excellent organizational skills, team player, ability to analyze and make recommendations for client up-sells (SEO packages, PPC campaigns, web design, and more).
Compensation: $30-$40K pluse commissions based on performance
Crazy experience and high level duties for $15 an hour? Data entry people at my office make that much!!
I still have faith that Canada is catching up and today’s posts are just a brief setback. Hope everyone is having a great summer!
This is a good paying job for someone with high-end link building and management skills. Link building is one of the hardest SEO jobs and it can also prove to be the most frustrating.
A Toronto Area search marketing firm is looking for a First-Class Link Builder to join our growing team. The Candidate will ideally be located in the Greater Toronto Area and have the ability to work remotely from a home office.
Read the rest here (link is dead now) and please reply to this thread if you are interviewed or get this position!
