2010 SEO/SEM Salary Survey Australia & New Zealand - Results

After a long wait, SEO Sydney Blog has finally published the results of the 2010 Australia and New Zealand SEO SEM Salary Survey. (You can download the results here).

For a little bit of background, the 2010 survey started in April 2010 following the same template as the 2008 and 2009 surveys.

In 2010, we had 59 respondents, which we would like to thanks for their support. After collecting and analysing the results, we finally got all the information we were looking for.

In 2010, the SEO and SEM industry in Australia and New Zealand has evolved compared to the previous years. While quite predictable, the 2010 Survey results show that the industry is getting more and more mature.

- The age of SEO and SEM professionals has increased compared to 2009 and 2008. In 2010 52.5% of all respondents are below 30. They were 64.5% in 2008 and 64% in 2009.

- The SEO and SEM professionals are also more experienced. In 2010, 63% of professionals have 3 or more years of exprience. They were 51.5% in 2009 and 42.4% in 2008.

- With more experience, SEO and SEM professionals have also worked for more companies than before. In 2008 32.5% of respondents had worked for more than 3 companies, they were 39% in 2009 and 52.5 % in 2010.

- More experience is also translated with higher salaries. In 2010 55% of SEO and SEM professionals earn more than 60K a year. They were 50% in 2009 and 45.4% in 2008.

Although not a break-through, the results of the survey provide some useful insights for both recruiters and candidates (Please feel free to check our SEO recruitment guide as well). As a recruiter, it is more and more important to offer salaries in line with experience. Candidates with 3 or more years experience will be less likely to accept anything below 60K. If they are on this wage or below, they might also be looking at other companies to get a payrise.

Google Caffeine: Towards a Fresher Google Index

Back in December 2009, we wrote a post on the issues that Google faced with real-time search. At this time the integraton of real-time search and especially Twitter updates in Google's search engine result pages showed some weaknesses.

Since then, things have changed and Google has reviewed its way of indexing documents and build a completely new search index called Google Caffeine. On July 8th, Google has officially announced and explained the Google Caffeine.

What is new with Caffeine

The orginal Google search index was built some time ago, when the Internet was much smaller and very different. In the last couple of years and even months, the content on the internet has increased dramatically and the need for instantaneous and fresh information has put a lot of pressure on the Google search index resulting in large delays to display the latest information.

The 'old' Google search index was build around layers. Each layer was updated at different rates (some layers were updated more frequently than others for example for Google News), but the main layer or main index required to crawl a very large amount of web pages to be fully updated. This process could take up to 30 days to integrate newly created pages in its index.



Although Google does not give a lot of information on what it is radiacally different, Caffeine appears to have higher crawling capabilities. The crawling process has also been reviewed. Rather than crawling the entire web at once, Caffeine crawls smaller portions and update the index on constant basis, which would improve the freshness of information.

At this stage, it is still early days to see the difference and measure the real effect of the changes.

3 Tips to Effectively Set Your SEM Budget

Setting up a SEM budget might seems like the easiest part, when considering advertising your business or products in search engines, however making the wrong decision with your budget allocation can have a bad impact on your campaign ROI.

A budget too high will result in some money being 'wasted' on not relevant terms or non converting terms . On the other hand, a budget too low is likely not to capture relevant traffic and will represent a high opportunity cost.

Based on experience and best practices, we have outlined some tips, which we hope will help you set your budget and maximise your campaign return on investment.

1) Your budget should reflect the search demand

This basic marketing principle is often overlooked when setting up SEM budget, which often result in inflated budget. For some reasons advertisers often think that they can spend without limits, but search traffic is a limited demand environement.

Having a budget much higher than the search volume is often the cause of poor performance. By forcing to spend more, the advertisier is likely to pay more for a click or select keywords which do not bring qualified traffic and therefore lower its ROI.

Before choosing a budget, make sure you do a quick research with the Google Adwords keyword tool to see the actual search volume. While useful, remember that the data is only an estimate and is likely to be different from the reality.

2) Take seasonality into account.

Seasonaliy is an important factor to consider when setting up your SEM budget. Search demand is not flat and depending in your industry is might vary based on the time of the year or special events.

If you are an online retailer, the Christmas season will generate a much higher demand than usual, so your SEM budget needs to reflect this.
If you are an accountant, the end of financial year will see an increase in search demand, which should be reflected in your budget.

Again the Google Adwords keyword tool can help you to identify seasonal trends.

3) Review your budget on regular basis

Setting up a budget for 12 months based on estimate is a risky exercise. 99% of the time, the estimate will be wrong so you budget is likely not to be fully aligned with the search demand.
Reviewing your budget every 2 to 3 months and adjusting it based on the demand, will make sure that you search engine marketing spend is in line with the search demand.

Search Specialist | SEO and SEM | $65-75K Package

Do you want to work for a leading digital agency, helping clients achieve there search goals.

About the role:

Do you want to implement Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Digital Marketing solutions including Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Performance-Marketing and Social Media Strategies. Do you want to help clients achieve there commercial goals. If so an exciting permanent opportunity has come up for a talented SEO and SEM specialist to join the team.

What you will need to be successful:

PPC
Experience running Pay Per Click campaigns
Key word generation experience
PPC ad writing skills
Campaign Optimisation
Key word bidding experience
Campaign reporting experience
Client Presentation skills

SEO

SEO site audit skills including crawling audit
Client recommendation and presentation skills
SEO reporting
SEO tracking
Link building
Article submission
Task priorotisation

If you are up for the challenge then apply now or contact Ronan Mahon on 02 9346 5232

Account Director - Search Marketing Agency

First Rate, a search marketing agency, is looking for an Account Director to join its marketing and business development division.

Objectives

• Grow agency revenue from existing clients by working the client base
• Grow agency revenue from new businesses by pitching search marketing to potential new clients.

Reponsabilities

• Work with existing clients to maintain and increase media budget
• Identify opportunities within the agency client base
• Propose and present new digital and search marketing ideas to clients
• Identify opportunities and pursue them
• Expand your knowledge of SEM, SEO, and Performance Marketing

Requirements
• 4+ years experience as an account director
• 2+ years experience in search marketing
• Active professionnal network
• Great interpersonal skills

Salary
$85,000 to $110,000 + super (based on experience)

For more information or To apply: http://lnkd.in/atUBxt