Employment Trends in SEO – Where is the industry heading in Oz.....

I have finally succumbed – got all my courage together and ready to put my opinions out there for you all to judge....

Over the past three years I have noticed a number of changes within the search industry – SEO is really starting to get noticed – Last year it was all about PPC, but now I have noticed some subtle but interesting shifts...

Firstly in Asia we are predominantly recruiting SEO candidates who have experience managing large PPC campaigns and this trend has been happening for some time now.

I believe that the reason for this is due to PPC being the quickest way to generate traffic and is therefore the initial strategy undertaken when launching any campaign however it seems that over time as a SEO strategy is implemented and run, PPC then becomes less valuable and SEO becomes the more beneficial strategy used to drive traffic to a site.

Also on a side note the other reason maybe that the search market in Asia is a lot more mature, competitive and established and this sees some PPC campaigns specifically with large organisations set up some time ago running their course and needing only slight tweaks, reporting, analysis and set up for minor campaigns being the only other requirements. I am already seeing this with a number of large publishers whom Xpand work with here in Australia.

Finally, web sites are valuing SEO as a long term strategy as rankings remain long after a campaign ends and because studies have shown that SEO is viewed as more credible than PPC.

However don’t get me wrong, I love PPC and value what it allows businesses to achieve in a short space of time and for various marketing campaigns they are running.

But what does this mean for you?

I highly suggest that you continue working if you are not already with PPC and get qualified but at the same time continue to focus on getting involved with as many large SEO projects as possible where you are dealing with a number of internal stakeholders as this is what clients of mine are specifically looking for.... I’ll elaborate next time...

If you would like to connect or have any questions feel free to find me at the following locations:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shairoitman

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shairoitman

Email: shai@xpand.com.au

Australian & New Zealand SEO/SEM Industry Survey - Need more Respondents

Back in April 09, we launched the second Australian and New Zealand SEO/SEM Industry survey. The purpose is to gather information on how the industry evolves and provide guidelines for job seekers and recruiters on salaries.

To date, we have collected the answers of 40 respondents, which is good. For more relevancy, we would like to get a little more respondents! So if you have not taken the survey or know people that might be interested, please feel free to forward the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=iLI9wkrRVaJT0NpI_2bSO8EQ_3d_3d

As soon as we have enough answers, we will release the results for free.

Search Jobs - Sydney and Melbourne - SEO and SEM

Search Jobs Ahoy.

Hi all, hope you are looking for a new challenge because we have some Sydney and Melbourne based roles to get your teeth stuck into.

For more details please give Shai or I a call. All contact details are below.

Search Roles Sydney:
Contact: Ronan Mahon
Agency: Xpand – www.xpand.com.au
Email: ronan.mahon@xpand.com.au
Phone: 02 9346 5232

1. Senior Search Candidate:

• Ideally you will have been a developer with a great technical knowledge and then moved into search
• SEO and SEM knowledge and hands on experience
• 3-5 years in search, either client side or agency side
• Knowledge of front end and back end development
• Previous experience in managing a suite of sites
• Examples of successful rankings
• Turning rankings into leads and sales
• Excellent pay
• Excess of $100k

2. Mid weight Search Candidate:

• This role is purely SEO
• Working client side
• Experience working with online retail is beneficial
• On page Optimisation
• Off Page Optimisation
• Social Media Optimisation
• Link Building
• Blogging
• Content Optimisation
• This role is perfect for someone who is working agency side and would like to move client side
  

3. SEM, PPC Specialist – Agency:

• Looking for Juniors, Mids and Seniors
• Experience Agency side is highly desirable
• Track record of achieving results and ranks
• If you are a search engine marketing specialist I don’t need to explain it, just hit me up and lets see about a new role.

Search Roles Melbourne

Contact: Shai Roitman
Agency: Xpand – www.xpand.com.au
Email: shai.roitman@xpand.com.au
Phone: 03 8637 7316

4. SEO Analyst – 6 Month Contract

• 6 Month Contract
• SEO Analyst
• A big project
• 3 Years hands-on experience to join
• Flexible working week and competitive salary

Online Retailer Exhibition & Conference - Sydney 2009

The inaugural Online Retailer Exhibition and Conference will take place in Sydney on the 18th and 19th of August 2009.
The conference organised by Marc Harvey from National Media, is the only event in Australasia exclusively focused on internet retailing and e-commerce. According to their website, over 550 online and multi-channel retailers have already registered. The figures set some high expectations for a new event!

One of the great thing about the online retailer conference is that you can get a Free Pass for the exposition, which allows access to exhibitors stands and keynote presentations.
The program of the conference also looks pretty exciting with topics covering a large range of activities from web analytics, to user experience and shipping.

If you are interested, early bird price will finish on 31st July 2009. You can get the full pass from $995 (rather than $1195) and half-day access pass from $395 (rather than $595)

ABA Web Audit Service - Towards Standard Online Audience Measurement Metrics

After an industry wide collaboration between ABA (Audit Bureaux of Australia), the MFA (Media Federation of Australia), the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) of Australia, the AANA (Australian Association of National Advertisers)and Nielsen Online, the Audit Bureaux of Australia has official released yesterday their new Web Audit Service.

What is the Web Audit Service

The web audit service is a hugh milestone in the Australian media landscape as well as in the web analytics industry. Partnering with Nielsen Online, the ABA aims at setting up a new online audience measurement standard (as they did with print), which will provide reliable, comparable and independently verified web audience metrics.

Basically the idea to set up a standard web measurement system (Nielsen Online) as the reference for accurate and reliable data for web traffic. If you have a website or work with websites, you have probably noticed the strong discrepancies between web analytics systems. Each system collect data in different ways and often use different metrics, which leads to a real confusion for advertisers.

By selecting one web measurement partner, the ABA expect to standardize the web data collection and metrics, which allows reliable and accurate comparisons.

What does the Web Audit Service offer

The web audit service will provide (to its members) audited web reports on 5 key metrics:

- Unique Browsers (unique visitors)
- Page Impressions
- Sessions
- Frequency
- Duration

The ABA will also audit the placement of web measurement tags on publishers websites as well as monitor how the data is collected by Nielsen Online.

Each member will be able to access the comparative data from Nielsen Online (Market Intelligence)

The Benefits & implications

The web audit service will have strong implications on how the online advertising industry works.

The new service will allow small publishers to be able to compete on the same ground as large publishers. Agencies and Media buyers will be able to access reliable data on the long tail of websites. Advertisers will have more visibility on their online advertising spending. As a results it is expected to open the online advertising industry to a larger audience.

Small publishers should be the biggest winners as they will be able to market themselves in a more effective way to agencies and large advertisers.

The Challenges

Nielsen Online and the ABA have made sure that the service is affordable (from $95 /month for publishers with 0 to 150,000 impressions), however the success of the service and concept will strongly depend on the adoption by small publishers.

While modest, the monthly fee could deter smaller publishers, who can access web measurement data through Google Analytics. I believe the fee could be one of the major drawback to the general adoption of the standard.

A partly free/partly paid service could have been a better option.