Guiding Users’ Way: Careers in Search Engine Optimization & Search Marketing

One of the hottest fields of the past several years, search engine optimization and its close cousin, search marketing, have become increasingly important to companies looking to improve their websites’ search rankings and make themselves more visible to potential customers online.

Perhaps because this field is filled with statistical research and analysis professionals — whose efforts tend to focus largely on interpreting users’ traffic and website usage patterns — writers and editors often overlook it when they’re searching for jobs in online media. But writing and editing play an essential role in the success of any search optimization effort, and that makes the “SEO” (short for “search engine optimization”) copywriter a critical member of every search marketing agency’s team.

Still, you might ask, what is unique about SEO copywriting and how does it differ from what any advertising or interactive copywriter does?

The short answer is: Not much. In fact, any writer who creates copy to be published online ought to have a working knowledge of how search works, the elements of a Web page that are important to search, and how to write in ways that incorporate search-friendly phrases and terms.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Consider for a moment the way in which you came to view this page on the Web. You most likely typed a phrase into a search engine like Google, which responded with a list of ten results, each with a title, description and the exact URL of the relevant page. Those results were served to you because, according to the search engine’s algorithm, they were the closest match for your search phrase.

What SEO copywriters do is create these titles, descriptions and related information so that their clients’ websites will be as relevant as possible to the searches being performed every hour of every day by the people they’re trying to reach. Whether it’s “new running shoes,” “turquoise jewelry,” or “affordable car insurance,” these copywriters write the copy that tries to entice users to interrupt their surfing and dive deeper into a particular topic.

Not Just “Microcontent” and “Metadata”

But the work of the SEO copywriter goes beyond creating titles, descriptions and keywords — often called “metadata” or “microcontent” by those who work in the industry — for individual Web pages, however. Search-focused copwriters also approach their work in a strategic way, and often write copy for entire websites or selected landing pages throughout a site.

In these larger efforts, the SEO copywriter’s knowledge of how search engines assign relevance and importance to websites and pages is critical, so she can craft pages that stand out on the Web and generate traffic for their owners, as well as ad copy for paid search campaigns.

Where to Find Jobs in SEO

Currently, employment in the search engine optimization world is a mix of freelance and full-time job opportunities. Many independent writers offer SEO copywriting as an add-on to their corporate and/or interactive copywriting services, while other freelancers specialize in writing the copy that appears in the text ads that appear alongside the organic search listings you see on the results pages of every major search site.

There are numerous interactive agencies that make search optimization their core business, companies like New York’s 360i, Atlanta’s TwentySix2, and New Jersey’s Teknicks. Meanwhile, scores of Web design and interactive marketing agencies have begun offering SEO and emphasizing it as an important part of their overall services for clients.

Increasingly, mid-size and large companies — especially companies that publish large, constantly updated websites — are hiring in-house SEO directors, analysts and experts, to avoid the costs of paying outside agencies to do work that they see more and more as critical to their business.

What Does It Pay?

Freelance copywriters who specialize in SEO can earn anywhere from $50 to $100 per hour for their services, depending on the size of the market in which they live and the kinds of companies they work with. For those interested in full-time employment, salaries for SEO copywriters range from $45,000 to $55,000 (according to data compiled by SimplyHired.com). Salaries for search engine optimization managers and directors often range higher.

What Do I Need to Know?

For starters, anyone who’s interested in becoming an SEO copywriter should have a strong working knowledge of HTML, the programming language used to create Web pages. This is invaluable in understanding how both Web browsers and search engines “read” content on the Web, and influences how these writers approach the SEO copywriting task.

Once they’ve begun to grasp HTML, understanding the elements of search — how search engines work, what they “see” on a page, etc. — is the next big piece of knowledge you’ll need. For my money, there’s no better introduction to search engine optimization than Gradiva Couzin and Jennifer Grappone’s Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day. This book presents a series of lessons in SEO in easy-to-understand, easily digestible chapters that emphasize the truly important and necessary information you need.

Want to Learn More?

Check out these sites, which feature the latest news, blogs, columns and guides to SEO for beginners as well as advanced search marketing professionals:

• SEOMoz
• Search Engine Land
• Search Engine Watch