SEO is the art and science of optimizing your web pages to be found by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing etc. But why part art, part science? The science part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) deals with technology and all the engineering & technicalities of a website such as code, information architecture & user experience etc.

While Art is all about understanding the business, and the customer behavior and try to positively persuade it by adding value to them in the form of a product, service or a solution and getting value in return as leads, sales or branding.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a fundamental role in scaling up sales and speed up the growth of a completely online business (such as Flipkart.com  or an offline business such as KFC.

High demand for SEO services:

With an increase in demand for SEO services, employment opportunities in the industry are also increasing. Now, when sites have increased in number and doing great business, an expert SEO has become the need of the companies. Therefore, you can expect more job opportunities in the Digital Marketing industry.

There are many living proofs that SEO is a viable business. 

SEO is a profession that can be practiced while working for a company or as a solo practitioner. There are many job boards like Dice and Craigslist that publish SEO job advertisements. It is worth noting that the compensation for SEO employees is equal to or even higher than that of developers, designers and marketers. Salaries over $80K per annum are not an exception for SEO jobs.

As a solo SEO practitioner you can make even more money. Almost all freelance sites have sections for SEO services and offers for $50 an hour or more are quite common. If you are still not confident that you can work on your own, you can start a SEO job, learn a bit and then start your own company.

If you already feel confident that you know a lot about SEO, you can take this quiz and see how you score. Well, don’t get depressed if you didn’t pass – here is a great checklist that will teach you a lot, even if you are already familiar with SEO.

Many companies offer turn–key solutions that include Web design, Web development AND SEO optimization. In fact, many clients expect that when they hire somebody to make their site, the site will be SEO friendly, so if you are good both as a designer and a SEO expert, you will be a truly valuable professional.

On the other hand, many other companies are dealing with SEO only because they feel that this way they can concentrate their efforts on their major strength – SEO, so you can consider this possibility as well.

The Web has changed the way companies do business, so to some extent today’s marketers and advertisers need to have at least some SEO knowledge if they want to be successful. SEO is also a great career for linguists.

For somebody who comes from design, development or web administration, SEO might look not technical enough and you might feel that you will downgrade if you move to SEO. Don’t worry so much – you can learn a LOT from SEO, so if you are a talented techie, you are not downgrading but you are actually upgrading your skills packages.

Finally, if you need some more proof that SEO is a great career, have a look at the available SEO courses and exams for SEO practitioners. Well, they might not be a CISCO certification but still they help to institutionalize the SEO profession.

It is true that in any career there are many things that are outside of your control but for SEO this is a rule number one. Search engines frequently change their algorithms and what is worse – these changes are not made public, so even the greatest SEO gurus admit that they make a lot of educated guesses about how things work. It is very discouraging to make everything perfect and then to learn that due to a change in the algorithm, your sites dropped 100 positions down. But the worst part is that you need to communicate this to clients, who are not satisfied with their sinking ratings.

Probably this will change over time but for now the rule is that there are no rules – or at least not written ones. You can work very hard, follow everything that looks like a rule and still success is not coming. Currently you can’t even rely on bringing a search engine to court because of the damages they have done to your business because search engines are not obliged to rank high sites that have made efforts to get optimized.

But even if you somehow manage to get to the top for a particular keyword, keeping the position requires constant efforts. Well, many other businesses are like that, so this is hardly a reason to complain – except when an angry customer starts shouting at you that this week their ratings are sinking and of course this is all your fault.

The SEO professional and customers both need to understand that SEO takes constant effort and time. It could take months to move ahead in the ratings, or to build tens of links. Additionally, if you stop optimizing for some time, most likely you will experience a considerable drop in ratings. You need lots of motivation and patience not to give up when things are not going your way.

Black hat SEO is probably one of the biggest concerns for the would–be SEO practitioner. Fraud and unfair competition are present in any industry and those who are good and ethical suffer from this but black hat SEO is still pretty widespread. It is true that search engines penalize black hat practices but still black hat SEO is a major concern for the industry.

In Asian countries like India the average salary for SEO is in between Rs 1.8 lacs – Rs 4 lacs per year for freshers. Like any other discipline; the salary depends on various different factors like No. of years Experience, Employer Type, City, Company Size, Certifications etc.

There are thousands of job openings in the Digital marketing industry and many of the job descriptions include experience in search engine optimization. Need for both entry-level & experienced SEO professionals will be growing until search engines exist in this world.

In Asian countries like India the average salary for SEO is in between Rs 1.8 lacs – Rs 4 lacs per year for freshers. Like any other discipline; the salary depends on various different factors like No. of years Experience, Employer Type, City, Company Size, Certifications etc.

There are thousands of job openings in the Digital marketing industry and many of the job descriptions include experience in search engine optimization. Need for both entry-level & experienced SEO professionals will be growing until search engines exist in this world.

Online industry is growing everyday & SEO is playing a vital role in bringing the visitors to the website and all the companies are spending a huge sum in SEO. It’s one of the most happening areas and there are a good number of job opportunities in the field of SEO.

Every website is looking to procure SEO services for itself either internally or externally depending on its budgets and expertise at hand.

SEO has very bright future for you if you have great analytic skills, and you are dynamic. You need to keep up with the latest trend in the field, have passion for research and be able to formulate clever and creative marketing strategy to beat your competitor, and have an edge over all others.

Many of the SEO firms, particularly the larger firms, have employees in these job categories:

• Analytics
• Business Management/Development
• Link Building
• Event Management
• Organic Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media Analyst
• Web Development/Programming
• Web Design
• Offline Marketing/Advertising
• Public Relations/Reputation Management
• Paid Search/PPC Management
• Web Design
• Writing/Blogging