The SEO Economy: A Search Marketing Recruiter’s Perspective

Sometimes it seems that you cannot go a day without reading a story about the economic challenges faced by our country. On one day the headline news is the declining housing market, the next it is a debate about if we are or are not in a recession, and the next it is about the latest financial company that needs to be bailed out. But what does that mean if you are a search marketer?

I thought I would take a moment to give you a view on the pulse of the search marketing industry from a search marketing recruiter’s perspective. As a forewarning, this analysis involves no economic indices, advanced algorithms, or other quantitative analysis or statistics. What it does include however is a picture of the search marketing industry based on the view of those of us that are out there in the market talking to job seekers and hiring managers every day.

In the course of an average week my team and I speak to hundreds of internet marketing professionals and hiring managers. We speak on a number of topics: the economy, new SEO project initiatives, their family life, the previous night’s Olympics competitions, the latest news from Google, and more. What I am not hearing right now though is that job seekers are having a hard time finding work, or that companies have stopped hiring. My overall takeaways are very positive. The hiring managers we speak to are looking to hire SEM/SEO professionals, or they are fully staffed and as busy as can be. On the other side of the fence, right now any good search marketing candidate starting a job search is not likely to be on the market long. (more…)