SEMPO Institute
Job Search is Fastest Growing Online Content Category in 2008
For news that should shock no one, the job search niche is the fastest growing online content category, according to comScore. The niche has grown a whopping 51% to 18.8 million visitors.
CareerBuilder.com leads the pack with over 9 million searches.
Women, the 25-49 age group and the $75,000+ salary set saw the most growth in job searches in December 2008 versus the same month a year prior:
Related Reading:
The 5 Web Resources You Need to Find a Job in Search
ClickZ’s Layoff Tracker for Digital Marketing Jobs
Yahoo, Zillow to Cut Jobs
Recruiting SEM Employees: Job Boards, Headhunters & Account Planning Boot Camp
SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
The 5 Web Resources You Need to Find a Job in Search
It’s a New Year, but we’ve got that same old economy from 2008. If you find yourself looking for a job in search, these five resources should be the foundation of your efforts:
- Indeed.com – Culls results from a variety of jobs sites as well as job listings from company web sites. Searching here keeps you from having to go individually to a variety of sites. You can pull an RSS feed of your job search into your news reader, making your search process even faster. You’ll find results from:
- SEMPO
- Monster
- HotJobs (owned by Yahoo)
- CareerBuilder
- Dice
- TalentZoo
- Twitter Let your followers know you’re looking for a job. I once did and had three leads in 24 hours. I got offers from all three. The Twitter community is generally a very compassionate bunch, raising money for good causes. Helping people find jobs is something I think we’ll see a lot of in 2009 – 2010.
- LinkedIn Not only does LinkedIn have its own job listings, but here you can many times find the people who are doing the hiring or at least work in Human Resources at the company you’re interested in. Use your network to get introduced and create connections.
- Craig’s List Answering an ad for a Search Marketing Copywriter on Craig’s List is how I got my start in search. Well, that and the great Marketing Don taking a chance on me.
- Search Engine Watch Board – Rounding out the list is a completely shameless plug for our very own jobs board.
What resources do YOU recommend? Leave a comment and let us know!
Related Reading:
The Purple People Collective: Freelance and Job Listings for Laid-Off Yahoos
Yahoo, Zillow to Cut Jobs
Recruiting SEM Employees: Job Boards, Headhunters & Account Planning Boot Camp
SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
SEMPO’s Annual State of the Market Survey Open Now Open for 2008
It’s that time of year. SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) has opened their State of the Market survey to gain (and later give) insight into what SEOs and SEMs are doing with their marketing budgets and strategies.
There are perks for participating, including an 8GB iPod Touch and a free pass to a North Americaan SES Conference to randomy drawn participants. You do not have to be a SEMPO member to participate.
This year, your participation may be more crucial than ever. An uncertain economy has many people guessing, but surveys such as these can help provide tangible realities into what’s really going on in search advertising.
“While there are numerous surveys publishing online spend projections, what differentiates the SEMPO survey is its ability to tap into the largest qualified pool of professionals actively engaged in search marketing,” says Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit, and a founding board member of SEMPO who continues to coordinate this annual research project.
Related Reading:
adCenter Offers $1000 in Free Clicks for SEMPO Members
SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
New SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd Has Big Dreams for Organization
adCenter Offers $1000 in Free Clicks for SEMPO Members
Microsoft’s adCenter is launching a new offer for Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) members: $1000 in free clicks. Campaigns created through the promotion will be placed on Live Search and the MSN portal. Those who wish to become SEMPO members to take advantage of the offer must join the organization by December 31, 2008.
“SEMPO members, both agency and corporate search marketers, represent some of the most knowledgeable and innovative search marketing leaders in the industry,” said Valerie Bolduc, senior global product marketing manager, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions, Microsoft. “Working with SEMPO provides Microsoft with the opportunity to engage and learn from the search marketing community, which enables us to enhance our products and offerings to better serve our mutual customers.”
SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt noted, “SEMPO’s continued growth is tied to the strong support of its sponsors. Microsoft has long been our lead sponsor and advocate on several fronts including the SEMPO Training Institute, as well as for special programs like the adCenter search advertising promotion. Our industry association greatly appreciates Microsoft’s strong commitment and ongoing participation.”
Related Reading:
SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
New SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd Has Big Dreams for Organization
SEMPO Selects Officers for New Board of Directors
SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
The SEMPO Institute is teaming with SIM Partners and i.c. stars to create search marketing career opportunities for young adults in Chicago. The president of SIM Partners, Jon Schepke, sits on the board of the SEMPO Institute. His company has been working with i.c. stars for over four years.
“As co-chair of the SEMPO Institute, it made perfect sense to connect these two organizations when the SEMPO Institute launched in 2007,” says Schepke.
i.c. stars is a nonprofit organization designed to develop community leaders in Chicago. The organization uses project-based learning to groom adults (who have at least a high school diploma or GED) for careers in business and technology.
“The i.c.stars partnership with SEMPO and SIM Partners has enabled a new and growth-oriented career option for graduates in the area of Internet Marketing,” states Eric Lannert, vice president of i.c. stars. He continues, “the volunteer efforts of SIM Partners have enabled us to modify our internal curriculum so students can manage their own Google Adwords campaigns for startup websites and gain experience. At a time of economic uncertainty, we see this partnership as a strategic initiative to continue providing meaningful and challenging job opportunities for our students.”
Earlier in the year, SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd included expanding the Institute’s baseline for education in her mission for the industry organization.
Related Reading:
Top 10 Toughest Jobs to Fill? The Top 3 Are In Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing Career Development
Search Marketing: A Rewarding Career Path
New SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd Has Big Dreams for Organization
Last month, SEMPO selected the officers for their 2008 Board of Directors, and Chairperson Dana Todd is sharing her vision for the organization.
“Because the internet marketing industry changes so rapidly, it’s becoming more important to hiring managers to know that the people they’re bringing on board have more than a passing knowledge of the tactical aspects of Search Marketing. It’s very learnable, but you can’t take shortcuts in learning a complex science such as Search,” said Chairperson Dana Todd.
Specifically, Todd wants to help search marketing practices be applied to other sectors such as online advertising, information architecture, and PR.
The Board of Directors will also focus on finding new ways to support the three primary legs of SEMPO’s mission , which are education, research and global expansion. New initiatives include defining standards and best practices, building local presences, and expanding the role of the SEMPO Institute to bring a higher baseline of education to search marketers.
Todd co-founded SiteLab Interactive in La Jolla, California. The company has been integral in the launch of Newsforce, which provides new media distribution tools for Public Relations professionals.
Boost Organic Results. Link Build with Social Media
In this evolutionary algorithmic age every search marketer charged with boosting rankings on the organic SERPs knows, with fearful certainty, that building inbound links is essential. Utilizing social media communities to do so is a front-and-center tactic for many.
Sure, we’re all aware of mainstream players like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Propeller, etc…
However, there are hundreds of social communities other than the biggies. These niche’ player-communities can be terrific venues to engage readers of similar ilk, make friends, drive focused micro-busts of traffic, and build links. Some communities are junk. This post offers niche’ social site examples and provides links to lists which index and profile dozens of useful ones.
Dofollow and Nofollow
A quick word about Do/No follow. Most blogs (and many communities) these days attempt to discourage spam by removing "link-juice" passed on links dropped in discussion threads. That’s called "Nofollow." (Wikipedia is a classic example of Nofollow.) Nofollow links deliver traffic but there’s no SEO benefit. If you view the source code of this page, you’ll see that some of the social site links are Nofollow and therefore do not pass energy.
When evaluating the potential benefit of social community participation, it’s best practice to understand the objective and potential gain. Whenever a site, with decent Pagerank, "forgets" to turn off Dofollow, it’s an opportunity of sorts to build links of varying strength and value. The most important caveat is that gratuitous link dropping, without offering true value to the community, is spam and will likely be treated as such.
Every search marketing professional knows that garnering good quality, relevant, and "natural" inbound links to your site or blog is critical to drive your SEO ranking efforts. Honest participation in niche’ social communities, relevant to your product & services, is the tactic that many savvy SEMs reach for to build their site’s inbound link-profile. In addition to the community site links themselves, “hot” posts can result in feed subscriptions, increased readership, and links from other relevant and valuable sites.
Fark is a social news site in which moderators approve user link-submissions and post them to the homepage. The links are Nofollow but can drive noticeable traffic.
Slashdot is a community where techno-heads hang out and geek-jam. However, users submit stories about entertainment, politics, and other fun stuff. If editors approve a submission and it’s promoted the homepage, measurable traffic can result. Also, links in the body of each post are Dofollow and pass juice.
Metafilter is a moderated community, both by site administers and users, in which participants share interesting web content. Links are Dofollow.
Mixx is widely regarded as an up-and-comer in the social news world. A potentially mainstream Digg replacement site, many SEM folks had early-adopter Mixx profiles for fun and future marketing bang. Oh yes, they forget to turn off Dofollow so the links pass juice.
Hugg is a smaller community engaged in dialog surrounding environmental issues. There’s social exchanges about technology, politics, and science as well. Links are Dofollow.
Sk*rt is a Dofollow PR 5 fashion, food, and technology community, primarily comprised of females.
Stirr’dup is a smaller NoFollow social news site which categorizes news as technology, entertainment, news and politics.
Linkinn is a PR5 site specializing in offbeat video and pictures. Links are DoFollow and pass juice.
Lists of Useful Social Media Sites:
48 Social News Websites: A List of General and Niche Social Media Communities
Tropical SEO: Top 38 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic)
Respected blogger Sugarrae has posted a serious interview with industry leading link-building experts and is a must-read. Interviews include:
Eric Ward, the Link Moses behind URL Wire
Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz
Roger Montti, the founder and owner of martinibuster.com
Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl and Clientside
Justilien Gaspard, Link Columnist for SearchEngineWatch.com, his link building blog and course author SEMPO Institute
Aaron Wall of SEO Book and Clientside SEM
Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link and the The Link Spiel
Michael Gray of the Graywolf SEO Blog
Andy Hagans, the lazy SEO of the Tropical SEO Blog
Jim Boykin of We Build Pages and Internet Marketing Ninjas
Rae Hoffman, CEO of Sugarrae and MFE Interactive
SEMPO Institute Adds Advanced Search Advertising Course
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has added another advanced course to its SEMPO Institute initiative. Joining the Fundamentals of Search Marketing and Advanced SEO courses is an Advanced Search Advertising course.
“Advanced Search Advertising gives marketers the ability to get more return on their ad buys by providing them with a deeper level of [...]
SEMPO SEO Training Levels Up
Coming off a successful debut of their Fundamentals of Search Marketing course, the training arm of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization has its Advanced SEO class up and running.
Most encouraging about SEMPO Institute’s efforts at education has been participation from major search engines in building the courses. SEMPO’s Terry Plank told WebProNews that Google, [...]
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