Here is our recap of the hot conversations and news over the last week related to search marketing jobs and staffing. Last week the two big conversations within the search marketing community were around SEO standards — and whether the industry needs to adopt them — and how the recession will affect the search marketing industry. The biggest news of the week though came from Google, who announced they would be cutting 300 jobs from their DoubleClick division.
SEO Standards
Last week bloggers sounded off on the issue of SEO Standards. It all started with Jill Whalen’s article, We Don’t Need SEO Standards. SEOhack followed Jill’s posting by proposing his own list of calculated standards, You Want SEO Standards? Well Here Ya Go.
His standards start with:
1. Those who wish to proclaim they are a part of the Industry must adhere to the Standards of SEO.
And are capped off with:
12. When encountering a member of the Board or what is referred to as an “SEO Rockstar”, all opinions will be deferred to the opinion of the Board Member or “SEO Rockstar” at hand
Following these postings, Jessica Bowman wrote a posting about creating SEO standards within your own organization, Do You Need SEO Standards For Your Company? The way she describes it is possibly how it could be done with the industry as a whole; slow and steady, and if something doesn’t work, evaluate and correct.
Chris Boggs wrapped up the week with a posting that stressed the need to act now and begin crafting SEO standards. In his post, SEO Standards Signal the Maturing of Our Industry, he describes his idea of outlining common SEO procedures and defining the risk associated with each particular option as the best way to start the process. He took time to respond to the positions he had read throughout the week and how he saw they should progress towards standards.
The Recession
For the past several months the recession and its potential impact on the search marketing industry has been a hot topic. The search marketing industry has grown exponentially since the last recession, so there is no strong historical data demonstrating how it will affect the industry. CNET this week had two articles talking about the recession and its possible effects on the search marketing industry. Both articles, Recession: The Best Thing for SEO and Use SEO to Optimize your recession, portrayed the search industry positively in the uncertain times ahead. A key theme is that because search marketing programs are able to be precisely and quantitatively measured, companies will continue to invest in successful programs.
Kevin Ryan also posted an article entitled, How to Survive a Recession in SEO, which lists a few tips to making the right decisions during a recession. He focuses on how to handle some of the harder situations in the best possible way, including laying off employees.
Recessions are a natural part of the business cycle, how long they last and how deep they hurt is determined by how we react to them. The search industry is likely to fare better than other industries, but that will only happen if we keep our heads up and use this recession to determine which areas of search work best and ask questions of the areas that aren’t producing efficiently enough.
In-House Issues
There will always be a debate about the best way to carry out your search marketing strategy, whether it involves hiring an agency, working completely in-house, outsourcing to a foreign country, or a combination of all three. Jessica Bowman wrote an article, IT Road Blocks? Try some In-House SEO Training, which described techniques for getting an IT department to work with SEO in mind. This can be one of the biggest road blocks when beginning your SEO strategy, and if taken into consideration appropriately, can be a benefit to your strategy. Also, Lee Odden’s article, Is Your SEO Firm Outsourcing Your Work?, brings up the issue of how SEO firms are increasing looking to outsourcing labor to fill in the holes.
Industry News
This week the industry news pages were dominated by Google. Google announced that they will be cutting nearly 300 jobs from their DoubleClick operations, nearly 1/4 of Doubleclick’s American workforce. The move comes coupled with Google’s announcement to sell the search marketing unit of DoubleClick’s Performics.
These 300 newly unemployed professionals will have new forum to search for jobs in the near future. This week facebook and careerbuilder announced a partnership which will allow clients of careerbuilder to run recruitment efforts through Facebook. Targeted ads placed on the side of the page or within a user’s news feeds will give advertisers a new forum to reach hard-to-find candidates. Advertisers will be able to target specific demographic groups like students completing an engineering degree or members of specific groups and societies. No details were released concerning the actual value of the deal, and Facebook officials declined to comments whether they would work a similar deal with Monster Worldwide Inc.
That’s it for this week. Stay tuned for next week’s update!
