SEO careers are so 2006. While having SEO knowledge and expertise is definitely still in high demand, there is a (relatively) new player in the online marketing world: Social media marketing and expertise. Previously, web marketing gurus could establish a career and find a job from SEO experience and knowledge alone. Currently you will have much better luck having both SEO and social media skills.
Demand for Both Skills
Let's do some job-searching, shall we? After all, job titles and descriptions should accurately reflect the demands of those hiring (unless they want a lot of skills they won't use).
According to the "trends" section of Indeed.com, SEO and social media keywords have both been on the rise in the past couple years in job postings. In fact, SEO has been in a lower percentage of matching job postings on Indeed.com than social media. So, if anything, social media has become more important to an internet marketing career than SEO.
A quick search on Simplyhired.com for SEO and Social Media reveals that jobs looking for SEO or internet marketing skills are also specifically asking for social media skills as well. The fact of the matter is that knowing SEO by itself will not cut it anymore. You must add skills to your resume, such as social media optimization (SMO) and keep current on any new online marketing techniques.
What Does This Mean for Job Searchers and SEO Professionals?
Well, it depends on how you'd like to focus your career really. Regardless of whether you think you'd really like to keep your focus on SEO or not, you should understand that a comprehensive skill set will always help bring your career to new heights and open up plenty of more opportunities than otherwise.
Even if you have a very specific niche focus for internet marketing (say it's social media), you are still expected to have a core understanding of the foundational principles of good web analytics, SEO, PPC, and social media strategy. In other words, try to keep yourself at least casually updated in the other areas of online marketing that aren't necessarily your specialty.
Whether a company will put all or one of your online marketing skills to use will depend on the size and structure of the company. Smaller companies will usually be looking for a web marketer who has a lot of overlap of experience and skills in a variety of online marketing areas while larger companies will usually have enough resources to dedicate specific niche marketers to only one area of marketing.
Bottom Line
Keep in mind, as you plan out your career in SEO, that the search industry will continue to evolve. The upcoming future seems to revolve around the current heights of the ubiquitous, social media saturated online world. But years from now, the search industry could be heading somewhere else entirely.
It is important that you keep yourself updated on the changes of search standards. This will help you identify which experience and skills are most practical to you landing a job. Be sure, also, to show off new online marketing experience as you acquire it; many online marketers were performing social media optimization before they even knew that was a marketable skill. Most importantly,educate yourself to new trends of the search engine industry. There is a lot of free information out there that could make a huge difference on your career.
