Rand Fishkin's SEO Salary Story

Continuing the theme this week about jobs in search engine marketing, the very hunky Rand Fishkin has been Tubed over at Salary Stories.

The video interview sees Rand reminisce about how he got started in SEO, what the average SEO/SEM employee can expect to earn and who he knows that earns up to USD 400K per year from the biz. If my article earlier this week didn't convince you to become a Search Engine Marketer, then perhaps this interview will.

On a side note - I've only ever seen Rand in photos before and seeing an animated Rand is quite disarming. Now I understand SEO FanGirl's obsession. That smile is every dentist's fantasy! If I ever see him in the flesh, I may need sunglasses. Thanks Rand for putting the sexy back into SEO. [note to self - suggest husband buys yellow joggers]

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A way to make SEO sexy again

My old forum buddy Qwerty spotted my recent post about SEO no longer being sexy and pointed me to a sexy SEO discussion by the gang over at In Search of Stuff. They have a great idea for putting the sex back into SEO. They're convinced that all we need is for Paris Hilton to say in public that "Search marketing.... that's hot".

It just might work. But in the meantime, their other idea of referring to organic search results as orgasmic search results is brilliant.

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SEO is no longer sexy

I was speed reading all my fav SEO blogs and newsfeeds today and I realised something a little sad. SEO is no longer sexy! It's just a boring, common-sense tribute to sensible coding.

When I started optimizing web sites, it was cutting edge stuff and didn't even have an acronym. I used to love bandying about the geeky jargon and watch people's eyes glaze over when I described what I did for a living. I felt like I was living in my own little James Bond movie, outwitting the evil black-hats, cleverly coding the search algorithms and rescuing poor webmasters from a life in the low SERPs. Watching a client website skyrocket from oblivion to the Top of the Pops within a few days was a total adrenalin rush.

Now it seems that every man, his dog and his dog's fleas are SEO experts. Instead of getting that fast rush from skyrocketing rankings, you've got to wait 9 months in the newbie sandbox. Instead of using my job description to get rid of horny drunks at parties, I'm finding I have to keep quiet about what I do, or face a two hour beer-breath lecture on the benefits of mod_rewrite vs URL parameter cleansing.

When did SEO become mainstream and boring? What can I do to liven things up in this white hat search world? Perhaps I should start a new naughty SEO blog along the same lines as the Naked News? Got any ideas people?