There are many Internet marketing jobs out there, and knowing how to specialize in this market is crucial. While there are firms that build links, do graphic design and analyze competition, most people and businesses are more willing to hire specialized workers that are best in their field. This list represents the five hottest Internet marketing jobs, and you should consider fitting your talents to one of these jobs.
Social Media Expert
In 2012, many businesses and experts believe that social media is going to be the defining factor that decides who gets traffic and who doesn’t. As a social media expert, you have to know at least one of the main networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc) fluently. Know about all the little tools, workarounds, and how to use the site.
More importantly, you need to know how to connect with a business’s audience. If you can prove that your social media skills can bring in money, then any business will hire you.
Backlink Builder
While social media is becoming a stronger force, many people still use search engines to find businesses. To increase their rankings, business websites need backlinks. There are tons of websites that offer 1,000 links for $10 that use automated programs to fetch low-quality backlinks.
Businesses are looking more for high-quality links that are able to increase their ranking, and if you know where to find these links, you can make a killing helping businesses out. While using an automated program may be suitable for this job, as some are very efficient at finding good links, you will probably have to manually build links.
SEO Consultant
The reason most businesses need SEO is either because they don’t have the time to do their own SEO, or because they just don’t understand how a website goes from page 10 to page 1 on a search engine. As an SEO consultant, you can help all types of businesses by analyzing their on-page SEO, off-page SEO and competition.
Be sure you can properly analyze a website. While most of your clients will probably be businesses that have low rankings, you might get some big companies that want to go from the second position to the first.
Content Creator
One of the most popular ways to market a website is through article marketing, or distributing an article through different directories in hopes of syndication and backlinks. While some businesses take PLR content and spin it thousands of times, many businesses understand the strength of good content. Powerful content can impact people, change buying decisions and foster a relationship with customers.
If you know how to write and optimize an article, then you can become a content creator. Most content creators also offer submission services, or submitting the article to different websites, but this is optional. Be sure you know how to write well, as most businesses will not accept articles with glaring grammatical of factual errors.
PPC Specialists
Businesses pay lots of money for PPC traffic. Sometimes the ad works, and sometimes it doesn’t. As a PPC expert, you have to do many things. You will have to write a PPC ad that convinces someone to click on the ad and view the business, and you must analyze the incoming traffic for conversions and other information.
After analyzing all the information, you will also be expected to further optimize the PPC ad, or to branch out and bid on other relevant keywords that can help the business grow in terms of traffic. An expert understanding of how PPC works, especially AdWords, will be required before anyone hires you.
Conclusion
There are many Internet marketing jobs around. Most of them are done on a freelance basis, but there are also firms that hire people to do these tasks. Overall, you need to understand how search engines work, and then pick one area of optimization to specialize in.
If you are new to SEO, and you need experience, then just make a website and build it up yourself. This can be used on your resume, and it helps you build confidence in this area. If you are already in the Internet marketing field, then think about what niche you want to follow and start finding businesses to pay you for your talents.
About Author
Tom Demers is a managing partner at Measured SEM, a Boston SEO and PPC agency specializing in a variety of SEM activities ranging from SEO audits to pay-per click campaign management.