There are probably a few of you out there that are managing PPC campaigns and SEO initiatives or have contemplated pursuing a search marketing career.

If you’ve worked for a small agency or a small to medium business typically the search marketing specialist is expected to handle both SEO as well as PPC campaigns. They both deal with search engines and keywords. Why not right?

But as you gain more experience and begin to work with larger enterprise PPC campaigns or you begin working with very unique SEO situations (i.e. localized sites, large network of websites, etc.), you will come at a crossroads in your career. You will need to specialize or at least focus your attention on one more so than the other.

The following is a comparison of the two career paths.

SEO Career Path

Being an SEO for more sophisticated clients or as an in-house SEO working with larger websites or network of websites (whatever the case may be), is a full time gig. Assuming you’re an actual practitioner and not a manager of people, you need to stay in touch constantly with:

• New search engine developments and algorithm changes
• Webinars and new techniques
• Learning from  your own experiences

On top of that you have to work with various teams or individuals:

• Managers & Stakeholders – Trying to get buy-in or reporting results
• Web Developers – Training them and supplying them with requirements
• Project Managers – Trying to squeeze in your requirements amongst the other 100 resource intensive requests outside of SEO
• Writers & Content Managers – Training, tweaking and improving the site’s content
• Social media specialists, Marketing & PR – Squeezing as much link juice out of their outward facing efforts

You’ve also got to be very analytical:

• Performing website audits
• Analyzing web metrics, log files and configuration files
• Pouring over code to make sure it follows best practices
• Drafting requirements and proposals
• Performing keyword research

This doesn’t even touch on the “culture changing” hat that you have to wear to try to convince clients or your in-house team that SEO is a worthwhile endeavor.

Who Will Be Successful at SEO?

• As an SEO you have to be able to prioritize and re-prioritize. You are usually working on other people’s schedules and priorities, not the other way around.
• Being a people person is extremely helpful because you’ll need to collaborate with others to execute on your proposals
• Being analytical is a must
• You have to stay up to date with the latest info. So being a self-starter is important.
• Most SEOs I come across are entrepreneurial; meaning they pursue opportunities with their clients or as an in-house person on their own without direction from others.
• Patience is also important attribute as well. It applies to waiting on results or waiting on other people to do tasks.

All this is very dependant on the type of clients you encounter or the size of your organization (if you’re an in-house SEO). But as an SEO, it’s a role that can change from day to day.

PPC Career Path

As a pay per click analyst or specialist, as you move up the food chain and work on enterprise level PPC campaigns with annual budgets dipping into the 7-figures, it too is a full-time career. When you’re spending that much time and money on a collection of campaigns, expectations are high.

As a PPC analyst 80% of your world is data.

Whether that’s analyzing PPC bids, click through rates (CTR) conversion rates or cost per acquisition (CPA); you are knee deep in data on a daily basis.

You’ll likely be working with Excel sheets, using it to create  your PPC campaigns or exporting data for analysis. Excel will be your #1 tool.

Who Will Be Successful at PPC?

• You’ve got to like numbers and be able to analyze them and make recommendations based findings.
• You have to be able to write compelling ad copy with strong calls to action.
• You will also likely be responsible for the optimization of landing pages and checkout processes. So an eye for improving conversions and usability will benefit you.
• PPC is a numbers game, so you have to be relentless at squeezing as much revenue and cost savings out of your campaigns.

If you’re the type of person that likes relatively instantaneous results with successes that can be directly tied to your efforts, then PPC might just be right for you.

One thing that is consistent in both SEO and PPC is that nothing every stays constant. Things always change and for the most part anyone who looks at either career should already know that ahead of time. It keeps things interesting and things don’t stay the same for very long. Hopefully this was helpful to anyone sitting on the fence

Link building can be tough. For larger organizations who haven’t fully weaved SEO into it’s corporate fabric, it’s challenging to get an audience to listen to your ideas and even tougher to get budget and resources to execute.

But once we do get the opportunity to create a website feature that could be considered link bait, we have to make sure that the opportunity is primed and ready for maximum effect.

The biggest mistakes we make with link bait is that we either:

• Don’t give users a compelling reason to link to us
• Don’t extend our efforts outside our walls and actually promote it
• Don’t make it easy for our users to share with their network  friends and followers

Secret #1 – Be Awesome

There’s no other words that succinctly describes your objective with being link worthy, other than to say “be awesome”. You’ve got to really rock someone’s world enough that they’re willing to risk their reputation (or for the younger crowd…their street cred) to share something with their personal network of friends. Whether that be on Twitter, Facebook, email or carrier pigeon.

Many times there are scenarios where the only link bait content you have available is left-over collateral from other marketing efforts that are being repurposed for the web. And to be honest, sometimes that is just not good enough.

Being awesome can take a number of forms depending on your niche. But generally they involve adjectives like:

• Informative
• Hilarious
• Controversial
• Helpful
• Attractive
• Useful

You get the picture. There’s no formula to it, except to say that you’ve got to bring your creative juices to the brainstorming process.

You want examples, you say? Here’s a few to mull over:

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - 9,000 inbound links

Boston Globe: Caught in the Oil Photo Essay – 47,000 inbound links

XE: Currency Calculator – 1.5 million inbound links

Secret #2: Target People Who Care

Call it what you want. Target market, personas or Linkerati. When creating your link bait it will likely have a better chance for success if you have a target audience in mind.

We have to keep these personas in mind during two key phases. During the brainstorming & development process. As well as during the promotion campaign.

Without a target your website feature won’t speak to anyone and could very well just fizzle.

Secret #3: Promote Through the Proper Channels

This might be just common sense, but it should be said. Promote your link bait via the proper channels. Social media is one channel, but not the only channel. Just like purchasing traditional media, you have to choose the right medium with the right message. Here are a few suggestions:

• Email Newsletters – It’s probably the most overlooked audience, and it isn’t as sexy as targeting several thousand people on Twitter but if you’ve got something that appeals to  your existing audience, tap into it. Your newsletter subscribers are probably your most rabid fans.
• Media Partners – Most companies are in industries that have their niche industry news outlets. For example, SEO has Search Engine Journal or Search Engine Watch. Partner with media outlets who have built in audiences and give them an exclusive ahead of their competitors.
• Social Media – Promoting through Twitter or posting on Stumbleupon or Digg is not a guaranteed home run. It doesn’t hurt, but it can be hit or miss. If  you’ve got a strong social media program in your organization, you’re more than half-way there. But if you don’t, look into partnering with a reputable social media consultant (or internet celebrity) who already has a strong following in your niche to help promote your material. As long as the message aligns with the persona of your chosen spokesperson, it can be a win-win situation.

Secret #4: Make it Easy for People to Tell Their Friends

Extend your efforts by making it simple for your website visitors to share your link bait.

Slapping a sharing widget with a weak call to action and over 30 different social media and sharing options on your link bait is NOT the best way to give people options to share something from your website. In fact, it’s probably best to pare it down to 3-4 options at most.

There’s no better example, than to show you how the link building expert The Oatmeal does it. He gives you a compelling reason to share along with a strong call to action with 4 different sharing options with popular websites.

So there it is. Four things to keep in mind when embarking on a link bait initiative.

What’s worked for you in your efforts at link bait?

I was attending a social media panel discussion at the F5-Expo conference yesterday. One of the topics being discussed was Twitter, and one of the panelists had made a half-joking remark that those who follow several thousand people on Twitter were probably mostly “SEO spammers”. Accounts built for the sole purpose of spewing out links. The type of accounts Twitter bans within a few days of their creation.

Now being an SEO when I heard this remark I was for a fraction of a second a bit insulted. But let’s be honest, the statement is somewhat accurate. As every blog owner knows, the majority of their blog comments are probably spammy links if left unchecked. Even Danny Sullivan, has seen this personally and blogged about it. Some of you are probably saying “Hey, those aren’t SEO’s they’re probably just spammers…period!”. But that doesn’t matter because perception becomes reality. Folks who have a tertiary knowledge of how the online space works knows that links are important to SEO, therefore brand certain spammers as “SEO spammers”

I can also look back at my own experiences talking shop while at meetups and gatherings and have come across business people who hired an “SEO” who was promised quick results that didn’t materialize. I’ve also come across folks from various backgrounds who pass themselves off as an SEO as if it was a checkbox next to a job application.

SEO Has An Image Problem

And therein lies the problem of being an SEO in this industry. We’ve got an image problem.

• Business people who have been burned by an “SEO” now paints all others in this field with the same brush
• There are no barriers to entry to claim you’re an SEO, therefore as a consumer it’s difficult to tell if PR folks, writers, traditional marketers who claim they know organic search optimization really know what they’re doing
• Crap links are being dropped in blog comments, forum posts and web forms. And SEOs get the blame for it.
• Behemoth sites like WiseGeek.com that publish sub-par content to pull in as many search queries are polluting the net and can be perceived as an SEO money grab.

Being an SEO can be tiring sometimes because you can spend quite a bit of time dispelling  fear, uncertainty and doubt out there. Imagine you’re a psychologist and every 1 out of 10 cocktail parties you attended you had to prove that your line of work was legitimate. It gets old.

What Can SEOs Do To Help Improve Their Image?

First let’s realize that this problem isn’t isolated to our line of work. Building contractors, insurance salesmen, realtors and others have similar problems with public perception. They get by just fine, so can we.

1. Don’t Undercut Your Value – I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past. Pricing has a definite impact on how much value is perceived in a given service or product. Stick to your guns and quality clients will recognize this; and hopefully eventually others will as well.
2. Don’t Take the Impossible Projects – Projects with impossible expectations are doomed to fail. Have some integrity and turn them down.
3. Demonstrate Your Knowledge – Share your knowledge online to show people there’s more to this thing than others might perceive. This kind of knowledge sharing helps deflect uncertainty and puts you above others who claim they know what they’re doing.
4. Say “No” to Shady Link Building - Please, don’t buy links by the bushel. Your fellow bloggers and forum owners will thank you for it.
5. Get Results - Happy clients don’t complain about SEOs.

It’s not all doom & gloom. Guys like Rand Fishkin, Aaron Wall and companies like Enquiro and Distilled have taken great strides in helping legitimize this industry. Well known brands are adopting SEO as a necessary marketing initiative. But there are still pockets of distrust and skepticism out there.

Will taking the steps mentioned erase everyone’s negative perception about SEOs? Most likely not.

But at least you can talk proudly at cocktail parties.