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Job Title: Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Manager
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: LM&O Advertising
Location: Washington DC
Date Posted: 10 March 2008
Position description:

LM&O Advertising, a Washington, DC-area, AAAA-member advertising agency, is looking for an experienced SEM Manager. This is an excellent opportunity to join a vibrant team of interactive marketing professionals.

Skilled in all areas of search engine marketing, the SEM Manager will plan, implement, report and optimize the delivery of paid search programs inclusion for all clients. In addition, the SEM Manager will help train and develop SEM staff as well as train both internal and external clients. This position combines both strategic and tactical elements of search engine marketing and should be seen as the absolute expert in SEM consultation. The SEM Manager may own his/her clients exclusively if the clients are search only, or will partner with the Account Executive owning that business as the expert in this practice.

Responsibilities:

Manage paid keyword programs for assigned accounts.
Create budgets, and performance forecasts for clients.
Copywriting or managing a Copywriter, on needed pieces of business.
Generating results reports, using industry standard tools.
Analyzing and providing strategic insights on reports for consultative meetings.
Optimizing paid search campaigns utilizing key performance indicators.
Managing search engine and technology vendors.
Manage some of the staff on daily activity within the Search group.
Crusade the SEM practice across both internal and external audiences.
Some travel required.

Business Operations:

Responsible for accurately estimating, timing and scoping projects.
Responsible for timely delivery of projects.
Work autonomously, with up to 50% on-site with client.
Actively update Interactive Director and appropriate Account Directors on progress and status of projects.
Contributes to all new business pitches whenever necessary and with a sense of urgency.
Works with/contributes to operational service issues (development of department staff, HR and/or Ops programs that affect staff, etc).

Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree required, Masters preferred.
5-7 years overall professional services background managing client expectations.
4+ years experience with search engine marketing.
Proven track record up-selling/cross-selling search programs.
Proven experience working effectively to build a business and show profit.
Excellent written and oral presentation skills.
Previous experience managing staff, with proven ability to mentor, motivate and grow a group of people.
Measurable success in working with sales and business development Stellar project management skills.
Ability to communicate with several different groups effectively.
Start up experience a plus Entrepreneurial work environments/experiences a plus.

LM&O is a member of the AAAA and an equal opportunity employer.

Please forward resumes to interactive2[at]lmo.com

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: [www.lmo.com]
Contact: Send resumes to interactive2[at]lmo.com

For more search industry vacancies please visit Search Engine College Jobs Board

Popularity: 16%

Hi Kalena,

Help! I’ve had my Hightower pottery website for about 4 years. On a good day I may get 20 hits and that’s during the holidays. Normally I get between 0-10 hits a day. I have listed my site in probably a dozen directories over the years and submitted to the same number of search engines. What am I doing wrong? Is it a content issue?

Charles

Yes Charles, it is a content issue. More precisely, it’s a Yahoo SiteBuilder issue. Why the heck are you using a rubbish Yahoo Content Management System (CMS) to build your site?

Just like Homestead SiteBuilder, which I ranted about earlier this week, Yahoo SiteBuilder is yet another CMS that creates multiple headaches when trying to optimize your pages so they are found in search engines.

I’m not hugely familiar with the SiteBuilder interface, but here are just some of the problems I see:

• The Title and META tags are identical on every page. I’m guessing this is a limitation of Yahoo SiteBuilder that you can’t change. This is limiting the ability of each of your site pages being found in search engines.
• You’ve got a serious case of code bloat, thanks to excessive, code added to your HTML pages by the SiteBuilder program.
• All of your image files and probably others are stored somewhere on the Yahoo site and referenced by your pages, instead of being stored on your own domain.
• This isn’t anything to do with the CMS, but your home page doesn’t really have enough text on the page to satisfy search engines and your pages don’t appear to be optimized for target search keywords and phrases.
• Another non-CMS issue, there don’t seem to be many internal or external links pointing to your site. You should probably try to gain some links from other web sites in your industry as theme-based links will help boost your position in Google. For example, I’m betting that within a month, you will be getting more traffic from this page than any other source. Such is the power of a well-placed link.

If you are serious about your business, you need to get serious about your site’s compatibility with search engines. You’d be better off paying a site designer to build you a REAL site that can be properly optimized. If you can’t afford a professional site design, consider installing the (free) WordPress blogging platform on your server and taking full control over your site that way. If you can’t afford a search engine optimizer, consider posting your requirements on our Search Engine College jobs board as there are a lot of SEO students just itching to sharpen their skills on a real site.

Take a month and teach yourself how to use WordPress if you have to - it’s pretty easy and search engines seem to love pages created with it (this site is built with WordPress). I’d also recommend taking the Search Engine Optimization Starter course at Search Engine College so you can better understand what makes a site rank well in search engines. It will be the best investment you’ll make all year and will help you get that gorgeous pottery in front of more eyeballs!

Popularity: 43%

SMX Sydney is gearing up to be the “must-attend” search engine marketing event of the year in Australia and there has been a lot of social media buzz and anticipation leading up to it.

To add to the excitement, because Search Engine College is sponsoring the event, we’ve scored a free conference pass for one lucky reader of this blog.

To win the free pass, simply answer this:

“What question would you like to hear Danny Sullivan ask Google’s Marissa Mayer at the Keynote Conversation on Day 1 of SMX Sydney?”

For your chance to win, contact us with your details and include your answer to the above question in the “comments” section of the form. Make sure you include an email address so we can contact you if you win! The answer I like the best will win a free pass to SMX Sydney. The winner will be announced on this blog on March 25.

In the meantime, if you’re planning on attending SMX Sydney and you haven’t registered yet, below is a coupon code that will give you 15 percent off the full conference ticket price:

SMX08-SECVIP

This is a short-term deal so register right now! And don’t forget, in the exhibit hall, we’ll be handing out Search Engine College t-shirts and $100 discount coupons which conference attendees can use towards a course of their choice. So if you’re planning on attending SMX Sydney, please stop by our booth to say hi and pick up your discount coupon and free t-shirt.

Popularity: 23%

On behalf of the tutors and staff at Search Engine College, I’d like to offer congratulations to our most recent graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

• Bob Schaller
• Dominique Neveling
• Micky Stuivenberg
• Laura Paradise
• Ellen Stender
• Bill Casey
• Bruce Gow
• Diane M. Pentheros
• Beth Evans
• Jeffrey Wieland
• Scott Spain

Search Engine Optimization 201

• Cheryl Hardy
• Kimberly Bock
• Laura Paradise
• Micky Stuivenberg
• Bruce Gow
• Jeffrey Wieland
• Colleen Lee
• Scott Spain

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

• Rick Hardman
• Evgeny Galkin
• Laura Paradise
• Bruce Gow
• Jeffrey Wieland

Web Site Usability 101

• Bruce Gow

Link Building 101

• Laura Paradise

Certified Search Engine Marketer

• Harshvardhan Kharshingkar
• Laura Paradise
• Bruce Gow

Congratulations to you all! Please contact your tutor if you haven’t yet received your hard copy certificate, Status Page or certification seal. Please stop by Search Engine College from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute to Search Engine Wiki or check our Search Engine Marketing Jobs Board to use your certification to find a job in the industry.

Popularity: 20%

Hi Kalena,

For the past 3 months my site would appear on page 1 of Yahoo when my “girly party” or “girly party” was typed into the search engine. Recently I’ve noticed that I don’t even appear in the top 10 pages. How could this have happened within 1 week? Something seems a little weird. Please advise. Why wouldn’t my company appear if I type in my entire business name in Yahoo search?

Tonya

Hello Tonya

I can’t believe your site was ever ranking for your business name. Or anything else for that matter.

Here’s why:

• You’ve used Homestead SiteBuilder to create your site. This is a CMS notorious for being search engine unfriendly.
• I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that this is a free-hosted site with content pulled from the main Homestead site and just displayed on your web site. If you want search engines and potential customers to take your business seriously, you need to take it seriously and get a professional web site designed and properly hosted by a real host on your domain.
• Your META tags are identical on every page and appear to be automatically generated by the Homestead CMS.
• Your site isn’t optimized for keywords at all. Your page content doesn’t appear to have logical search keywords integrated within the visible text.
• The Title tag for your home page just says “Home”! Search engines consider the content of the Title tag to be one of the most important aspects of your page in determining whether it is a relevant match for search queries. Your title tag says didley squat about your business.

I could go on but it’s too depressing. Sorry to be so blunt, but it always pains me to see businesses using Homestead or Geocities or similar types of piggy-back, unprofessional, free-hosted or cheap-ass accounts online. It only takes a small effort and very little financial investment to get a professional-looking site built, hosted and optimized for search engines.

An easy way to regain a ranking in Yahoo and Google for “My Girly Party” is to include this phrase at the beginning of the Title Tag of every page on your site.

In the meantime, may I suggest you download our free SEO101 lesson? Implementing the techniques mentioned should help you gain some rankings fairly quickly.

Popularity: 36%