Monthly Archives: April 2008

An Impressive Search Marketing Resume in 5 Steps

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Job SearchSo you’ve created your search marketing resume. It’s impressive, but you don’t seem to be landing interviews with it. What to do? Never fear, the team at recruitment site Onward Search have shared the secrets to a great SEM resume. They receive lots every day so they know what makes one resume stand out from the rest.

In his blog post 5 Keys to Improving Your Search Marketing Resume, Reilly O’Donnell of Onward Search lists 5 steps you can take to improve your resume and increase your chances of landing that interview:

  1. Organize - organize your resume into logical sections.
  2. Bullet Points - use bullet points to break up the document and make it easier to scan.
  3. Quantify - list specific, measurable results that you’ve achieved.
  4. Tweak - research the firm and align your resume language with the company’s own terminology.
  5. Be Professional - check your resume for typos, grammatical and spelling errors and formatting consistency.

Great advice!

Search Industry Job of the Week: Search Engine Analyst

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Job Title: Search Engine Analyst (SEM)
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Venere.com
Location: Rome, Italy
Date Posted: 28 March 2008
Position description:

Would you like to work in the travel industry? Are you passionate about all things search? Then this is the perfect job for you!

Venere.com, one of Europe’s market leaders in online hotel reservations is looking for a Search Engine Analyst (SEM) to join its team and help build Venere.com’s online visibility.

The candidate will be responsible for developing and implementing the company’s online marketing strategies.

In your given market, you will control every aspect of SEM, across the main online Media Suppliers – Google, Yahoo!, MSN etc. Execution includes creating advertising campaigns, deciding bidding strategies and compiling reports on revenue and profitability. You will work with and improve customised tools to increase productivity and performance.

Skills

The ideal candidate should posses the following key skills/experience:

•  Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering or Economics degree
•  Strong Financial Analysis
•  Ability to research, understand and evaluate marketing opportunities
•  Methodical approach to work and multitasking
•  Excellent reporting skills
•  High competency level in Excel
•  Fluency in English language is welcomed
•  Previous Search Engine Marketing experience will be well thought of.
•  High fluency (preferably Mother tongue) in German, Spanish, French, English or Scandinavian language.

All candidates must possess valid working documents for Italy.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: 30 April 2008
More info from: Venere.com
Contact: Send resumes via online form to: Venere.com

For more search industry job vacancies visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

SEO Training of the Smelly Kind

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Smelly SEOWell I was checking the SERPs to see what all the current fuss was about regarding Google datacenters at the moment (is it an algorithm tweak or just a shuffle?), when I came across something amusing.

Check the current SERP for “SEO Training”, paying careful attention to the #3 result. Yep, you can now undertake SEO Training of the Smelly Kind. From the site:

“In the Precertification Academy, DEP and PSATS provide Sewage Enforcement Officer (SEO) candidates with the basic knowledge needed to work for a local agency and prepare them for the duties and responsibilities of an SEO. We are committed to providing quality training to assist SEOs with making decisions that ultimately protect the Commonwealth’s public health and environment.”

It all sounds pretty similar to the responsibilities of most SEOs, although protecting public health and the environment is going beyond the call of duty. Perhaps we now have a more appropriate anagram for SEO: the Sewage Enforcement Officer!

Gave me a chuckle anyway.

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Q and A: Do people actually search for exact phrases?

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QuestionHi Kalena

As I’m rethinking about my page, I’ve become curious about something. Do people actually search for phrases such as “web design Gloucester” or do they for the most part just search for a page with those three words on it? (which if I understand things is what you get when you search without quotes).

Of course if I have the three words as a phrase either search hits it, but I’m having trouble making it as readable as I’d like using the concise phrases and I’m wondering if the sacrifice in readability is worth it?

Lastly, I wanted to be sure that if I have a key phrase such as “web design Gloucester” that the string “web design in Gloucester” matches. I seem to remember that “in” was a stop word ignored by Search Engines.

Steve

Hi Steve

I think you’ll find that most people will start a search using generic terms and then add qualifiers to help narrow down the results. So they might start with “web design companies” (no quotes) and then seeing billions of matches, they might try “web design companies Gloucester” or “web design Gloucester” (no quotes). I don’t really know too many searchers who use quotes unless they are advanced users or SEOs. So it really pays to try to get ranked for the non-quotes version of your target keyphrases.

You can achieve this by using the phrase in your text but including stop words so the copy is more readable. You should never have to sacrifice readability! Stop words are words like “the”, “and”, “in” etc that are mostly ignored by the search algorithm. So if your page has the sentence “we are one of the most popular web design companies in Gloucester” then search engines should rank your page high for the query “web design companies Gloucester” as they will ignore the word “in”.

The reverse also applies, where if a search query includes a stop word, engines will show pages that have either the shorter sentence included without the stop word/s or the longer one.

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Q and A: How many anchor text links should I create on a page?

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QuestionHey Kalena

Quick question for ya if you got a minute. If I’m targeting a keyword or phrase, lets say dogs. I write a 500 word article about dogs. I post it on my site. I want to target my main url i.e. www.dogs.com. How many times can I create anchor text in that one article that links to the main page?

Chris

Hi Chris

It’s really not about counting the number of keywords or links - it’s about what sounds natural to a reader and what makes the most sense in the copy. If you can read page copy aloud and it doesn’t sound stilted or repetitious, you’ve probably got the right balance of keywords. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend aiming for keyword repetition of around 2 to 3 times per page for each keyword/phrase you are targeting. More than that usually ruins the copy and/or triggers red flags in search engine filters.

When using anchor text, a good way to avoid excessive keyword repetition is to try using keyword variations and word stemming e.g. accounts, accountant, accounting etc. Also consider using your keywords in headings, sub-headings and bullet points. These have the added advantage of breaking up the copy and making it easier to read. Oh and if you decide to use “dogs” in your anchor text, for Pete’s sake make sure the page you are linking to talks about dogs! Sounds obvious but it’s amazing how often this is overlooked.

ADDED: Nick from Search Engine Optimization Journal has blogged about this post. He took from my comments above that when I said 2 or 3 instances per page, I was referring to anchor text links. But I was actually referring to keywords per page, not links per page. Nick’s right, too many links pointing to a single page using the same anchor text is dodgy and unnecessary and may trip spam filters. Just wanted to clarify this point to avoid confusion. Thanks Nick!

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