SEO's top of online marketing tree

A NEW breed of consultant is earning up to $350,000 a year marrying marketing pizzaz with tech savvy to help companies and wealthy individuals improve their rankings on Google searches.

Underlining the importance of sites such as Google, Yahoo and ninemsn searches to the growing digital economy, the "search engine optimisation" consultant is now top of the online marketing tree.

Commanding sky-high salaries, SEOs carry a bag of tricks to massage clients' search rankings, helping them appear higher up - or in rarer cases, lower down - the list in search results.

Search engines use "bots" - software that automatically scans the web for new and changed pages - to document and catalogue content.

The engines then employ complex algorithms to rank web pages according to their importance to internet users.

The job of the SEO consultant is to redesign websites so they attract the attention of bots and receive the best possible ranking. The higher a site's ranking, the more likely internet users will click through to the web page.

Because Google looks at two major factors - the relevance of the page's content to a search, and the number and quality of the links to that page - SEO consultants are forever rewriting web content, and trying to generate additional links to clients' sites.

The easiest way to get a link is to rent space on a "link farm", a simple web page that contains only links to other sites. Search engines count the links, and rate those pages more highly.

Getting a link from a government or educational site is more valuable, because Google ranks them higher, so SEOs sometimes pay ordinary websites to link to their clients' pages.

"I've never seen it in Australia, but there are government sites elsewhere in the world where $50 a month is a lot of money," said Zak Asani, director Sydney SEO firm Found Agency. "There's a web site for the ministry of energy in a Latin American country. I don't know how the web master got away with it, but there's a link on the home page.''

More commonly, SEOs buy text link ads on newspaper websites and blogs in an effort to convince Google their sites are valuable. Fees range from $US20 a month for an Australian blog all the way up to $US1750 for The Wall Street Journal website.

Right at the bottom of the pile are "link monkeys", computer experts in developing countries who are paid by SEOs to put in links on other sites by typing comments into guest books or submitting information to online directories.

If you have a background in technology, marketing or journalism, there could be a place for you as an SEO consultant, with salaries ranging from $40,000 up to $350,000 depending on skills and experience.

"We just get people with no experience and train them up," Mr Asani said. "Finding people with experience is very difficult."

Mr Asani and his team work for clients such as News Limited's real estate classifieds site realestate.com.au and the Fast Impressions speed dating agency.

"We have had a couple of individuals who were wealthy who wanted negative references to themselves disappeared, which was an expensive exercise," he said. "You've got to optimise the 20 sites below them so the (negative reference) is moved down. We had one individual pay $100,000 plus because there was a (press release) about him on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission website that ranked No.2 when you searched for his name.''

All this self-promotion and manipulation is not surprising, given the amount of credence placed on the internet as a research tool.

"From time to time our consultants will Google candidates to see if they have a fraudulent background, for examples by reading press articles and ASIC files,'' said Jane Bianchini, national manager of recruitment firm Candle ICT.

Googling candidates has turned up all sorts of things, including one candidate for a senior management position who was a clown in his spare time.

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au