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hey, thanks for sharing our infographic! Happy to answer any comments or questions.
Nice to see Texas representing.
I think SEO's are generally underpaid considering the amount of money that we can bring in. This is referring to legitimate SEO pro's - not the scammy weasels
Great infographic. No surprise that NYC and SF are leading the pack.
Here's the thing: we all know SEO is worth far, faaaaaar more than the top-end of the payscale shown here to any organization that's doing it even somewhat well. So while it's great to see that SEO is valued and in demand, I'm curious why we're not seeing higher pay than this when we know the ROI for the receiving organization is 10x+ the pay, easily.
So I'm curious: is anyone out there working on a performance model with incentives and triggers? Is anyone else -- in-house, agency, independents, or otherwise -- being creative when it comes to compensation? Would love to hear your stories.
I agree that the top end of salary ranges is WAY higher than what this graphic/data shows. That said, I've not seen or heard of many (really any) creative pay structures at agencies or in-house for the SEO position. I've only really seen that type of stuff in sales roles.
I think that if you want to get into positions that have those top end salaries, most SEO experts will end up calling themselves something different. SEO is still considered a very niche skill with some residual negative connotations. By associating yourself with a broader range of skills (ie, 'Marketing Manager' or 'Inbound Marketer') it's going to be easier for employers to justify a larger salary.
@Marcus - That's one of the considerations we had too. Great observation.
the only one that I've seen that has any kind of scale of value to pay compensation is here https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1
basically as a results only work environment, he actually has a single consultant work with a client for 2-3 weeks on everything to improve their business and doesn't implement anything themselves, they charge based upon what the outcome will be worth and moves on to the next client. He say's they have sometimes been booked to about 6 months out with client's for one on one consulting, it's an interesting model but he doesn't really release all of the details to it.
Since not every job posting (in any industry) includes a salary, there might be a skew to higher paying jobs not including salaries in their listings. (Just a hypothesis :)
Agree that these feel a little low in certain buckets.
Though - they're pulled from public job postings. So, it's entirely possible that there's 10%+ wiggle room built in for negotiating off of the public number.
Surprised Utah isn't listed as one of the top states for SEO jobs, it's just booming over here.
@Brandon you're the second person to mention Utah (specifically, Greg at seo.com mentioned SLC). Interesting.