With a number of new college graduates and employees being displaced, now is a great time to learn a new, employable skill. Search marketing is driving electronic marketing and commerce and is almost essential for any large web business. This post goes over how you can become a search marketing pro in just a few months.
Executive summary
- Read the right blogs to familiarize yourself with news and lingo
- Get certified by Google to add legitimacy to your work
- Get some experience by working for a local non-profit
- Learn more than just keywords and bidding strategy
- Attend conferences to network and get the latest trends
- Get a job through a search marketing job board
Read the right blogs
Reading the right blogs can help you stay current with best practices, industry news, and learn from some of the most talented in the industry. The list includes blogs of the three major search engines and more. You probably won’t learn bidding tactics or “how to” do search marketing from some of the blogs, but you’ll get a good idea of what’s going on in search marketing.
- http://www.battellemedia.com/
- http://www.mattcutts.com/blog
- http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
- http://www.searchengineland.com/
- http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
- http://www.ysearchblog.com/
Get certified
Getting certified is important – it will separate you from the other “experts” in the field. The de-facto certification is the Google Adwords Qualified Individual. It has a few requirements, such as managing $1,000 in spend over 90 days and passing the exam. (I wrote a post here on how I prepared for the exam and what to expect when taking the exam.) Overall, it was fairly straight-forward and most people should be able to study for a few days and pass it with relative ease.
Also, you can become Microsoft AdCenter Expert by participating in Microsoft adExcellence Program (thanks, @nsurya).
Get some experience
Don’t have $1,000 of your own money to spend? Then volunteer running the search marketing for a local non-profit or small business. Be sure to collect the current campaign information (spend, CPCc, CTRs, conversion rates, etc) before starting so you can measure your performance. Once you’ve finished compare current data vs. the data from when you started. It should be much better and that makes great talking points during an interview.
Learn more than just keywords and bidding strategy
Familiarize yourself with the entire chain of search marketing by experimenting with landing page optimization and search analytics. Sign up for and implement Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer and run A/B tests on your landing pages.
Attend conferences
There are tons of Internet marketing conferences, but the one I truly recommend is SMX: Advanced. It’s not cheap and it’s in the corner of the country, but it brings together the most advanced, recent content from the best in the industry. However, if you can’t make it to SMX: Advanced, then there are other conferences, such as: SMX, SES, OMS, and others. Going to conferences also helps build your personal brand, makes great interview talking points, and is great networking.
Get a job
In addition to the standard job search engines, there are some fantastic industry specific ones. The best ones seem to be Search Engine Journal, SEMPO, and SEOmoz. Also be sure to check companies websites as they might not advertise their job openings.
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If you’re interested in career development, I also occasionally write over at Career Fire. I founded Career Fire (but no longer run the site) to educate readers on effective resume tactics, personal productivity, and general career development.
