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Hot Careers Include Search Engine Optimization Consulting

My son is just beginning his first year of college this fall. It's hard to imagine that he'll be leaving home, but I guess we all face this moment eventually. Some people pursue post-secondary education to widen their horizons but Ken is much more pragmatic than that; he wants that degree to help make more money and nothing more. That's all well and good, but when he announced that he was looking at Java programming or website development, I suggested that he might want to rethink that strategy. The problem is this: web development has been around for so long that much of the mechanics of it have become a black box that almost anyone can work with. Sure, a really sharp programmer can fine-tune a web site to wring more performance out of it and a graphic designer can tweak it to look better, but that whole space is saturated. You aren't just competing with the do-it-yourself crowd and the one-person web development companies, but you're also dealing with the tens of thousands of web developers that various schools have churned out over the past five years. It's hardly a recipe for commanding a top salary.

I suggested to Ken that working with web sites can still be lucrative, but not in the programming area.  What he should concentrate on is learning about search engine optimizing. Search engines have grown to become a dominant force on the Internet and the biggest of them all -Google- is one of the largest tech firms of this century. With the continued growth of the web, the sheer volume of information becomes ever more overwhelming. Search engines should not only continue to be a critical component, but many of my colleagues feel they may become even more dominant; I tend to agree with them.

It stands to reason that if search engines will be such an important part of the web browsing experience, then optimizing a site to increase visibility via search engines (or SEO) should also become increasingly important. SEO is a skill that requires considerable training and there aren't many people who have that training. When it comes to the success or failure of a web site, the visual appearance is certainly important, but traffic is what ultimately separates the successes from the also-rans. The key to increasing web traffic is effective SEO; more and more companies are going to be looking to add people with this important skill to their marketing teams and with demand comes compensation.

About the Author:

Corrina Delmar is a business columnist with a Midwestern newspaper. She specializes in technology-related issues facing companies today, such as search engine optimization. In a recent column, Corrina listed her top ten technology careers most likely to be in demand during the next five years, placing search engine optimization consulting in the number three position. If you have any questions or comments for Corrina, you can reach her at: Address: ThinkBIGsites 200 Broad Hollow Rd. Suite 207 Melville, NY 11747 Phone #: 888.300.1496