The SEO Jobs Report
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The SEO Jobs Report

The state of SEO jobs in 2020 – Blog banner
Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

We analyzed 7,051 job postings on Glassdoor and LinkedIn to better understand the current SEO job market.

In this new report you’ll learn:

  • Average SEO position salaries
  • Skills that employers look for
  • How COVID-19 impacted SEO job demand
  • Industries that hire the most SEOs
  • Lots more

Let’s dive right into our findings.

Highlights and Key Findings:

1. The mean salary for a US-based SEO professional is $60,548 per year.

2. Companies based in CA, CT, NY and NJ pay the highest annual salaries for SEO pros (mean salary of $72.6k/year). Those located in UT, PA and IL pay the least (mean salary of $48.7k/year).

3. SEOs that know how to code get paid more than those that don’t. Specifically, SEO job postings that require knowledge of a specific programming language have a 7.3% media higher salary compared to similar job postings without a programming language requirement.

4. Companies hiring for SEO talent post job titles that contain the terms β€œSenior SEO manager”, β€œHead of SEO”, β€œSEO content writer”, β€œSEO account manager” and β€œMarketing manager SEO”, and β€œSEO digital marketing”.

5. Only 22.9% of SEO job postings are for technical positions (for example, β€œSEO analyst”). The vast majority (77.1%) are looking for SEO professionals with non-technical skills, like β€œSEO strategist”.

6. Cities that recruit the highest number of SEO professionals include New York, San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, Atlanta and LA.

7. The most common skills that recruiters look for in an SEO include β€œmarketing”, β€œcontent”, β€œsearch”, β€œanalytics”, β€œdata” and β€œtools”.

8. The industries that are most interested in filling SEO positions are: Advertising & Marketing, Staffing & Outsourcing, Internet, IT, Publishing, and Enterprise Software.

9. 29.8% of SEO positions require a bachelor’s degree. Only 7% require a master’s degree. And 64.3% don’t have any degree requirements at all.

10. The most common programming languages required by companies hiring SEO help are HTML, CSS, Javascript, Go, SQL and PHP.

11. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t slow down the number of SEO job postings. In fact, postings for SEO positions seemed to slightly increase during the height of the crisis.

12. 63.4% of SEO jobs require experience with a specific tool. The most common tools that employers cite are Google Analytics, Semrush, Google Search Console, Moz and Screaming Frog.

The Average SEO Annual Salary is $60,548/Year. Although Salary Varies Significantly By City and State

We used Glassdoor.com to find and analyze salary data for SEO job postings in the United States.

We discovered that the mean annual salary for an SEO position is $60,548.

Average SEO salary

However, this figure varies significantly based on a number of different factors. Namely, the city and state where the company is located.

First, we broke down the average SEO salary by city. Here’s the full breakdown.

SEO salary by city

Perhaps not surprisingly, SEO jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area pay by far the most.

Research by Deutsche Bank discovered that San Francisco is the US city with the highest salary across all professions. And this seems to apply to careers in the SEO field.

In fact, the average SEO job salary in San Francisco is 2.64x higher than similar positions based in Naperville, Charleston, and New Orleans.

We ran the same salary analysis by state.

SEO salary by state

Again, California-based companies pay the most for SEO help. With Northeast states located in and around New York not far behind.

On the other end of the spectrum, Utah, Pennsylvania and Illinois came out towards the bottom of the list.

SEOs That Can Code Get Paid More Than Those That Can’t

Speaking of salaries, we found a slight connection between coding requirements and higher salaries.

Specifically, we found that SEO jobs that require coding skills have a 7.3% higher median salary vs those that don’t require web development skills.

Higher median salary for SEOs that code

Which suggests that SEO professionals should invest in their coding skills.

For example, take a look at this job posting from our data set.

Job listing with coding requirements

This job requires β€œDeep technical experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript”. And the salary for that position is $120k, which is significantly higher than the $71.6k average SEO job salary for that state.

The Most Popular SEO Job Post Titles Are β€œSenior SEO Manager”, β€œHead of SEO”, and β€œSEO Content Writer”

Next, we decided to analyze the words and phrases that employers use to describe SEO positions.

This is important for two main reasons:

First, SEOs looking for a job can optimize their LinkedIn profiles for the specific terms that recruiters look for. This will not only help people find them. But prospective employers will also likely consider them a better fit for the position if their LinkedIn profile is a 1:1 match for the job title they’re looking for.

Second, these words and phrases can help SEO professionals know where to upskill. For example, knowing that many SEO titles use the term β€œmanager” could help you focus on improving your managerial skills.

To help us find the most common terms used, we tokenized job titles into single words. And visualized their relative frequency.

Most common words in SEO job titles

(Note: stop words and words that appeared less than 7 times were removed).

As you can see, the most common single words used In SEO job titles are “Manager”, “Specialist” and “Marketing”.

In a second step, we analyzed sequences of words in our dataset of job titles.

Most common phrases in SEO job titles

This analysis revealed that employers are posting jobs that include phrases like β€œSenior SEO manager”, β€œHead of SEO”, and β€œSEO Content writer”.

We also discovered that, based on the fact that the second most common phrase was β€œremote work possible”, that a large number of SEO roles are remote. Not surprisingly, mentions of this specific phrase seemed to increase after COVID.

Only 22.9% of SEO Jobs Emphasize Technical Skills

Is SEO a highly-technical job that involves crawling, indexing and deep knowledge of canonical tags?

Or is it more of a soft skill that’s more about content, copywriting and social media?

It’s really a mix of both.

Which is why we wanted to figure out the type of SEO positions that recruiters look for most often: technical SEO positions? Or SEO roles that focus more on non-technical skills?

Here’s what we discovered:

Highly technical SEO jobs

77.1% of SEO job titles include non-technical descriptions, like β€œmanager” and β€œmarketing”.

While only 22.9% of job titles in the SEO field included technical terms, like β€œtechnical” and β€œanalytics”.

(Although, as I mentioned earlier, SEOs with coding skills get paid more. So that’s important to keep in mind here. Just because a title is more common doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily more desirable).

In short: most SEO positions are for non-technical positions that emphasize non-technical skills like β€œstrategist”, β€œmanager”, and β€œwriter”.

We also looked at the terms used in job descriptions. Here’s a word cloud of terms that employers use in job descriptions when hiring SEO professionals.

Job description terms – Word cloud

Companies Based In New York, San Francisco, Austin and Chicago Have the Highest Number of Job Offers in the SEO Industry

We analyzed our database of SEO job postings by city and state.

First, we found that these US cities had the highest number of jobs for SEO professionals.

US cities with highest number of SEO jobs

Here’s a detailed breakdown of this data.

US cities SEO jobs breakdown

We also looked at SEO job postings by state. US states with a large number of postings for SEO positions include California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina.

SEO job postings by state

Industries With The Highest Number of SEO Job Postings Include Advertising & Marketing, Staffing & Outsourcing and IT

We decided to break down SEO job postings by sector and industry.

Specifically, we wanted to answer the question: which industries hire SEO talent the most?

First, we analyzed the number of SEO job postings by sector.

SEO job postings by sector

Business services and IT are the two sectors that hire for SEO help most often. This finding probably won’t surprise anyone in the SEO industry.

After all, US businesses spent approximately $700B on marketing services, according to industry research by Borrell Associates. And all of those digital marketing agencies need SEO staff to serve clients.

We also decided to look at the number of SEO positions posted by industry. Here’s what we discovered.

Number of job postings by industry

Again, no big surprises here. Advertising and marketing businesses are by far the leaders when it comes to hiring SEO professionals. You also have industries that tend to do well with or without SEO (like banks) hiring relatively little in the way of SEO help.

64.3% of SEO Positions Don’t Require a College Degree

Does a college degree help you land a competitive SEO position?

According to our data, not necessarily.

We found that 64.3% of all SEO positions have no degree requirement at all.

SEO positions with no degree requirement

However, a fair number of SEO job postings (29.8%) did require a bachelor’s degree of some kind. Very few looked for candidates with advanced degrees.

For example, take this posting from our data set.

Job listing with no degree requirement

This is a relatively high-paying managerial role. Yet the position doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree.

That said, if you’re looking for a job in SEO, a bachelor’s or master’s degree isn’t going to hurt you.

But it’s clear that search engine optimization is such a fast-changing field. Which is why most employers aren’t super interested in candidates that learned SEO from a university. Instead, they prefer candidates with lots of hands-on experience from optimizing sites in the real world.

The Most In-Demand Programming Languages In SEO Are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Go, SQL and PHP

As we covered earlier, only a small fraction (22.9%) of SEO job postings are for technical SEO positions. And that technical-focused SEO positions tend to pay more.

Which is why we wanted to dig a bit deeper into what specific technical skills employers look for in an SEO pro. And what coding languages they want candidates to have experience with.

Here’s what we found.

Most in demand programming languages

Considering that HTML and CSS are essentially the building blocks of developing websites and web apps, it makes sense that these two skills would come out on top. And when you keep in mind that 96.2% of all websites online use JavaScript, it also makes sense that employers would seek out technical SEO professionals that know JS.

We also looked at the combination of languages that businesses hired for when looking to fill SEO roles.

Combinations of programming languages in job descriptions

This was essentially a remix of the above findings. HTML again dominates the list. CSS and JS are also in high demand.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Didn’t Seem to Negatively Impact The SEO Industry

Mass shutdowns in response to COVID-19 led to millions of people filing for unemployment.

We hypothesized that job postings for SEO professionals may significantly slow during and after the most intense period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the data shows that businesses were still hiring SEO professionals during the pandemic. A trend that has continued even as shutdowns in many states were lifted in late May and early June.

SEO job postings during COVID pandemic

For this analysis we divided a timeline as β€œbefore” and β€œafter” COVID. We considered β€œafter” COVID the day that the number of COVID-19 infections hit 100 in the US. And we looked at SEO-focused job postings on LinkedIn during that time frame.

Although the US economy took a hit during COVID, it appears that the SEO industry may have gone unscathed. In fact, job postings have significantly increased.

On further analysis, this finding makes sense. Shutdowns forced many businesses to go online for the first time. Or to scale up their existing online presence. Which may have led businesses to realize that they need to hire SEO help to succeed online.

Most SEO Positions Require 2-5 Years of Experience

Next, we looked at the length of experience that SEO positions required.

Here’s the breakdown:

Years of experience required for SEO position

As you can see, many SEO jobs require between 2 and 5 years of experience in the field.

This is likely due to the fact that the SEO field is relatively new. There simply aren’t many candidates out there with 10+ years of SEO experience.

There’s also the question of how valuable a certain number of years of experience is in the world of SEO. SEO, like coding, is a performance-based type of role.

Having years of experience is nice to have. However, most employers want SEO professionals that can help them rank higher in Google. Whether that ability comes from 1 year or 10 years of experience doesn’t seem to matter much in the eyes of most employers.

36.6% of SEO Positions Cite Experience With a Specific SEO Tool

Most SEO professionals use a number of tools as part of their job.

We were curious to see how many job postings require experience with a specific piece of SEO software. And which tools were cited most often.

Firstly, we found that 63.4% of SEO job postings require candidates to have first-hand experience with a piece of SEO software.

Number of tools mentioned in job descriptions

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the other roles won’t involve using an SEO tool. They likely will. It’s just that a certain percentage of employers may be comfortable training new hires on the tools that they use most often.

Second, we wanted to answer the question: for those postings that did require experience with a tool, which specific tool were they most interested in?

Here are the tools that employers want SEO hires to know how to use.

Tools that employers want SEO hires to use

Google Analytics was (by far) the most commonly cited tool. According to BuiltWith, 85% of the top 100k websites in the world have Google Analytics installed. And considering that Google Analytics is a key tool for doing SEO-related work, it makes sense that it would come out at the top of this list.

The rest of the top 5 were a mix of paid and free tools that are 100% dedicated to SEO and SEM: Semrush, Google Search Console, Moz Pro, and Screaming Frog.

Conclusion

I really hope you enjoyed this report. You can see a full breakdown of our data analysis right here. We also have a GitHub repository of the data that we used.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Which finding from today’s report did you find most interesting?

Or maybe you have a question about something that I covered.

Either way, I’d like to hear from you. So go ahead and leave a comment below.

293 Comments

  1. Awesome information for anyone seeking SEO jobs. As always, thanks for the attention to detail and amazing content, Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Keller. I’ve seen these sorts of breakdowns in other industries. But not SEO for some reason. Which is why we decided to analyze this data and report on it. Overall, I’m super happy with how it turned out.

      1. Sylvia Avatar Sylviasays:

        As someone new to SEO, I appreciate having data on which technical skills (coding languages and apps) I need to become familiar with. I wonder if you’d consider doing a similar report for Australia?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Hi Sylvia, happy to help. A worlwide version of this should be super interesting.

  2. Hey Brian, great article and great insights as always.

    Out of curiosity, how much technical SEO do you perform for Backlinko? Specifically, in regards to using HTML, CSS, and JS for site optimization?

    And in order to have a shot at running a successful blog like yours (I’m just getting into blogging), how necessary are those skills compared to being a good writer or researcher?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Gordon. I don’t personally do a lot of technical work at Backlinko. But we do have a developer on the team. That said, if you want to run a blog it’s definitely helpful to have some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JS. But you don’t necessarily need to be a technical SEO pro to succeed with blogging.

      1. Thanks for the reply Brian!

        As a follow-up, when you decided to focus heavily on case studies did you add aspects of gathering, parsing, and visualizing data to your skill set or do you leave that to the pros such as FrontPage Data in this case?

        (I promise, no more questions after this. Thanks in advance!)

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          No matter what type of study we do, someone else (not me) definitely does the gathering, parsing etc. I’m not remotely technical enough to do that sort of thing.

    1. I have similar questions. I took your word but it is not clear what this is.? Web marketing or visitor recruitment methods. How can I rank on google.?

  3. Really interesting analysis, Brian. I’ve been looking for stats to support my theory that SEO is something that a business cannot ignore. This post is perfect for that purpose.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Hazel. You’re right: it’s interesting to see that demand for SEO jobs didn’t really decline during COVID (in fact, it might have increased). Which goes to show that businesses understand that SEO isn’t something you can skimp on.

  4. This was great and reassuring. I’ve been a little worried about how Covid was going to affect SEO, but there’s reason to be positive!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Dan. It was hard to make firm conclusions about job demand during COVID. But it looks like it may not have hurt demand for SEO jobs all that much. Which is definitely a good thing for the industry.

      1. Yea I mean who can predict anything right now, but data doesn’t lie and this appears well researched, so it seems reasonable to be optimistic!

  5. Interesting how most jobs don’t require a college degree. I wonder if this is specific to SEO or is this part of a larger trend for companies to look for specific expertise rather than the overall accomplishment of a degree.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Aaron, that stuck out to me too. I think it’s probably a mix of both. I don’t think that many employers cared if their head of SEO had a degree. Especially because 99% of the time that degree was in history, nursing or something else completely unrelated to SEO. And I also think it ties into the trend of tech companies not caring about degrees at all.

      1. Jerrod Wertman Avatar Jerrod Wertmansays:

        LOVED this! We’re moving, and it’s cool to see the job postings and potential opportunities for someone like me, who’s been doing this for 10+ years. Also really cool to know which tools these employers are looking for experience and expertise with. I’ll need to brush up on AHREFs. I really liked your in-depth post on that earlier.

        Thanks again for awesome, actionable content!

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          You’re welcome, Jerrod. And best of luck with the move.

  6. Ron Avatar Ronsays:

    Interesting that ahrefs is number six on the list when it seems to be one of the top two or three favorites among people who practice SEO.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I was surprised by that too. I would have expected Ahrefs to be higher up too.

  7. Christine Avatar Christinesays:

    Thanks Brian once again for a detailed report!
    It was interesting to see which seo tools to specialise on and encouraging to know lack of years of experience is not a hinderance!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Christine, you’re welcome. The SEO field is definitely all about results. In fact, that’s one of the things that I like most about it. So fancy degrees and years of experience don’t really matter. It’s all about whether or not you can rank.

    1. Oksana Avatar Oksanasays:

      Thanks for this article, Brian! According to numbers, it seems a very perspective job. And as an SEO Specialist now, I’m very glad, that I’ve changed my occupation three years agoπŸ™‚. It’s a very useful and interesting article for me, especially about Seo tools. Thanks!

      1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

        You’re welcome, Oksana.

  8. I agree but for freelancers, COVID 19 situation has been impacted on them as most of the companies stopped their SEO projects and they don’t want to invest now due to this crisis.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Neha, I’ve heard the same thing from SEO freelancers that I work with. It’s definitely unfortunate. But hopefully demand for SEO freelancing will pick up like it looks to be for full-time SEO jobs.

      1. I think its dependant on area as well, as an SEO freelancer I actually was busier during covid. Only had one client pause but got a lot more enquiries from businesses pivoting to put more focus on their website because closing their premises had made them realise they needed a stronger web presence. Lockdown has been slow to lift here in Scotland and even now we still have a lot closed so many business have been pushing the online side of business, which was a benefit for us.

  9. I’m surprised that only 23% SEO jobs are technical SEO positions. Suppose to be higher.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I was surprised too. It could be that lots of companies have developers on staff. And they take care of coding-related tasks. Or that most companies have a simple site structure (like a blog or services business) that doesn’t need a ton of technical SEO work.

  10. Aryan Avatar Aryansays:

    People who didn’t know any programming language, also be able to (some are much better than SEO’s who code) rank their websites or their client websites in 1st position of Google on such super competitive keywords, so why are they not paid like SEO’s who code.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I don’t understand what you mean.

  11. Ali Abbas Avatar Ali Abbassays:

    Really cool post, Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Ali

  12. Ty Avatar Tysays:

    Hey Brian, I’m applying for SEO content writing jobs. I’ve been blogging and ranking my affiliate site for over 3 years, but my rankings have fallen drastically after the Jan 2020 core update. Since my current rankings aren’t too impressive, what is your best suggestion for making myself stand out from other applicants? Thanks for your help!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      HI Ty, I’d be transparent. And say that you’ve run your own sites over the years. And that gives you a more well-rounded view of what makes a site successful (more on why that’s key here). You got hit by an update, but you’re working through it and trying to get back on track.

  13. Hey Brian,

    Thank you for this awesome post.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Lalit.

  14. Amazing insights. I started learning SEO as soon as the pandemic started. Some of my main sources of learning are this blog and the Neil Patel blog.
    I created a practice WordPress site where I do all my experimentation. I am already taking small gig to help out businesses in my neigborhood.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Awesome Alain. Great way to get started.

  15. Trust me Brian, its impossible to find this kind of research shortlisted on Seo jobs… Yes, people go through glassdoor & other job portals but it isn’t as clear as you made it…
    The most interesting part that actually made me happy is the fact that nothing is affected for webmasters (seo experts) during this covid-19 pandemic..
    Thank you so much for always motivating people to the best of your ability….

    Love from India

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, Pratham. Glad you found this report helpful.

  16. >it’s clear that search engine optimization is such a fast-changing field. Which is why most employers aren’t super interested in candidates that learned SEO from a university. Instead, they prefer candidates with lots of hands-on experience from optimizing sites in the real world.

    Thanks Brian. It’s great having industry leaders around who can step back and share a birds eye of the field. I took a Digital Marketing class back ~2010 at NYU Stern and can testify that the universities even back had to work hard to keep abreast of the ever changing developments.

    With that said, I thought it’d be helpful to mention @Ginny Marvin’s June 2020 article https://searchengineland.com/welcome-to-the-predictive-marketing-era-336284 . As the field continues to change and AI and ML become more pervasive, my sense is that the income and opportunity divide you touched on (i.e., those with vs those without programming skills) is only going to increase. May we all keep growing our skills as people + machine > people alone or machines alone. Cheers.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Dave. I’ve never personally taken a class on marketing. But I’ve heard that most are similar to your experience: way behind the times.

  17. That’s a terrible average salary for SEOs. If you do it right, and choose the right clients, you should be easily making 6 figures.

    I would say that SEOs who know how to do results-driven CRO is where it’s at. Coding is something you can hire out if you really need to.

    Great article!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Ryan, keep in mind this is for full time SEO gigs. Not freelance or SEO services work. That’s a whole different ballgame.

  18. Being an SEO Executive it feels so good to read such in-depth report related to my field, thankyou Brian🌸

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, Uzair. Glad you liked it.

  19. This is absolutely amazing. You’ve helped me to use the proper keywords for my LinkedIn profile

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Very smart πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  20. Wow, what a breakdown. I just finished my masters in Business Communications and have continued running my own one-man operation. I actually had no idea of the standard salaries (I am based in Denmark but I believe we compare pretty directly to American standards).

    Loved the content. I believe getting industry inside-information might be harder for SEO’s than in other industries?

    Kind regards,

    Jacob

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Jacob, you’re welcome. Glad you found it helpful but I didn’t understand your question.

  21. Great post Brian! I just learned a lot of information I never knew before! And thanks for all your hard work, my website has grown so much thanks to your strategies!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Fiona, thank you. And I’m glad to hear that you’re seeing results from my strategies. Props to you for putting in the work πŸ‘

  22. Marston Gould Avatar Marston Gouldsays:

    None of this information is really all that surprising, but two comments – 1) the fact that folks doing paid media get paid often times 30-100% more than organic demonstrates how little SEO is actually valued 2) those with technical skills would make more money by applying those skills to just being developers. This just goes to show that SEO is a dying field and a dead end career.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Those weren’t my conclusions from this at all. 1) do you have data that paid media folks get paid that much more? and 2) that developers get paid more than SEO pros?

      1. Abby Avatar Abbysays:

        Marston – Until the day search engines are no longer used (so, never?) SEO will be a career. People will always be searching for content, and smart businesses will always want to understand how to show up.

        Also, even a brief search for “paid search specialist” on Glassdoor shows companies are offering a similar salary level to organic positions. I appreciate differing opinions, but before using words like “dead end career”, please have data to back it up.

    1. @Marston, “SEO is dead” for 20 years already. Everybody heard about this if they are working with SEO long enough. With paid media it is much easier to measure results. With SEO (white hat) it is a long shot and you can’t see results instantly so it is much harder to measure performance.

  23. Since I keep coming back to your site and really value your content, I might as well leave a comment and say thanks for sharing!
    Keep up the good work

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Floris. Feel free to stop by the comments section anytime. The Backlinko community is a great group.

  24. Great insight, Brian. Thanks for the info. Looks like it’s time to ask for a raise πŸ˜‰

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Nice! This report should help with that ask.

  25. Anam Umair Avatar Anam Umairsays:

    Thank you so much. You are always a great help!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  26. Suraj Avatar Surajsays:

    Hi Brian!

    Thank you for such a detailed compilation. It is really helpful! When you say coding, how would an SEO manager who doesn’t have a background in coding learn it? What aspects of coding should he/she learn?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Suraj, you’re welcome. That’s tough to answer because there are a million ways to learn how to code. But I’ve heard good things about one month HTML.

  27. Craig Anderson Avatar Craig Andersonsays:

    Hey Brian,

    Thanks so much for this post. As an amateur SEO (only running my own sites) I’ve always wondered about getting into the industry. I’m sure there’s thousands of others in the same boat.

    This has been massively eye opening, and made me realize there’s real career possibilities out there. And what I can focus on to get there.

    Thank you!
    Craig

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Craig, you’re welcome. The SEO industry is great to be in. Especially if you have experience running your own sites. I cover why that is in this post.

  28. Hey Brian Dean,

    Just want to say hats off you to for this report. And, Your contribution to SEO industry is worth appreciating.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  29. Ali Avatar Alisays:

    WOW. Good Job again Brian. Clap Clap Clap

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ™‚

  30. Hey Brian, great findings from this study. I was wondering how Covid-19 would impact SEOs and digital marketers. Now that businesses are moving online, more and more of them would need to optimize their site and content. Which also means that existing digital marketers should buckle up for new competition.

    The spike at the end of May is quite interesting.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Exactly. Demand for digital marketers probably went down a little bit at first. But as more companies moved online, they quickly realized that they needed people to help them get found. Which might explain that spike in May. Although it’s hard to say for sure based on our data alone.

  31. Njoya James Avatar Njoya Jamessays:

    I just love the fact that higher number of SEO jobs don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Sounds cool since am yet in college.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Njoya, that’s definitely the case in my real world experience too. If you can rank sites, you’ll have no issue finding work in the SEO field. If you have a degree? Great. If not? No biggie.

  32. This is THE most comprehensive research material on SEO jobs anyone can find on the web. You and your team did a fantastic job and I’m sure this’ll stay on the top list of thousands of SEO/SEM professionals. Thank you so much for this post Brain (& team).

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Chris. I appreciate that.

  33. Amazing ! As usual, your work is exceptional. I really like the fact that you integrate a lot of sourced data.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Ramzi. Yeah, it’s interesting that this data is kind of just sitting there. But until now no one had collected and analyzed it.

  34. Thanks for the informative content on SEO job postings. I’m still amazed to see that 64.3% of job postings don’t require a college degree.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Eldho.

  35. “Two Thumbs Up” Well researched and well written!

    I like the “highlights section” at the top, then the detailed comments and graphs in the main body. It’s a lot to absorb in one sitting, so I’ve bookmarked it for an additional read tomorrow morning.

    (Suggestion: Provide a “read more” link from the end of a highlight to the expanded discussion later in the post, and a “return” at the end of that particular discussion.)

    Kudos, and thank you.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Rick, thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.

  36. Nice report with data Brain.
    When is your SEO course going to be open his year 😊

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Jyothi. We will probably open enrollment in October.

  37. Thanks Brian for this insightful post. I think seo has a lot of potential and still drives amazing results.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Rajat. For sure: SEO is far from dead.

  38. Anjay Sah Avatar Anjay Sahsays:

    Impressive Research Based Content. I am pretty
    Sure It will help many others like me. Though I am Very much at My Initial Phase of Starting SEO as my career. After reading it I feel somewhat secure that i am moving in the right direction.

    You are Awesome. Learnt alot From Your Every post.
    Thanks Brian

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Anjay.

  39. Ricardo de la Rosa Avatar Ricardo de la Rosasays:

    Awesome Brian! With this information, now I have a better picture of the SEO industry in terms of offering as a service. And it gives me to think about doing it even more than I use to do it.

    Brilliant info! Thanks!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Ricardo, no worries. That was the idea behind this report actually. There wasn’t really any large scale analysis of SEO job data. Which is what encouraged us to run this analysis.

    1. Great post as usual!
      Just shocked to see ahrefs below!

  40. Hi Brian,

    Thanks for this informative post, as usual. This is pretty useful for SEO guys like us who can now demand the right amount for their services. Thanks for your tremendous contribution to the SEO community.

    Best Regards,
    Himanshu Tyagi

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Himanshu. Glad it helped you out.

  41. Great insights. Thank you for the comprehensive work in analysis and adding these helpful visualizations.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries. Glad you enjoyed it.

  42. Thanks so much for this Brian. It will help me in pitching for new clients, having known industries with high SEO demand.
    Again thanks for the good work you’re doing.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Nevin. Good idea there. Very smart.

  43. Thanks for this report, Brian! I found it interesting that SEO job opportunities took a slight upward turn despite COVID-19, which gives me hope that I will be able to survive as a writer during these unprecedented times. I write long-form blogs and SEO content.

    I wish you the best and look forward to more reports and valuable information from you in the future.

    -Rebecca

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Rebecca, you’re welcome. Yes, that’s promising for sure. I’m not 100% sure how demand for full time jobs apply to freelancing. But I’d imagine there’s a lot of overlap. Like I mentioned in the report, businesses are scrambling to move online. And they need expert help (content, SEO, PPC, social) to help spread the word. Which bodes well for the industry.

  44. Dilbar Avatar Dilbarsays:

    Awesome article. Thanks!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Dilbar.

  45. Thanks Brian for another great post!
    It’s interesting that you mentioned β€œSEO is a relatively new field”. Many SEOs feel they have been doing this for years when in fact there is plenty of opportunity to learn, grow and utilize these skills in so many different industries. I loved the analysis.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Kunal, you’re welcome. For sure: SEO is new. Plus, it’s changing all the time. So there’s always something new to learn and figure out. That’s actually why it’s such a fun industry to be a part of.

  46. Leah Q Avatar Leah Qsays:

    Thanks, Brian. This is great and helpful information. I’d love to see the salary breakdown for male vs female.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Leah. Good idea. For that I think we’d have to do a survey of some kind. But it’s doable.

  47. Very insightful and intresting, as I’m in a middle of a Job Switch it gave me a fair idea how’s the market looking, a similar report on Digital Marketing as a whole would be awesome!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Abbaz. Good idea there. We may expand this out to other industries in the future.

  48. Emad Sharaki Avatar Emad Sharakisays:

    Amazing Brian, as usual, you mentioned a lot of details in USA. I wish if you can list more information about SEO jobs in Europe with salaries.
    Thank you for your efforts

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Emad, this was the first SEO Jobs Report. So we decided to focus on US at first.

  49. Shri Harsha Avatar Shri Harshasays:

    This is awesome Brian,
    Can you please cover similar for performance marketing as well?
    Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Shri. We might look into other industries, including performance marketing.

  50. Darrell Avatar Darrellsays:

    Hello Brian,

    I was wondering how do you go about collecting data to make posts like this. Do you utilize a specific service provider ? Any insight would be helpful as I would love to make case studies like this in the near future.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Darrell, it depends a lot on the study. For a study like this we usually work with someone to scrape and analyze data that’s out there. For others (like this one), we do it all in house.

      1. Brian, As a old, self taught SEO guy who was learning “how to” when Google launched their 2003 SEO GUIDE your research and analysis are always some of the best I’ve seen. Thank you for all you do for myself and others. Because in today’s world and economy Branding and SEO are top skills to have.
        Be well,
        BJ Bronstad
        Are you branding you?

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Thanks BJ. I appreciate that.

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