One of the toughest parts of having a liberal arts degree involves the job market. Even before the economy slowed down, degrees like Communications, Political Science, Psychology, and English were not necessarily the route to a high paying job. However, the increasingly semantic nature of search engines has led people with BA Degrees to find jobs in search engine optimization (SEO) which is widely assumed to be a technical field.
Even before search engines touted their “semantic” capabilities, the field was weighted toward English majors. This derived from the “content is king” philosophy in SEO which had the thesis that the content on a website was the prime factor in getting good search engine rankings. Content is still a very important piece of the puzzle, and for that reason SEO firms routinely hire writers and train them in search engine optimization.
To be sure, there is a great need for technical knowledge in the field of SEO. Most of the better agencies and consulting firms have programmers and webmasters on staff for internal and external initiatives. From an entry level standpoint in SEO, the requirements are a bit more basic. For instance, a general knowledge of HTML and experience putting together a basic website are a good start.
The process of search engine optimization basically involves matching up actual search queries (in search engines like Google) with relevant websites. Search engines gain their credibility by presenting information that is as germane to the search term as possible. The order of the words in the search is also an important factor, so people looking for Hotel Rooms in San Francisco will either type in “San Francisco Hotel Room” or “Hotel Room San Francisco.” Either way, a talented content writer can incorporate both phrases into a web page, and that same writer would have the skills necessary to format the meta content (what the search engine uses as a topic guide) to optimize the page.
Another important piece of the SEO puzzle is link popularity and link text. Essentially, the sites linking to your site are telling the search engines what you are about. If 100 sites say that you are about “orange widgets,” and you have made your site relevant to that term, you are likely to get a good ranking in the search engines. Once again, a person who has experience writing term papers and doing research will have an advantage when it comes to finding out good keywords, soliciting links via email, and determining the best word order in the actual link text.
Search engines like Google and Bing like to say that their ranking algorithms (the set of rules that determines how one site gets better placement than another) have up to 300 different factors in deciding placement. Many of these factors are closely guarded trade secrets, but to a certain extent the major rules are known to the SEO world. Given that many of these rules favor “natural language” in website design, and those rules are the same grammar and usage rules that have been drilled into the heads of most English Language and Literature graduates, there is a natural fit for people in this field. A testament to the power of this idea is the good placement for sites like Wikipedia and About.com, which almost always deliver very good results for any search. Despite challenges to the veracity of the content on these sites, there is plenty of information, lots of references, and each page is clearly formatted in a style that is useful to the reader and the search engine.
What can a Liberal Arts student do to improve their job prospects in the SEO field? First, do some research. Sources like SEOBook and PlanetOcean have useful guides for learning the basics of SEO. Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is a clear guide to the general principles of SEO, and helps people learn a few terms to drop during the job interview process. There are even plenty of YouTube videos dedicated to the topic. Second, creating a website and optimizing it is a real-world way to learn the ins and outs of search engine placement. The site doesn’t even have to sell anything, but it can function as a test case for SEO training. By learning first hand how to install free tools like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, you will be able to see how the search engine universe works, how to monitor traffic, and even how people find your website.
There is quite a bit of on-the-job training in the optimization world, and experience in working with diverse websites is key to getting a well rounded SEO education. By dealing in sites with sectors like health care, legal, real estate, retail ecommerce, and lead generation, you can learn more about the internet landscape than most business school graduates. Secondarily, you will get a feel for universal search engine principles and those that are applicable to specific niche fields on the World Wide Web. Eventually, your SEO knowledge can be a stepping stone to careers in online marketing and product development, which generally have a higher pay grade than other jobs open to people with BA degrees.
Finally, people with English, Psychology, and Communications degrees can benefit from the relatively open and growing status of the Search Engine Optimization industry. Experienced SEO professionals are still in demand despite cuts in other job categories. Many companies are only just learning that dollars spend on search engine marketing create a higher return than newspaper, radio, and TV advertising. These companies are scrambling for SEO professionals, or they are retaining the agencies that employ them. Given the natural fit between the skills needed for a BA degree and the semantic requirements of search engines, now may be the best time for graduates to consider a career in SEO.
