The five trends defining SEO and content marketing careers
As 2019 draws to a close and we enter the 2020s, SEO and content marketing are booming. How can marketers take advantage to grow their careers and build effective teams?
Conductor has collected and analyzed UK salary and jobs data by title and city to help marketers understand what to expect from employers, and we found that money and opportunities in inbound marketing are at a new high as brands double down on SEO and content.
Learn how to seize the moment by digging into these five key trends we pulled from our research – covering everything from the best cities for inbound marketing jobs (and their under-performing counterparts) to the skills that get marketers paid more.
1. Best cities for jobs: London, Manchester and Leeds dominate, while Birmingham slips
Are you in the best place for your marketing career? Unsurprisingly, three of the biggest cities in the UK – London, Manchester, and Leeds – are the top three cities in the country (in that order) for content marketing, SEO and PPC jobs. These cities have the most inbound marketing job openings across the board in the UK.
More surprisingly, Birmingham, by most measures one of the three most populous cities in the UK, doesn’t even crack the top three for content marketing, SEO or PPC job openings. In fact, Birmingham ranks seventh for content jobs, fifth for SEO jobs and a striking nineteenth for PPC jobs. It seems like Birmingham might be taking a longer journey to build its inbound marketing community.
2. When it comes to salaries, Edinburgh punches above its weight
Inbound marketing salaries also vary by city. (Location, location, location!) For the most part, London once again leads the field far and away, though another notable top performer is punching above its weight: Edinburgh.
Across inbound marketing job titles, Edinburgh – despite its average size relative to other UK cities – boasts salaries that, for the most part, sit below those in London, but in a tier of their own above salaries in the other UK cities we studied. Salaries for content directors and SEO analysts in Edinburgh are particularly high. Top notch.
3. Digital marketers with diverse skill sets get paid more
These days, everybody in inbound marketing is getting paid – but marketers with broader skill sets are getting paid more than specialists. In the UK, average salaries for marketing managers and digital marketing managers are roughly £20,000 to 30,000 higher than average salaries for SEO managers, social media managers and content managers.
These three job titles are usually specialists in their fields, while marketing managers and digital marketing managers often have skills encompassing SEO, social media, and content. Clearly, if you expand your base of digital marketing expertise, it could pay off handsomely.
4. Nearly two-thirds of SEO jobs require content skills
And broader skill sets are starting to become a requirement even for so-called specialist titles. Today, nearly two-thirds of SEO jobs in the UK require content skills. Not only that, two out of every five content jobs in the UK require SEO skills.
Silos are coming down in marketing departments around the world, so to stand out in the inbound marketing job market (and get paid more), be aggressive in learning everything you can in every field of inbound marketing.
5. There are over twice as many content job openings as there are SEO job openings
Brands are in hiring mode when it comes to both content marketing and SEO, and, due to the structure of most marketing teams, there are more content marketing job openings than SEO job openings – twice as many, in fact.
Let’s be clear, though – there’s major growth in the SEO job market. Across the pond in the US, there was an 81% increase in SEO job openings from 2018 to 2019. And SEO skills are more widespread and valuable than ever – as mentioned above, these days, content marketers need to have SEO skills to succeed.