← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
SEO Jobs Week - Does Location Matter In SEO?
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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Tyson Stockton.
- [00:43]
Tyson Stockton
Hey, what's going on? My name is Tyson from Pre Visible IO and today we are going to be continuing the conversation with nick Leroy from SEOjobs.com where we're breaking down our 2025 SEO jobs study. We've gone through the framing of the study on Monday and then we also went into kind of roles and titles. Today we're jumping into the location component.
- [01:09]
Ben Shapiro
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- [02:28]
Tyson Stockton
We get into that, Nick, how are you doing?
- [02:29]
Nick Leroy
I'm doing fantastic. I still have no complaints about the world. So how are you doing?
- [02:35]
Tyson Stockton
I'm doing good. It's, I mean, midweek, so you know, we're right in the midst of it. I'm excited about the topic though, today because I Think a lot of people, you know, it stems around like a lot of conversations in SEO. And I think it's something that a lot of us have opinions on. And you always have kind of like this polarization in some ways of remote versus on site. But I think, like, it's an interesting conversation as far as like, how the industry's unfolding and rolling out.
- [03:06]
Nick Leroy
Yep. Different opportunities and different locations.
- [03:09]
Tyson Stockton
Well, and it's like, I think we saw obviously a huge shift with the pandemic where I think compared to maybe like all jobs, there's always been that level of remote. And you had kind of your digital nomads within SEO COVID pandemic amplified it like crazy. And then it's been kind of this like, well, what is the new norm? Right. And I think it's also interesting because I feel like if you were to ask the common person out there, like before we did this, I mean, I know, Nick, like you spend a lot of times with SEO jobs, so it's maybe a little unfair advantage. But, like, where do you feel like the general public in SEO would feel the breakdown would be between hybrid office or remote jobs?
- [03:58]
Nick Leroy
Just the current state today.
- [04:00]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. Like, what do you feel like the impression is like when you talk to.
- [04:05]
Nick Leroy
Other SEOs, I think the impression is that everybody is remote. And I think that's the kind of that high level. I think the reality though, as I talk to more people in actuality is the people that are remote are typically agency side. And that is one of the benefits to be able to pull people on agency side and in house are more of a hybrid. Best case scenario, they're on site maybe two days a week. As we've seen on the news, there's a lot of big brands bringing people back five days a week. Does that align kind of with what you're seeing as well?
- [04:40]
Tyson Stockton
It does. And I think, like more people, I feel like there's more of an impression that most of the opportunities can be remote. And it's like, it's true that there's a good significant portion and more than other industries, but there's more of a location requirement than I think I was anticipating. When we kind of went into the study, like, I felt like there probably was going to be a higher level of remote. And I was kind of like, you know, honestly a little surprised to see that office jobs was like, you know, the majority. And if we're looking at percentages for the jobs, you know, that we pulled and we broke these down by quarters to see how they were kind of like fluxing or changing. And in the start of the year, you had kind of the breakdown of roughly 20% hybrid, little over 43% office and 37% remote. So there was a preference to office over remote. Head to head. Obviously, if you combined in hybrid with office, it's going to be the majority. And so the majority of jobs out there, at least in the start of the year, it was almost a little bit over 60% had some location element to it, regardless if it's 100% or not. The most interesting piece, though, on this was what happened in Q4, where we really saw a divergence and we saw a stronger push on office jobs at that point. So I don't know, I think like, I had my own thoughts towards that, but I think like, that was interesting to see where it's like where those jobs came from were from the remote. Like we saw. As office increased, remote decreased, Hybrid stayed about the same and has had kind of just this slow, steady increase. But it went from Q1 at the 19% of all the jobs to 23% in Q4. So we're not talking a huge, you know, swing, but in remote, you know, we're looking from 37 to 29, and in office 43 to 49. So I think like, there is that decrease, which really kind of like caught my attention when we were looking at the numbers of the study.
- [07:00]
Nick Leroy
Yeah, I guess I'm less surprised only because every month out in our data set is another month further away from COVID With that being said, I think there's kind of a hard line in the sand. You know, people either believe that you can be productive, we are adults, and you can do your job regardless where you're at. And then I think on the other side of the pendulum is, you know, we can create so much more synergy by working collaboratively in person and being able to get more from it. We build better, you know, work or, sorry, not work, life balance might be the opposite there, but, you know, it's like we just build, you know, that team morale. You know, it's like we're just what is the entity of the company. And a lot of that is done in person, you know, over happy hours or specific events. So I'm not surprised. I think I am a bit skewed in my personal preference, but again, we kind of talked a couple days ago. Being 10, 15 years into the industry, I kind of like being at home, whereas I couldn't imagine trying to learn all the complexities of SEO, like just being thrown into a computer and being like, if you have a question, slack me. Like, okay, I'm never putting my hand down.
- [08:22]
Tyson Stockton
Which I think that really hits a source. And I think like to me, I also, I mean there's not a right answer to this. Like both of us work remote, so clearly we both have our own preference. But we've also been in the industry for over 10 years. Like, I mean, I don't know about you, probably both of us are approaching like 15 years at this point. So it's like that's a bit different of a scenario than someone that's coming in. And so again, if I'm looking at like, okay, what advice do I give to the SEOs and the job seekers out there? Well, you know, if you're just breaking into the market, like remote's going to be a lot tougher and you know, you're seeing a softening in the job postings there. So it's like that's going to have an impact. I think also like, you know, we talked yesterday about seeing kind of a little bit of an increase in some of the higher level roles and I think some of those more often come in the form of the enterprise in house organizations. I feel like they're kind of cruising along and that's going to have an office component where if we're talking about of like uncertainty in the economy or with the elections that happened in Q4 and like that, it kind of also makes sense that the SMB, you know, the companies that don't have as deep a pockets might be a little more hesitant, a little more reluctant, a little more, hey, let's wait and not overextend ourselves. So I feel like there's a component that's maybe also amplifying this a little bit with maybe there being a higher representation of those enterprise big box store jobs in Q4 that maybe we don't see as much in the others.
- [10:06]
Nick Leroy
Right. They can afford the bigger risk because they can weather out a quarter or two, whereas that might take out an.
- [10:12]
Tyson Stockton
SMB completely 100% as far as, you know, looking at cities. So then we're saying like, okay, based on those numbers, you know, we can say, you know, let's call it at least average across the year, you know, just over 30% of the jobs being full remote in the U.S. so then we know, okay, like 70% or so of the jobs we're looking for are going to have some office kind of location, which markets, like where do we go? And from this I think like there's there's a few interesting kind of like outliers to it where there's your expected kind of like run of the mill, not run the mill cities, but like the cities where you'd expect there to be a lot of opportunity. And then you have kind of, sometimes you're like, you know, more sneaky kind of, I don't know, ones that you wouldn't anticipate as much.
- [11:10]
Nick Leroy
Yeah, I was really surprised when we saw this. I don't know why it surprised me, but as people could probably guess, the more populous the, the town or the state, you know, the more opportunities there typically are. So, you know, I'll let the cat out of the bag. It's like a California does not surprise me that it's on the list just because you have three times the amount of population than we do in Minnesota. Even though we have some pretty big enterprise brands over here too.
- [11:40]
Tyson Stockton
And I think like with that too, you also have like those other hotspots like so it's like of course New York City is always going to be up there. San Francisco is going to be up there too. I think San Francisco is an interesting one to look at because population of San Francisco is not so great. But then you have the surrounding metropolitan that is. So if you're looking at per capita with San Francisco, it's a little bit of an outlier. But then I think, you know, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin and Boston, like those ones like Atlanta, Austin, Boston, like those ones are ones that kind of like, yes, those all major market areas but not necessarily kind of like you know, top five largest cities in the entire US like so those ones kind of caught my attention a little bit as well.
- [12:32]
Nick Leroy
Well, and what's funny, and you've probably seen this too, but having specifically Atlanta comes to mind, I know costar is based there and Home Depot is based there and they always want 100% on site. But what they end up doing is they rotate talent like this. Yeah. So it's really interesting when you do get these very specific locations that like you said they otherwise wouldn't maybe be on your top list. But then you just have these handful of companies and they like rotate the same employees.
- [13:04]
Ben Shapiro
Time for a one minute break to hear from our sponsor, Pre Visible. So you're looking for SEO help and you got a couple of options. You could start replying to spam from agencies that claim they can get you to rank number one on Google. You can pay an hourly rate for a consultant who will inevitably nickel and dime you with hourly charges. Or you can work with a cookie cutter agency to quickly launch a strategy less project with low success rates. None of those sound very good now do they? Well, that's where Pre Visible's integrated consulting model comes in. Pre Visible draws From a collective 40 years of SEO and digital marketing experience to unlock your organic growth opportunities. They build custom solutions that combine strategy, technical expertise, content and reporting to effectively operationalize SEO for your business. Pre Visible's four stage approach ensures that your SEO programs thrive by starting off with a strategy first approach. Then they support you in your efforts to create quality content, help you identify technical issues, and most importantly, they'll work with your cross functional teams to integrate your SEO strategies to make sure that your SEO budget actually drives results, not just your agency's bottom line. So join brands like Yelp, eBay, Canva, Atlassian Square, all who rely on the SEO consultants at Pre Visible. For more information, go to Pre Visible IO. That's Pre Visible P R E V I S I b l e.IO.
- [14:32]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, I've seen that too. And I think like with the top markets, regardless if we're looking at like states or cities, I think like the highlight for me there is if you're looking to make that jump of director vp, you might have a greater edge in one of those top tier cities because there's going to be proportionally more of those jobs in those markets. But then that next kind of trending positive area, I thought it was really interesting that the states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio were all ones that were positively trending from a number and volume of jobs. I think, you know, the steepest decline that we saw, which was interesting to me was Florida, Colorado and Utah. So that one I thought was kind of interesting, which I don't know if you have a take or kind of, you know, impressions of why, you know, what could be driving that.
- [15:32]
Nick Leroy
Isn't Florida a zero state tax state?
- [15:36]
Tyson Stockton
True.
- [15:37]
Nick Leroy
So I kind of interesting that that goes down. I can't speak for Utah, I don't remember if they are zero tax, but I would just expect, maybe it's more the political climate and you know, companies kind of making their decisions that way. But it's very interesting. I mean I know just from networks like Florida has a hopping agency scene, but like I said, it's obviously contextual.
- [16:02]
Tyson Stockton
Well and like that kind of like checks out to me because it's like okay, you have this higher representation of enterprise, like yep, those are going to be skewed into California, New York, Texas, Illinois with Chicago, Florida. Like you have a good chunk of that, you know, but you are seeing kind of like some shifts there. Like I feel like Colorado and Utah have been states in that conversation of like these hotspots and you have like, you know, more companies that are kind of going there. But it's like, I feel like there's a, that kind of high SMB area probably is going to be a little bit more represented there. And so I could see that. I also think, you know, North Carolina, you know, Raleigh is like, you know, it's a, it's a hot market for SEOs out there. Like shout out to the Raleigh crowd because it's like that is I think per capita one of the stronger like SEO markets in the country.
- [17:02]
Nick Leroy
The one thing that's really interesting, and I can't say there's a direct correlation I'm just going to throw on this data point out is obviously we know anybody on the west coast and the east coast, those are the highest, you know, cost of living. And then when you go to more of the Midwest, you know, and then you kind of get Utah, Colorado, cost of living is a fraction of what it is on both of those sides. So I just wonder with remote, you know, being a big thing and people being willing to move, if people maybe made some more of those changes and then as more of these jobs are kind of called back, if you will, you know, maybe they don't want to move again or they see that benefit. Because we'll probably talk, I think tomorrow we're going to talk about salary. But the one thing that I'm really, really interested in talking more about is some companies will literally pay different amounts for the exact same role depending on, you know, what state you live in. So it's just there's so much more to it than just this state is.
- [18:03]
Tyson Stockton
Up, this state is down 100%. One other call out that I would have in this area is Boston. We saw the highest uptick for like postings. And so I think obviously like where you live is such a massive question that has family, personal, like, you know, you called out cost of living. Like there's all these components that go into it. But I think it's one piece of the puzzle. And it's like sometimes people are like, you know, looking for somewhere new and so, you know, recognizing the up and coming, trending or the type of job, you know, that you're looking for. You know, it's worth kind of leaning in those areas. But again, for me, like the location is more of for what it's worth. Also I need to have proper expectations. If I'm only going to look remote, I know right off the bat, hey, I'm only going to be looking at roughly 30 plus percent of the total jobs that are going to be out there. And so I think that is something that we do have to be real with as far as like what elements are we layering on that change the volume of actual possible jobs that we could be landing and going after.
- [19:20]
Nick Leroy
Absolutely.
- [19:20]
Tyson Stockton
Well.
- [19:21]
Nick Leroy
And it was interesting as you were sharing that I just typed into Google like Boston, big companies like just trying to understand who is local to that area and they have like that perfect combination of like super well established companies that are just going to exist forever. For example, like Fidelity or General Electric, like they're just not going to go anywhere and even Liberty Insurance. And then they have some of these really exciting companies like DraftKings and CarGurus and you know, Datadog. Like these are some of the companies that are just like up and coming. So I'm not surprise. It's like you kind of have your safe bets but you also have your up and coming big opportunities. So it's interesting to just kind of isolate one city and I'd be curious in our report if you were to look at them, the ones that are kind of following and not, not to say in house determines everything but if there's some correlation.
- [20:17]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah. And I think like you know, maybe Florida would be an outlier in that sense. But it's like yeah, Boston to me, interesting market. It's not going to be as expensive as New York. You have a lot of strong universities as far as, you know, playing into like the talent pool there. So it's like yeah, if I'm, if I'm also a hiring manager, Boston looks really interesting. I mean Raleigh, we mentioned Austin, Atlanta, like these are all cities that are, I think, you know, it's not going to be as pricey of a market as San Francisco or New York. Sure there's gonna be less jobs.
- [20:59]
Nick Leroy
Right.
- [20:59]
Tyson Stockton
But it's gonna have that kind of like, I don't want to say like value buy. So like as a, also as an employer you have to be real with yourself of like population of SEOs. Where are we looking? I mean that would be a study I'd be really interested in doing later on is comparing population of SEOs to job count as well and see where there's kind of a disproportionate opportunity between the two.
- [21:26]
Nick Leroy
Yeah. And not to go too far off track, but I talk to a lot of like business owners or companies primarily on the agency side that want to hire like in house. And then what they do is they get frustrated because the talent locally isn't what they want, but they don't want people to work remotely either. So the one thing the pandemic opened up, which was a really awesome opportunity and the power to the people, if you will, is SEOs were getting premium pay because someone like myself can be in Minnesota and work for a company in New York or in San Francisco and get their pay rates. But now, as everyone's kind of clawing back, it's like we no longer have, you know, all SEOs. We have what's the 25 mile radius around my office. And that is very likely who will potentially be interested 100.
- [22:22]
Tyson Stockton
And I think, you know, again, to that point of, you know, when we're looking at this, it's like there's a, a layer of how realistic we are. Kind of also did, you know, kind of dictates to like, the value that we can, you know, really get out of this. But with that, that's going to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. As mentioned, Nick and I are doing an episode every day this week on our SEO job study. We got two more episodes in the works, but we have skills. What are kind of the top trending skills or how do we need to be thinking about skills? And finally, we're going to be talking about what everyone wants to know. Salaries. But I would argue skills are the area that you can control as a candidate. Salaries, what comes from those skills?
- [23:12]
Nick Leroy
100%.
- [23:14]
Tyson Stockton
And with that, as always, if you'd like to get in touch with Nick, be sure to check out his LinkedIn profile in the show notes and go over to SEOjobs.com for all the latest and greatest SEO open SEO jobs on the market.
- [23:31]
Ben Shapiro
Okay. Thanks to Tyson Stockton, our guest host. If you'd like to get in touch with Tyson, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes. You can contact him on Twitter where his handle is TysonStockton. Or if your team is interested in SEO consulting or organizational education, you can always head to their company's website, which is previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O. And a special thanks to Ahrefs for sponsoring this podcast. Monitoring your website used to require multiple expensive tools, but that's not the case anymore. Thanks to Ahrefs because they just launched their Ahrefs Webmaster Tools product which monitors your SEO health, helps you keep track of your backlinks and gives you the insight into what keywords are performing for free. So check out Ahrefs webmaster tools@ahrefs.com AWT that's Ahrefs a H R E F S Just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about if you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com, where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is benjayshapp. B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember the answers are always in the data.