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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
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 Previsible IO, and joining me today is Nick Leroy, founder of SEOjobs.com and today we're landing the plane on the SEO Jobs Week. We've talked about every part of this study and we've kind of been teasing around it, but I feel like this is probably going to be the most anticipated episode where we dive into salary. So, Nick, welcome back. How are you doing? Kind of tale in the week. Where are you at?
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Nick Leroy
You know, I'm looking forward to the weekend. I'm not going to lie. So I'm glad that we get to end this, you know, series with a really great topic. I don't think salary is talked nearly enough and I'd love to be able to rip that band aid off and make it less taboo.
- [01:31]
Tyson Stockton
100%. 100%. And I'm. I'm with you too, on the weekend, right around the corner. We're almost there. But I think, like, this is an important one too, for, you know, everyone out there. Because it is, to your point, it's not something that's discussed well enough. Like, there is a lot to this. Like, clearly, like, this is our livelihood. This is what we do for, for a living. So it's like it's one of the key pieces, like, for it. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully, kind of with that, we'll be able to shed a little more light on salaries as a whole. The first piece that I think needs to be, like, called out is in my mind, like, there's a couple, like, significant factors. And I hear, like, too often you see through like, glass doors or something else, it'll be like an SEO manager makes X amount. And it's like, to me, that does a huge disservice to the individuals looking at it and wanting some sort of guidance on this because then it's like it's an inflated number that then more people are chasing after. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't strive, you know, like push the envelope, like strive by all means. But I feel like people also need to have realistic expectations. And if everyone out there is expecting a six figure salary in it, frankly, that's not the case. Right. And I think that's something that's like really important to get across to the ASOs out there. And like, one of the stats across this entire study that meant the most to me or that really jumped out, less than 15% of all the jobs that we came across had a six figure salary. And I think that is the harsh reality that still a massive portion of the jobs are below a six figure salary. And on some level we all should just acknowledge the state of the job market and kind of like, you know, be realistic with that last piece.
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Nick Leroy
Yeah, you know, it was really interesting, Tyson, because just maybe a year or two ago we were in the inverse. I've never seen so many individuals that had been in the industry for maybe three or four years landing six figure jobs. It was just like left and right. The demand was shooting through the roof. And I think this is the biggest fear that I have for our industry is just because things are going to be a lot harder to prove, you know, the data is going to be murkier than it's ever been before. People aren't going to be willing to invest nearly as much and that's going to impact everybody from, you know, consultants all the way down to individual employees and salary.
- [04:14]
Tyson Stockton
And it's true, there is so much nuance within the industry and we've started the week by talking about, hey, how we approach this study was to look into these segments in these facets because looking at it from the macro level can be misleading. And it's whether or not the side of SEO that you're in. Also I think major ones are in house versus agency as well as location, on site, off site. But I guess the one first that I'd want to start with is clustering it into job titles. And again, there were thousands of variations of job titles. Like some employers are very creative on it, but consolidating this down to the most common ones. And so I'm going to kind of list out what they are and then we'll talk about kind of where they sit, like median salary range. And again, we're using median not, you know, mean. So it's like there is some nuance, like to the differences there. But we have vp, SEO Director of SEO, Technical SEO, Content, SEO, SEO Manager and SEO Analyst. Now, the first ones I want to Touch on which are like, I think really like no surprise here. Was SEO analyst, SEO manager, 75k on the mark for the median on the analyst, 80k, you know, I mean slightly above 80k but like right around 80k for the SEO manager. And I think like those are two ones that actually I think were right where I was expecting them. But I would put a caveat that your location is going to have a swing on that too because you're going to have some of the job postings in San Francisco, New York that are going to throw up that median. That it's like, hey, if you're only looking remote, you know, you're going to want to reel that back a little bit.
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Nick Leroy
Absolutely. Well, and I think that just goes back to that conversation. You know, for some people remote has a certain monetary value and I think we are seeing through this report that the ones that are spending and paying out for these roles tend to be in house and in person.
- [06:28]
Tyson Stockton
That's such a good call out too. And like the in house person agencies, an important piece to this I think too though. And we started in the week saying, you know, hey, we saw more of a softening in content technicals, smaller volume of jobs by a significant margin, you know, but we saw the uptick if we look at the median salary for content SEO, it was under 70k, so below the SEO analyst and it was 67. 5. And so that's like what we saw when we grouped all the content SEO jobs, if we clustered all the technical ones, 97. 5. And so there's over or not over exactly a 30k increase of median salary for technical SEO jobs versus content. And I think that really jumped out at me being that we're seeing an uptick in number of jobs and that much of a separation in salary. Like if I'm coming up on the job market and I have some technical chops, that's an area that I am highly interested in. I think does show a fair amount of promise.
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Nick Leroy
Yeah, absolutely. And it just goes back to all the things that we've been talking about all week. We know AI is disrupting the market even more than just SEO, but it's solving content first and foremost and we can have a whole nother debate about the value and should it be writing someone else, blah blah, blah, where it's just now getting better at is addressing some of these technical issues. So I think the need for the human element for technical is still as high as it ever has been. And I think especially from a leadership perspective, they're Kind of questioning like why do I have to pay people to build a content strategy? Why do I have to pay people to write? You know, it's like I'll can't just chat GPT do it. And I think that's reflective of these prices or these salaries.
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Tyson Stockton
Sorry. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you on that. I think I feel like the next piece of the puzzle in talking about salaries or it's like the factor that people should be considering of having a significant impact is going to be this in house versus agency and even freelance is also I think I would treat that in its own category. Like I wouldn't put that necessarily in agency but I think like first in house versus agency there's clearly a correlation to having higher salaries. On the in house side. Like I don't think that surprises anyone but it's just like 100% like that is a significant portion of this.
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Nick Leroy
Tyson, have you got any thoughts on why agencies are paying a little bit less than in house roles?
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Tyson Stockton
I do and I mean we see elements that back this in the study but I think it's like yeah, it's like we see this in the study and I think there is a little bit of extrapolation on my part. But I think because of the size of business you almost see the same correlation to salary and median salary in looking at the size of the company as well as in house versus agency. So typically an in house company will not open an SEO role until they've reached a certain size. Like it's, I mean we've seen, it's been debated in like these SEO shows what time it's like do you need an SEO for a startup? It's like probably not. That's insert growth marketing title like kind of area. Once you get to the larger business now you have AN in house SEO, you have a team of SEOs. And so I think there's one hand. Yep, the agencies we need to make a margin. It's like why the business exists. But I think more so it's the in house side. There's going to be this skew to a bigger business. And if you're looking at median salary there is a correlation that just steadily increases of the size of the business.
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Nick Leroy
Right.
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Tyson Stockton
You go from 0 to 250 people in the organization. The average salary is 72,000, 72,500, 250 to 1,000 people. 90,000 1,000 to 5,098, 5,000 to 10,000. 108, 10,000 to 100,000 people. 115 and over 100,000 employees, salary over 125,000. And it's like there's no outliers. I mean you'll have individual outlier postings, but it's like, it's not like one salary band all of a sudden like bucked the trend there. It was very consistent and the larger the business, the more that they're paying. And so I think that's something that's really, I don't know, I'd recommend that SEOs think about again to giving yourself realistic expectations. And it's like, do you want to be remote? Do you want to be in house? Like, do you want to be at the agency? And also it's like what size of business do you want to work with? Like some people do really well with the structured corporate environment. There's a lot of SEOs out there that we don't like that stuffy environment and it's not like what we're kind of chasing after. And so I think like either way is fine. But take it into account when you're setting your expectations on salary as well. Yeah, I think that's fantastic in the same regard too. If you're looking at the VP and director roles, again, it's going to be in the larger companies and I think the like next piece in salary. That to me is like interesting then is it's like let's look at the remote versus on site piece. And when we look at that though, I feel like this again where you have these like, you know, chicken or the egg scenario. Is it because the role is in house or has a hybrid component or has an office component that the salary is higher or is it the fact that it's with a larger organization? And there also is a correlation between the size of the company and whether or not it's on site versus remote. So what you find is bigger the business, more likely they are to have an office, more likely they are to have that as a requirement to their job posting and more likely it is to have a high salary. So I think again, you got to be realistic. But it's like these are things that I think you need to kind of accept that if you want that top 10% of the salary band, it's more likely you're going to be looking at a larger organization on site requirement. Obviously there's years of experience, all these other things, but I think those are the elements that I would feel like people don't maybe accept enough.
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Nick Leroy
Yeah, Tyson. Obviously we're a little bit jaded as agency Owner and freelance consultant. But what role would you recommend for people at different parts in their, in their job? Like, do you agree with the idea of like, Like, I grew up agency side and then I went freelance. I kind of wish I had done agency, gone in house, then went out on my own. But I'm curious, where do you think the right position fits for each individual, you know, within their career?
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Tyson Stockton
That's such a good question. And it's really difficult to apply a blanket statement on it. I was kind of the opposite of you. I started in house and I was in house with the same organization for seven years and they had different roles. But my start to SEO was seven years in the same company. And so then going from that to agency, it's like you learn different things from each aspect. Agency, you're going to learn quicker. Like, I think that's the biggest advantage point. I think one, you're going to have more entry level opportunities. You're going to learn quicker because you're going to have exposure to a bunch of different websites and strategies and problems. So it's like you're facing more. You're getting more SEO reps for the same period of time. You're also getting paid back to salary a little bit less in house. Yeah, it's not like, maybe you're not in that same type of like you're in a pressure cooker, but it's a slightly different one. But it's like in house, you really learn what it takes to get something from start to really finish. Not just identifying the problems, but like, how do I win people over, how do I navigate through this? How do I build, like you said, buy in on it. And, and it's like there's also a lot of just, I think, nuances that you learn from being at an organization for a longer tenure as well. So the ideal answer for me would be both, like, you're going to learn something from in house, you're going to learn something from agency.
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Nick Leroy
Right.
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Tyson Stockton
If I was forced to pick a starting point for someone coming into SEO, I think I would probably say agency because I think they're going to have more opportunities. It's really difficult to land that first in house role unless you're coming in as like, you know, intern entry level. You pivoted from another role in the organization, but it's like coming in cold. Like, your odds are probably the highest on agency. How about you? Like, what would you pick?
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Nick Leroy
Yeah. And again, I'm skewed because while I've worked with a lot of Enterprise brands. I've never formally had like an in house role and I think each one brings different value. I love everything that you said about agency side. I think it gives you the most opportunity or at bats, if you will, with different technology, different industries and you just have to work with a ton of people. So you just get used to this is how a developer works for this client, this is how a content writer and those are really good skills, especially to nail those hard skills that we've already talked about. I view in house as kind of like the 200 level because now you know all the skills and what it takes to, you know, rank if you will. But now you have to advocate for the channel, you have to get buy in and approval and that is a whole nother set of skills and I think that they're ones that you need to build on top of your hard skills. So then after you get to that 200 level, when you're having conversations or a seat at the table with decision makers, again, that's another level that you've got to kind of pass. So I think doing that and then you know, at that point, you know, pick and choose what you like most. You know, for me that's like I chose neither of the both which, and.
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Tyson Stockton
I think like that's, that's where you get the option to make that choice too. Because it's like at that stage of your career it's like, I'm sure it's like you could have picked and choose like it was a choose your own adventure at that point where you're, you're choosing what fits you best. But you've already proven yourself, you've already kind of established yourself and I think it's like, it's a great piece on like where you go. But then also it's like sometimes you hear of the stories of like the barriers going from agency to in house and sometimes like making that transition earlier. So it's like again, generalizations. But I would say start agency. Once you get like a little bit under your belt, I would pivot into the in house side to establish yourself early because it's like if you make it to the director level at an agency and then you try to pivot into in house, you're probably going to have to go back to an SEO manager or a lower level role. And so if you do that lateral move, I would do that move earlier and then you can always go back agency. It's like once you have that now you're, you know, you're going to have your options. But I want to, I want to revisit salary just a little bit because it's like, I think the next piece with this like, you know, we've already had on like hey, remotes, lower salary than agency. There are a few like interesting outliers where it's like there's certain salary bands that there's more remote jobs versus others. And it's not just the low ones. Like for whatever reason, 75k like that salary was, there were more remote jobs at that salary than on site ones. But as far as states go, I guess first, and I mean this is a piece of. I don't think we really had that much in the actual study that went out. So I'm going to kind of like, and it's not staged for the listeners, I'm going to actually quiz Nick on a few of these. And this is a surprising one too. So I'll give a, give a precursor. What state had the highest median average salary?
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Nick Leroy
It's gotta be California or New York.
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Tyson Stockton
100% what I would have thought not. Correct. So New York median salary was 100 on the mark, CA 102. But the one that had the highest was Washington. And I think like you have a few of these like hotspots. And so you see obviously when we get to cities like that's where you see like location of these larger businesses. Well, in Washington you have Amazon, you have Microsoft, you have some large organizations up there. And so technically for the year, however, like if we really wanted to dial it in, there was a little bit of an outlier with Washington in Q1 where the median average salary was like 145 and then it dropped down to like 185, 118. So it's like it was a little inflated by that one quarter. But I think like otherwise no surprises. So if we go in like cascading order, this is going to be states with the highest median salary going down to lowest. So we have Washington at 107. Then we have California 102, New York at 100. Then you have Texas and Illinois at 90. And then you have Colorado close behind at 88, roughly rounding up that. So like from that, no real surprises for me. Like, I guess it is weird you don't see Florida in the mix. Like there's been a lot of talk, a lot of companies kind of moving to Florida. Florida not a great state SEO job market wise. Average median income was 65. So yeah, lower cost of living. So it kind of makes sense. But you do have some bigger market cities like Miami, you know, so it's like you don't really follow like a population trend. But I think if you're thinking more in cities, that's where the state order makes more sense to me.
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Nick Leroy
So we all need to go to Washington is what you're saying.
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Tyson Stockton
Well, not just yet. So let's, let's, let's go into cities. Which city do you think has the highest median? And this is by a long shot.
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Nick Leroy
So yeah, I would say New York City is what I would say. Or L A is what I would guess just because of, you know, the cost of living.
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Tyson Stockton
I mean, you're, you're on the money with the reasoning there. But San Francisco, I mean, you're like Manhattan San Francisco, you're neck and neck for like cost of living, but you have like 2 of the quarters. So quarters 1 and quarter 2, you had a median average salary income for San Francisco being over 175. So head and shoulders, it does level back to like 157 in Q3 to 147 in Q4. But almost consistently across the board, it had the highest salaries. There was one quarter that there was an outlier, which was a really kind of a tough one to read. But Boston, so Boston surprisingly, like strong market. And if you look at like SEO jobs per capita, it's like definitely in the mix that I think is like, quite interesting. But in Q4 you had a job post that was super high. And so it skewed the median salary to 200 over 200k. And so you go from like 125, 136, 92 to over 200. And so it's like, still I would put them in like the stronger, like markets and cities, you know, but you can be misled a little bit in there as well. Other ones, like. And so I'm going to call out, like, I mean, let's just go through kind of, let's say, I don't know, top 10 or so. Yeah, San Francisco, as mentioned, a few of the others that kind of stood out. I mean, obviously New York City's in there, but average, it had the most, the highest volume of jobs. So we saw the most SEO jobs in New York City by a long shot. So if you're playing the numbers and you want to know where do you have the best chances to land a job in SEO? It's in New York by like literally 3x the next city.
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Nick Leroy
Just have fun being able to buy a house or drive or park.
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Tyson Stockton
True. Next One though, and this is for volume of jobs also is going to be Chicago and your average or median income was 93k. So a little better cost of living. I would say like the cost of living change from New York to Chicago is greater than what we see in median income. So the SEOs in Chicago, you got some good big size businesses there, healthy amount of jobs. Like that job market I think is like quite interesting or strong. Another one that I feel like is on the rise and you have a strong surrounding community too is Atlanta. You know, that was a high volume of jobs in Atlanta and that lower average but also significantly lower cost of living there. So 80k was your median, you know, but it's the third largest market from volume of jobs. And then you have San Francisco. So like San Francisco and Atlanta neck and neck for the volume of jobs, but 80 to 175. So it's like you have these trade offs that you're kind of going towards and then two other kind of like I think sneaky ones. Austin was up there 103 for median and also high volume of jobs. Boston right there with Austin on number of jobs. So I think if you're looking at per capita, Austin's looking quite strong. And then you have Los Angeles, which surprisingly Los Angeles is very similar to Atlanta. Like these salaries, which I would have expected LA to be higher salaries were about the same between Atlanta and la. And the number of jobs actually weren't that far off either. So it's like you have almost equal opportunities, equal number of opportunities and pay in Atlanta with a much lower cost of living than la. And granted you have the ocean and you're in la, so maybe that's worth something. But it's an interesting, I think job market.
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Nick Leroy
It just goes back to all those trade offs and things. You have to consider as somebody that has admitted to chasing the money at times, you forget all these other factors. So if you go just for the raw salary, you may gain 20 grand in your salary but actually lose 10 if it's 30% more expensive where you live.
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Tyson Stockton
Absolutely. And I think the last city that I want to land on is because to me it's not very insightful to be like, yeah, San Francisco, New York have a lot of jobs and they pay high. I know it. It also comes with those things in those areas. Another one that's like the outlier is Charlotte, North Carolina as even a state. I mean you have a strong SEO community in Raleigh. You and I, Nick, we've talked off air about like some of the companies in that area. But like Charlotte is in the top 10 for a number of SEO jobs and it has, I mean we're talking 86k so it's not on the upper end, but it's also significantly cheaper cost of living there. So it's like, I think it's. To me, it's really interesting seeing these smaller markets that have a strong SEO job market and then also shout out to Patrick Stokes too because it's like you look at the SEO community in that area and it was also one of the stronger SEO communities, which I think is quite cool. Well, Nick, it's been a pleasure, I mean one to having you as a part of the study and partnering with SEOjobs.com any other kind of final words from your side on whether it's to the job seekers or hiring managers out.
- [28:29]
Nick Leroy
There, I think the best thing that I can say is just acknowledge that the industry is in a weird state of flux. People that are looking for jobs, it seems it's very demoralizing right now. I think it's easy to assume that either you're not good at SEO or SEO is dying, when in reality there are a lot of people that are in this situation. So I just want to iterate that there's always opportunities for us to get better at our craft, but this is a reflection of where industry is and not necessarily you. So I understand you need a job. You may even want a different job. Keep pushing forward, I'm hoping. And Tyson and I talked offline a bit. You know, I think 2026 is a whole nother year obviously, but I think we're going to see a big direction change. But all the details in between, I don't know yet. What do you think?
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Tyson Stockton
100%. I'm, I'm right there with you. I share the optimism. I feel like we're well positioned to take advantage of this shifting direction and kind of elements of the industry right now. I think for me the two biggest pieces that I would lean into is a technical, whether it's actual like technical skill sets like you know, programming, SQL, whatever, or familiarity in tools, in LLMs in applications, AI, like lean into that hard skill set area because that's going to continue to advance and grow. The other one is the exact opposite and it leans into more of what is difficult for AI or LLMs and it's the human element. So learn the technical hard skills, lean into the human element and build your network. Lean into the SEO community. Join the SEO community with Noah. But really it's like that human area and that ability to connect with others and be doing it, that's where the opportunities are going to continue to exist, is the individuals that are able to use and take advantage of the technology and they lean into the human elements. And a lot of times you need a lending hand to kind of get that interview, get that foot in the door. So lean into it. Be active, reach out and lean into the community of SEO.
- [31:05]
Nick Leroy
Yeah, I love that last part that you say. The one thing we didn't talk about enough here is all these skill sets are important, you know, effective communication, those are all great. But your network is worth infinitely more. Because you know what, if you have a solid network, then as much as I hate to admit, you don't even need an SEO jobs.com because you're talking to people and you kind of know firsthand what jobs are available. So if you have some downtime or you just are looking to get some advice on where to invest, like your network is one of them.
- [31:39]
Tyson Stockton
A hundred percent, 100%. Well, it's been a pleasure. Be sure to check out the SEO Jobs report. Report. I mean, you can find it all over. You can find it on SEO jobs.com, you can find it on pre visible IO. It's on search engine land. So, I mean, really find it. Read the report. There's no gating to it. It's an open resource to the community. Hope you enjoy it, hope you get some value out of it. And we look forward to kind of continuing this type of support to those out there in the SEO job world. And with that, that's going to wrap up this episode or really this week of the Voice of Search Pod podcasts. We hit everything SEO jobs related. And if you'd like to get in touch with Nick, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in their show notes. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn. And also make sure you go on over and check out seojobs.com for the latest in the open and available SEO jobs.
- [32:41]
Podcast Announcer
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. 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. 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 benjschapp 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 gonna 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.