Madagascan herbal xylophones - a lesson

Hire me and you too could rank number 1 for completely irrelevant searches.

So what do you actually do?

I have been in my job as a Multi Lingual Search Marketing Ninja for over half a year now and I still haven't satisfactorily answered this question. To anyone. It's not a very easy job to describe. However, at parties, I will still say "translator... kind of." This has the benefit of being succinct, it conveys a vague sense of international mystery, and is partly truthful. I sense certain Quality Assurance Executives reading this may well employ similar tactics.

Hurah for meaningless, jargon-filled job titles.

Anyway, I'll give it a go, if only to entertain Jumble, who is unemployed, and who will doubtless find the concept of "job" fascinating.

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When I am not translating (extremely) minority interest websites into German, I am gainfully employed as a general sort of search marketing consultant type person. "Search" there means all things related to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the other search engines on ye olde interwebbe. It is A Big Thing these days, don't you know. Even if it does strike me as a fundamentally hubristic industry with no footing in reality. But I'll get to that later.

So what do I consult on? Basically, helping companies get more money out of their website.

Sadly, this is not as simple as adding a flashing button to your site bearing the words BOOSTEZ VOTRE TRAFFIC. I help people change the design and wording on their pages to make it more user friendly, and also more attractive to Google. Don't ask... but Google likes things a certain way. Most of the guidelines are pretty sensible and make things better for the user anyhow.

Getting links back from other sites is also important. I used to think a link was just a link... a way of getting from one page to another. But no! A major way that Google decides whether a site is Good or Bad is the number and type of pages linking to it. If a lot of pages link to your site, they are effectively telling Google, "this is an important page." It even matters what the actual text you click on is, because that tells Google "this is an important page on this subject". Try telling that to the owners of the site who rank 1st on Google for "click here"...

I can't be arsed to go any deeper into this but check this excellent, although jargon-heavy, article if you want a long list of ways to get your site ranking higher.

Once your site is optimised, Google will (eventually - it takes a few months) start to reward you by showing your site higher in the results on relevant searches. In the meantime you can use Pay Per Click advertising to get instant results. You can make an advert, conforming to a certain format: Headline, line, line, Site Address. You'll see examples of these on the right of the page when searching in Google. Basically you then decide when you want the ad to show - depending on what a person searches for. This is done by creating a list of keywords that trigger your advert. And every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay money to Google.

My job is, effectively, with both normal optimisation and PPC, to intercept the guy typing in "buy Madagascan herbal xylophone" and present him with MY client's Madagascan herbal xylophone website and not someone else's.

It's also my job, once I've got him there, to make sure the page he lands on is designed in such a way that it is nice and easy and comfortable for him to then go ahead and buy a Madagascan herbal xylophone. Or two.

Does that clear things up?

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All in all, it's been nice to learn some completely new skills while being paid for it. I knew absolutely nothing about profit-driven web design and general search marketing before I started with my company, and I've learnt a lot of transferable skills along with brushing up my maths (PPC involves a lot of stats and spreadsheet work... the joy).

I just get a bit frustrated at the idea that, if nuclear winter occured tomorrow and I survived, these particular skills wouldn't be up to much.

Not sure why that is my measure of a worthwhile and fulfilling job.