Search Engine Experts.com

Atlanta-based PPC / SEM / SEO Ecommerce Job

2012-02-07T02:25:23-05:00

SUWANEE, GA - EcommerceRecruiter.com is the leading executive search firm serving the Shop.org, Ad:Tech, and IR-500 communities. To subscribe to our searches, click here. Alternatively, follow EcommerceJobs on Twitter. To add your resume to our confidential database, click here. To like us on FB, please click here.

We are working with Simple Floors in their search for a Director of Ecommerce, in Suwanee, GA.

HARRY'S COMMENTS: This search will allow a world-class search marketer to get fantastic experience as an ecommerce marketing general manager. Three years from now, you’ll have hands on experience in off-line retail marketing, usability, analytics, online merchandising, logistics, purchasing, conversion rate optimization, leadership, and organizational development. For search marketing specialists, GM opportunities like this one can be scarce as hen's teeth.

The client’s online retail business is very well-established.

The company has been in existence for 7 years, and management has a great understanding of sourcing, production, logistics, inventory management, and financing. It operates 15 stores around the US, and recently launched a franchising program.

Annually, SimpleFloors.com gets 1.2 million unique visitors, 90% of which come from search engines. Their average order value is $2500 on a site-wide conversion rate of 11%. The firm is a well established seller in marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, MSN, Yahoo, Shopzilla, Square Trade and Overstock.com. These folks know what they're doing, so it's not like you'll need to beg for resources to grow the business.

But there is a lot of work to do ...

The client has sincere interest in broadening their email and affiliate marketing programs, plus management is would like to dramatically improve the firm’s ROAS in Adwords. Both SEO and analytics improvements are key initiatives, as well. In fact, the company’s franchising success is critically linked to SimpleFloors’ ability to drive high quality traffic to its web properties through paid search, social media, SEO, and comparison shopping engines. The buck will stop with you on these initiatives.

There’s a ton of potential in SimpleFloors' markets, both online and off.

SimpleFloors is classified as a building material dealer. The building material dealers industry in the US includes about 45,000 companies with combined annual sales of about $230 billion. Major companies include Home Depot and Lowe's. The industry is concentrated: the top 50 companies account for more than 50 percent of industry revenue.

The company’s customer base includes interior designers, builders, contractors, and homeowners. Demand for wood flooring is closely tied to residential real estate construction, both new and remodeling. Competition comes from other manufacturers and competing flooring products like carpeting, linoleum, tiles, etc.

The US interior design industry includes about 10,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $8 billion. The industry is highly fragmented: the 50 largest firms account for about 10 percent of revenue. Huge opportunity!

SimpleFloors’ ability to contract its manufacturing process and distribute direct to its clients allows the company to bring the latest designs to market with incredible speed: For instance, a new style introduction can go from the design room drawing board to the factory and onto installation in just under two months (versus the industry stand two years). This speed makes SimpleFloors very popular with interior designers, who seek the latest flooring trends for their clients.

As usual, I'm loaded with proprietary research and information on this search. If you'd like to apply for the role -- please see the link that the bottom of this posting.

Please Tweet this job, and you'll be automatically entered into our monthly drawing. Just do it and see what happens: 2010 prizes included $100 Amazon gift certs, Dean & Deluca steaks, and Keurig coffee machines ...

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Own the overall acquisition strategy for SimpleFloors
Grow / optimize our keyword portfolio through testing with ad copy, landing pages, bidding strategies, negative keywording, etc.
Tracking, reporting, and analyzing our PPC initiatives and campaigns, including understanding attribution analysis and impact of lifetime value.
Create business requirements for engineering as well as develop your own solutions to improve our search engine marketing process.
Stay current with new advances in search engine marketing and the competitive landscape.
PPC & online marketing are part of your DNA
Grow and manage our presence on non-affiliate comparison shopping engines such as Pricegrabber and Google Product Search.
Build brand awareness by overseeing content strategy, contact strategy, and promotional calendar.
Drive improvements in our natural search channel by developing content strategies and facilitating technical solutions that allow for greater visibility in search engines
Provide weekly reporting and analysis to the management team and board of acquisition marketing channels and additional initiatives.
Contribute and form overarching strategy for social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Blog) and provide basic customer service when necessary
Research and implement new acquisition marketing tactics and vendor partnerships
Effectively manage strategic vendors and partners related to the acquisition of new customers
Work with the Marketing and Creative group to improve site performance visibility.
Manage and report on multi-variate (MVT) and A/B testing program for the web site.
Assume full P/L responsibility and an ability to plan revenue, marketing and sales promotion consistent with the global strategies.
Manage the development of the Web organization to meet revenue objectives and recruitment of the team
Improvements to our internet retail site, including feature-functionality, user interface, SEO, landing page optimization, effective online merchandising of products and promotions, and overall user experience.
Manage email marketing (list development and management, campaign development and implementation, etc.)
Conduct extensive A/B testing of email strategy, including delivery timing, creative layout, tailored offers, and subject line testing to develop best practices for ongoing email campaigns
Drive overall promotional messaging and creative onsite and through email.

REQUIREMENTS:

Self-learner and a passion for search engine marketing.
Experience managing PPC campaigns across Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Expert knowledge of performance marketing, conversion, and online customer acquisition strategies.
Proficient in Microsoft Excel.
You should love spreadsheets and lots of data.
Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, work within a marketing team, and work with other departments in a matrix environment.
Excellent verbal and written skills.
Detail oriented.
Ability to re-prioritize projects as needed.
Knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO)
Expert with web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Coremetrics, etc.

Applications for this position are being coordinated by Harry Joiner. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates, please be sure to email Harry Joiner for a packet of market research and company / competitive intel that will differentiate you in your candidacy. Due to the intensely competitive nature of this search, thorough preparation for these interviews with this proprietary material is strongly recommended.

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Bay Area SEO / SEM / PPC Ecommerce Job

2012-02-05T20:24:23-05:00

EMERYVILLE, CA - EcommerceRecruiter.com is the leading executive search firm serving the Shop.org, Ad:Tech, and IR-500 communities. To subscribe to our searches, click here. Alternatively, follow EcommerceJobs on Twitter. To add your resume to our confidential database, click here. To like us on FB, please click here.

We are working with Alibris Retail in their search for an Acquisition Marketing Manager, in Emeryville, CA. Alibris Retail is the premier online marketplace for independent sellers of books, music and movies. Alibris offers more than 140 million new and used books, movie and music items from more than 20,000 independent sellers in over 50 countries and Google eBooks to consumers through their web sites (Alibris.com, Alibris.co.uk) and Library Services group.

HARRY’S COMMENTS: I have been an ecommerce recruiter for seven years, and one of the coolest things about my job is that there are candidates whom I have placed more than once. Such is the case with this role’s hiring manager, Adam Silverman, who is a rock star anyway you slice it.

I placed Adam as a VP of Ecommerce with Monsoon Commerce last October, and it’s Adam’s charge to develop and manage the growth of Monsoon’s retail arm, Alibris, currently No. 123 in Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide. Prior to Alibris, Adam was Director of Marketing at Musician’s Friend (IR-44), and from 2006 to 2009, he was Director of Ecommerce for apparel retail chain Wet Seal (IR-316).

Smart. Funny. Authentic. Driven (in a good way). Highly competent. Endlessly resourceful. I have never seen Adam in an easy role, and somehow he always finds a way to win. Seriously, I would want my own kid to work for him.

In fact, I'm going to post that as a LinkedIn recommendation for him.

Now about the role: We need a real, live marketer who is an inch wide and a mile deep in customer acquisition experience. This person needs to eat, sleep, and dream multichannel customer acquisition: Affiliate marketing, Display advertising and retargeting, CSE’s, PPC, Mobile, and possibly, when appropriate, direct mail. You will need to know how to acquire customers with each of these channels individually, but much more importantly – you will need to combine these channels so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Your ads will need to do it all:

Stop prospects in a way that allows them to self-select.
Hold prospects.
Create desire by hinting at the value of the Alibris experience.
Give the prospect a reason to act now.

Imagine a cross between the late, great PPC savant Alan Rimm-Kaufman and legendary adman John Caples. You don’t have to be that now – but you should aspire to be that.

We need someone who sees Alibris’ categories through the customer’s eyes. That means developing an affinity with each type of Alibris customer so that you can anticipate their needs and behaviors.

Both Caples and Rimm-Kaufman would question everything: What went wrong and why? Was it the place? The time of day? The kind of customer we attracted? Was it the offer? And so on. Next, what went right and why? For each thing that went right, could we do it again, only bigger, or cheaper, or both? The questions are endless.

To answer these questions, you’d need to be very creative in not only what clues you’ll be looking for, but where those clues might be found. Alibris’ analytics package is certainly one place. But we need someone who’s not afraid to profile customers based on their RFM history, demographics, psychographics, geography, etc.

Alibris has already done much of this work with one of America’s foremost database marketing consultants – but you’ll need to build on that exemplary work, realizing that all markets are dynamic. Things change, which is why we expect you to have a teachable point of view regarding multichannel attribution models.

As I’ve said many times before, I don't take every search that comes my way. Not by a long shot. There has to be a compelling reason that an A-player would want to apply for this role.

And here ‘tis: This role is about giving a bright up-and-comer who has a ton of depth the kind of breadth that will come in handy for the rest of his or her career. It's about giving an exceptional candidate an opportunity to have a real impact on a $150 million etailer’s business, while working for a great guy in a high visibility role in one of America’s coolest cities: San Francisco.

And truly, I am not looking for someone who can just “press the buttons” with AdWords. Heck no. This role is about so much more than that. I need a marketer. I need someone who is hypothesis driven in their approach to customer acquisition and is not afraid to make smart bets on how to grow the business.

As always, I’m loaded with proprietary info on this search. Apply below and I’d be happy to give you all I’ve got.

Position Overview:

The Acquisition Marketing Manager’s primary responsibilities will owning the strategic roadmap, including optimizing and growing the acquisition marketing revenue for the Alibris Retail division in accordance with business goals. As the acquisition guru, you will design tests, track program performance, implement campaigns, and come up with strategies and recommendations on how Alibris can optimize the breadth and depth of their acquisition programs across paid search, natural search, direct response, display, non-affiliate shopping comparison engines, and other emerging acquisition channels. You will also own the strategy and presence on the social media channels, and look for general growth opportunities in the acquisition marketing field.

Responsibilities include:

Own the overall acquisition strategy for Alibris Retail (B2C), and provide acquisition support for Monsoon Selling Solutions division (B2B)
Grow the keyword portfolio by figuring out how to scale and manage a program with potentially millions of keywords and finding new search venues to advertise in.
Optimize the keywords portfolio through testing with ad copy, landing pages, bidding strategies, negative keywording, etc.
Tracking, reporting, and analyzing PPC initiatives and campaigns, including understanding attribution analysis and impact of lifetime value .
Create business requirements for engineering as well as develop your own solutions to improve the search engine marketing process.
Stay current with new advances in search engine marketing and the competitive landscape. PPC & online marketing are part of your DNA
Grow and manage Alibris' presence on non-affiliate comparison shopping engines such as Pricegrabber and Google Product Search.
Drive improvements in the natural search channel by developing content strategies and facilitating technical solutions that allow for greater visibility in search engnies
Provide reporting and analysis on a weekly basis for acquisition marketing channels and additional initiatives
Contribute and form overarching strategy for social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Blog) and provide basic customer service when necessary
Research and implement new acquisition marketing tactics and vendor partnerships
Effectively manage strategic vendors and partners related to the acquisition of new customers

Position Requirements:

Self-learner and a passion for search engine marketing.
Experience managing PPC campaigns across Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Analytical Experience
Expert knowledge of performance marketing, conversion, and online customer acquisition strategies.
Proficient in Microsoft Excel. You should love spreadsheets and lots of data.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in a quantitative, test-driven field (economics, market research, science, etc.)
Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, work within a marketing team, and work with other departments in a matrix environment.
Excellent verbal and written skills. Detail oriented. Supportive of co-workers.
Ability to re-prioritize projects as needed.
Knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO)
Expert with web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Coremetrics, etc.

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Greg Tirico: "Impact of Google Suggest on SEO"

2008-09-03T11:17:00-04:00

ATLANTA - The most recent graduate from the Google School of Hard Knocks (aka Google Labs) is the Google Suggest tool.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

Google Suggest is a feature that analyzes what you're typing into the search box and offers relevant suggested search terms in real time. You can choose one of the suggested queries by moving up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

Interesting. So let's examine the impact of Google Suggest on our SEO practices using a real world example. A search for the term "real estate" (without the quotes) used to look like this:

With the addition of Google Suggest as a standard offering on the home page, the same search for "real estate" now looks like this:

While it is too early to tell (unless you collect mounds of data from Google traffic) I find my personal practices shifting towards selecting a suggested term as opposed to finishing what I had intended on typing.

The most common way to target a search term may eventually be by following the suggestions that Google is now forcing on the screen. We will need more data to analyze the true impact but my qualitative analysis skills (my personal search habits) tell me that this will be an enormous factor in the Google SEO world moving forward.
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Greg Tirico is an e-Marketing Project Manager at Akzo Nobel Coatings in Atlanta. He can be reached at gregt12 [at] gmail.com

Career Advice for SEO's

2008-06-17T18:37:00-04:00

BOSTON, MA - Some quick advice for SEO's / SEM's looking to get ahead in the world: Make sure that any brand you mention on your resume is on the first page of Google's organic rankings at the time of your resume submission.

I just reviewed the resume of an SEO who's working with a major consumer brand. He has three bullets on his resume about all of the great things he's doing for the brand, but when I Googled the brand name (ie "Coke" or "Gucci"), he wasn't even on the first page. Not good.

SEO's, please bear in mind that I use Aaron Wall's SEO toolbar for Firefox, and I can tell how many back links your pages are getting (and from whom), how many times they get Del.icio.us'd, and so on. It's all right there. I also have a subscription to Keyword Discovery -- so I have an idea of how competitive your categories are, where you might be spending your PPC dollars, etc.

I'm not trying to impress you. Actually, my point is that I'm not any smarter than the average recruiter. All recruiters and potential employers can see how you are doing. Your results are on the web.

When Google ranks your client, it ranks YOU.

These days, recruiters can tell if an SEO candidate is any good. And given the dynamism of the web, it's okay to lose once in a while. We understand, especially if your category is dominated by black and gray hats (mortgages, vitamin supplements, etc).

But it's not okay to lose and put it on your resume that you are #1 or #2 for seven out of eight keyword phrases. I'm not as dum as you think I are. I know how to use Google. Everyone does.

Local Search is Brutal for Recruiters

2008-06-05T22:11:00-04:00

CHICAGO, IL - I'm not quite sure what the technical SEO lesson is here, but it has been a fairly expensive foray for yours truly. Two years ago I snapped up the domains "ExecutiveSearch____.com" -- where the "____" was the name of a top 50 metro US city. For example, I bought ...

Times fifty. Then I started blogging on as many of those sites as I could. Man. Talk about time consuming. It was exhausting. Setting up all of those blogs ... changing the c-names ... editing my content so that it would match the local market ...

It's not like I'm insane. It was a theoretically valid keyword-density play, where the URL would contain the keywords I needed to get recruiting business in those cities. Seemed like a good idea at the time -- and it made sense from a naming standpoint.

So imagine my surprise tonight when I checked on the Google results for "Executive Search Chicago." Not only am I not even on the first page of the results -- but even if I were, who would care?

Look at all that clutter! How is any prospective client who uses Google (and they all do!) supposed to pick one recruiter out of the geo-mapped pack at the top of the results page? Proximity? Forget it.

Memo to executive search firms: You need an instantly recognizable INDUSTRIAL or FUNCTIONAL differentiation. You cannot just say "we have the best relationships" and expect the phone to ring. It won't. Which leaves you with three choices:

networking,
cold calling, and
SEO.

I've done all three. SEO is by far the most effective -- and it's certainly the most scalable. In that sense, maybe the SEO lesson here is that it's not how well you optimize your site, but that you have a business concept worth marketing in the first place.
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SEO Jobs: "How Many Tools Are On Your Peg Board?"

2008-05-22T10:33:33-04:00

ATLANTA - On Saturday, I was listening to "Costas On The Radio" the weekly program of one of my all-time favorite sportscasters, Bob Costas, who has now ventured into non-sports broadcasting.

He was interviewing Darrell Hammond, long-time cast member of Saturday Night Live. Costas asked Hammond a thought-provoking question that -- as I thought about it -- had implications for leaders everywhere. Costas was discussing Jimmy Fallon, a fellow SNL cast mate of Hammond, having just been named by NBC to replace Conan O'Brien on The Late Show in 2009 when Conan takes over for Leno on the Tonight Show.

"You've worked with Jimmy Fallon for years," Costas said, "Why do you think he's the right choice to host that show?" Hammond didn't miss a beat. "Because he's a total performer," he said. "I'm not. I'm good at a couple things. I can do good sketch comedy with an ensemble team. And I can do impressions. That's it. But Jimmy Fallon -- he can do it all."

Hammond went on to say Fallon can do sketch, he can do impressions, he can do dialects -- young, middle age, and old -- and he can write comedy too. He simply does it all. He's multi-dimensional. For a comedian, that list is the full monty. When you realize the breadth of Fallon's comedic talents, it's no wonder he got the nod over others.

Simply put, he's a safe bet to nail the laughs and reel in the ratings. It reminded me of a corollary in baseball -- the 5-tool player -- a rare bird indeed. He's the guy who can run, throw, field, hit for average, and hit for power. In the major leagues, he's on the Most Wanted list. Highest paid too. There aren't many.

Most players are lucky to have two or three in their bag of tricks. But to excel at all five is to be the sought-after needle in the haystack. Now ... shift to leaders. And to you.

How many leadership tools are on your peg board? What Jimmy Fallon is to comedy ... and what a 5-tool player is to baseball ... YOU must be to leadership. Multi-dimensional. Multi-skilled. Multi-talented.

Lessons & Actions For You:

Let's say you're highly effective at presentations. Pretty good at working a room. And not bad at leading meetings. But those are pretty much all the arrows in your quiver. You're in trouble.

Or let's say you're the new business closer and exceptionally good at it. You're a planner and organizer to beat the band. And you've got a genius for marketing. But that's it. You're in trouble.

See where I'm going with this? Let me be more specific: A handful of leadership tools on your peg board ain't gonna cut it. Want proof? Some of the greatest leaders of all time have spoken out on the subject. John Wooden, famed UCLA men's basketball coach, who still today owns more national championships than any other coach living or dead, diagrams 17 critical leader traits in his success pyramid from his book "Wooden on Leadership".

As you read the book, you then realize he's burrowing down even deeper into mini points that, if you're counting, could tally over 60 or 70. Colin Powell, former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- in his book "The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell" -- has 16 chapters, each one digging into an important leadership quality. And inside each chapter, you can flush out more sub-points, for a total of, I'm thinking, maybe 50 to 75 traits.

Jack Welch, legendary CEO of GE, has spoken of more than 30 must-have attributes of effective leaders. In "Robert E. Lee on Leadership", written by H. W. Crocker, there are 11 chapters. Each one ends with a bullet-point list of "Lee's Lessons" that summarizes the content. I counted. Total of 52 behaviors, traits and lessons for leaders.

I could go on, but you get the picture. There's an endless list of books, CDs, courses, workshops and seminars on leadership -- and every author has his or her list of traits. Go ahead. Read, listen to, or attend any one of them. I challenge you to argue with their logic. They ALL make sense. Watch any sporting event. Then watch the post-game interview with the head coach.

In a 15-second sound bite, the astute viewer/listener can grab two or three tidbits of leadership wisdom -- each one a profound lesson on its own.

Bottom line: Leadership is multi-dimensional. And by "multi", I don't mean three or four. Or eight or nine. Or 22 or 23. I mean dozens and dozens. Like courage. Initiative. Integrity. Loyalty. Enthusiasm. Vision. Honor. Serving others first. Trustworthiness. Hopefulness. Goal-oriented. Inspirer of others. Delegator. Risk-taker. And on and on and on.

I've only scratched the surface. If all this scares you -- and it should -- you may want to re-think your leadership role. Make sure you're up to the task, up to the challenge, up to the responsibility. Your followers -- whether they number only one or two -- or as many as 10,000 or a million -- all deserve you to be effective at all the many facets of marketing leadership.

No, not a few. Not just the ones you like. Not just the ones that don't upset you. All of them. And the ones you're not good at? Work on them until you are. It's not an option to ignore them. The more you study leadership, the longer will grow your list of critically important traits you must embrace.

Leadership is not for everyone. It's not for the squeamish. Not for those with wobbly knees. Nor the feint of heart. And certainly not for those who intend to just eek by with a couple of key skills, and zero interest in developing the rest. If the pressure of having to be proficient at such a long list of attributes troubles you, get out now, before you embarrass yourself and topple the enterprise.

If, on the other hand, you're energized by it all, you seek to learn more every day, and you're on a non-stop quest to improve yourself and acquire the marketing knowledge and skills to lead with honor, dignity and daring ... then you are in the rarified air that the world's greatest leaders have breathed.

Which are you? Let this be your wake-up call to decide. You can't be an effective leader by going at it half-hearted. Wherever you are on the "leadership continuum", you will always have more to learn. Will you? Will you start today?
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Rick Houcek is President of Soar With Eagles in Atlanta. To subscribe to his newsletter, please visit Soar with Eagles.com and fill in your name and email address in the upper left of the home page.

Google Diverts Wikipedia Traffic?

2008-03-02T00:59:55-05:00

LEEDS, UK - Today I discovered a great new band called The New Mastersounds. Their stuff is of the MGs and Meters instrumental variety. Funky. Supa fuhnkee. I'd love to hear Amy Winehouse backed by these guys...

Anyway, the band is currently touring the east coast, and as I perused their site, I was struck by their use of maps, downloads, copyright permissions, and DIY club posters. They make it so E-Z for their fans, vendors (i.e. club owners), and mainstream media to support them. Especially for club owners who need to promote the band's upcoming gigs at their venues, it's like "insta-marketing." Lots of ideas to swipe on this site.

PS - When I went to include links to this post, I Googled "wikipedia" and I got a SEARCH BOX in the Google SERP! Watch what happens when you enter a string into the box. Gee. Somehow, I think this diversion of traffic goes beyond having "just another SERP" on which Adwords can appear. Don't you? I mean, it's not as if we are talking about a ton of traffic that Google is siphoning off. Are they making a statement with this tactic? Seriously, I'd like to know your thoughts.
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Call For Guest Authors

2008-01-27T18:32:59-05:00

Are you a search engine expert? Great! That makes one of us!

How would you like to blog right here -- at SearchEnigineExperts.com?? I'd like to turn this space into a group blog. Open source, baby! I may not be the Michael Jordan of SEM, but I'm a talented writer and a good editor. So only apply if you are prepared to bring your A-game. You'll need to think and write like a search engine expert -- which means you'll pretty much need to BE a search engine expert.

There's no money in it, by the way. But there is visibility on one of the best SEO domains around. You submit articles and I'll publish them here giving you full credit. You can include your name, employer, and your email address. Any business you get is yours completely. I won't be involved at all.

The articles will remain your intellectual property "in perpetuity and throughout the universe" as lawyers like to say. My only request is that if you leave the fold, please leave your posts here. You can publish them anywhere else you like -- but please don't yank them off this site. Broken links, etc.

If you think I'm smoking something, please say so in the comments section below. And if you'd like to become a guest author, please send me an email and I'll contact you for your references and writing samples. This sounds more stringent than it is: This is the same process I went though before going live on MarketingProfs DailyFix and DuctTape Marketing. Nothing personal. It's just a QC measure.

I look forward to hearing from you!

"Search Engine Advisors.com" seeks $65K

2008-01-22T17:35:59-05:00

Snap Names has listed the domain SearchEngineAdvisors.com for sale on its site for $65,315. And that's just for starters. The domain could fetch more than that once the bidding starts tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Does Dot-Jobs Work?

2007-12-27T16:10:00-05:00

PITTSBURGH, PA - Last week I was contacted by a company with a .Jobs TLD. "TLD" stands for Top Level Domain, and you see them every day in the form of a .com, .net, .org, or dot-whatever.

Two years ago, the dot-jobs TLD was launched with great fanfare, partially as a way for corporate recruiting departments to maintain EZ-to-find career sites for their candidates -- but mostly as a way for these sites to jump to the front of the organic SERP's.

Sort of like a Special Access Pass at Disney World.

Essentially, dot-jobs was an SEO play marketed in the name of improving the jobseeker's search experience. The pitch was that jobseekers who Google for "Merck jobs" (for example) would prefer to see the positions offered by Merck first -- and then see the "less relevant" job board and recruiter listings farther down the search result. Dot-jobs conferred instant legitimacy.

For dot-jobs customers, the arduous SEO tasks of updating keyword rich content and back linking were, presumably, to be secondary concerns. A standalone career site hosted on a dot-jobs domain was a trump card: dot-jobs beats dot-com, beats dot-net, beats dot-biz, and so on. PPC costs would tumble, the argument went, as career sites floated to their "rightful place" at the top of the organic results. Sweet victory!

It was a good idea. But in practice, dot-jobs doesn't seem to be working out that way. Here is the career site of the company who contacted me. And here is the search I did for them on Google. Where's the dot-jobs result? M.I.A.

Now curious, I ran some other Google searches for dot-jobs career sites:

Note: These aren't just random companies. They're companies being touted on the dot-jobs homepage as flagship customers. Only Publix enjoys a top ranking with its dot-jobs domain. Everybody else is trailing the job boards that dot-jobs was supposed to preempt. Merck even has a testimonial on the dot-jobs homepage, yet Merck's dot-jobs page is fifth in the organic rankings (at least for my Google datacenter). Ouch.

What gives? Is a dot-jobs domain worth the $120/year investment? That's more than twelve times what dot-com domains sell for. Somebody enlighten me.
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