Salary for SEO/Marketing Director

Ok Now that I have gotten hip deep in this position with x company, I've realized that in order to effectively manage the SEO for a huge site, 2 PPC Camps with over 1500 keywords each. Do email marketing blasts twice monthly and maintain all the Marketing materials takes alot more than 8 hours a day. I have decided to ask for more money as I am only makin 30K now. I am willing to give up my outside graphic design clients to spend my ocassional evening doing research, tracking results ect. So what do you guys think I should ask for ??
I am in the south (Louisiana) so salaries are lower here but not that low


thanks in advance for any input

 

You can try this site:
http://salary.monster.com/

It might give you some ammo for when you decide to ask for the raise.

 

In NY you would make 50-60k at least.

salary.com is great, by buy my experience, its overstated by 10%. (ive been doing HR and recruiting for approx 10 yrs now)

 

Your pay sounds low for the amount of work you put in. Ask for more (within reason). Better yet, apply your knowledge to start/grow your online business selling your services, advertising, etc so that you can quit that job and make more working from home doing what you like.

Good luck!

 

I would say just based upon what you said and your location you should be making around 40-50k. Of course a lot of companies don't pay what people are worth and I'm not an HR person.

Maybe you could ask for some type of incentive program. For instance if your campaigns perform so well you get X amount of money or $X.

I worked for a CFO that used to always say the only people that ever make what they deserve to make are people that work on 100% commission.

 

I really like the bonus senernio- Our conversions are based on leads and I can see where a bonus based conversions would work
thanks...I knew there was a reason I hung out here

 

Bit off topic here, but I always thought that an average salary at the US was $100k a year...so, what would be an average salary then?

 

Is that a sly way of saying you come here for you Hodgedup?

Hopefully it won't be as hard for you to convince them of some incentive based pay. I mean if you don't perform then they don't lose anything. If you do then they're making that much more. It's better for everyone around. If you're making a flat fee what's the incentive to work harder?

I like it because if you walk the walk you get paid for it.

Let us know how this turns out.

 

The figures of average salary vary so much in the US depending on geographical area, area of expertise, ect.

The average household income is $43,000.

 

US Median Wage for all races, both sexes, was $27,060 in 2003.

The Federal Minimum wage (some states are higher) is currently $5.15 or about $10,000 a year - although only about 4% of women and 2% of men earn this.

Only 20% of families (combined income) earn over $100,000 a year.

 

wow... sems quite low. What kind of living can someone do with that salary?

 

Not much. I just read that where I live (Northern California) you need to have an income of $130,000 just to qualify for a home loan. I see fast food chains advertising a starting wage of about $9.00hr.

 

Yea exactly...which is why I tend to rant when someone starts the old tired thread of "SEO's charge too much".

I live in Northern California as well and you can live on 40k a year, but you'll basically be just getting by if you're single, especially if you have kids. You'll be really sad if you don't have benefits to go with that. You definitely need to be making 90k+ if you want to try and buy property (ha ha...a decent 3 bedroom home sells for 700k+, in San Francisco it can be more than a million).

I've seen SEO/SEM positions for 50 to 70k in our area, but you better know your stuff. This is mostly for in-house positions with large corporations like E-loan or Red Envelope. The large local SEM agencies pay crap and always try to pass positions off as 'entry level' even though they want you to understand and manage everything.

 

Well considering I am in South Lousiana It is probbly lower than that...but since my husband passed in June the 30K is it- certianly not enough to keep a teenager in Abercrombie

 

Keep at them, telling them how much you are worth. In my experience, the people who make their jobs seem extremely difficult and talk to their bosses/HR directors about what an incredible job they are doing get paid the most.

Real skill has little to do with it (in most of the companies I've worked for anyways).

 

Unless you're freelancing. I wasn't sure from your post Ladesignz if this is a staff position or a client project. That can make all the difference.

 

An on staff SEO guy is a bargain for a company, but a hard position to fill. Your problem is that you are starting out at 30K. If you ask for a raise and they are very generous and give you a 30% raise - which is pretty much unheard of in corporate america you end up at just under 40K and little hope for a similar raise in the future - unless they harness you with more job responsibilities and a title change.

You earn the most money working for yourself. The next best thing is to salary hop as you gain valuable experience in a market needing experienced people. I don't know what your community is like - but it certainly would behoove you to research other local businesses that are e-commerce based and chat some people up about a job.

It's a hard decision as a business owner to double someone's salary. Even if the guy is worth it, it's a bad precedent and can end up costing you employees or big dollars down the road. In a corporate environment it's even more difficult because that money has to be justified and budgeted up and down the food chain.

A solid, experienced, hard working staff SEO should be worth over 100K to the right company, but that company and that employee have to find each other. If you think about it, how many other people are as responsible for the bottom line as the SEO guy?

If you are thinking of going off on your own, give it some good hard thought and planning. The most important thing is to have the ability to support and believe in yourself when you have gone 4 months without work, because at some point it will happen.

 

Amen to that... nothing like being your own boss and working with a beer in your hand

It is quite nice to know that you are going to get a paycheck every month when you have an office job, but I am now so used to working for myself that it would be tough to go back to that again... and best thing is that I am earning a bit over 40k a year, so it seems that I am making decent money

 

You should really look into the extra business your clients are generating because of the services you provide and base your worth on that. Not your worth in skills, education etc. (no one cares about that). But the market value. Those are the factors no one seems to want to disclose. But if you indeed provide a services that increases a companies revenue by let's say 250k/year, then what do you think your cut should be?

 

This thread has certianlly given me alot to think about .....more income streams for one. I recently let go of all of my graphic design clients so that I could spend that time on building content rich sites for myself. And I will continue to do that but it seems like the general thoughts here really relate to how much value you add to the company. Hell they didn't even know what a conversion was when I got there LOL. So my next step is to figure that value based on leads from before I got there and now. I am sure I can chart the increase.
Thanks again for everyone's feed back :}