As Britain begins to make its way out of the recession, we should be prepared for the job market to take a little longer to recover; the high unemployment figures that we have been left with, alongside the low number of jobs currently available cannot be expected to level out overnight.

What happened during the recession?

According to the official definition, a recession occurs after economic decline – measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country – occurs two consecutive quarters in a row. Britain has been unfortunate enough to see its economy shrink for five consecutive quarters, its unemployment figures reaching 2.46million people. But what effect did this have on SEO jobs?

During the recession, companies will have been trying to cut costs. The best way to do this is would of course have been to cut back on expenses, and to assess where money was being spent on things that were not vital to the survival of the business. One of the most obvious areas to have made cutbacks will have been staffing levels, which has on the whole, resulted in there being fewer positions available.

Another area that is likely to have suffered the effects of budgeting, is marketing. However so far, online marketers have been able to use this to their advantage. Online marketing is a cheaper alternative to more traditional offline campaigns, and as such online marketing companies saw a certain amount of growth and success during the recession. As a direct result of this, online marketing positions such as PPC and SEO jobs saw a rise, rather than a fall, in numbers.

What is likely to happen after the recession?

A recent spate of recovery signs suggest that Britain is now well on its way to coming out of the recession. However recovery cannot happen overnight. Unfortunately the job market is likely to continue to suffer the adverse effects of the economic decline as companies look to keep expenditure low during the recovery period.

Research suggests that with 55 per cent of survey respondents stating that they expect to see their SEO budgets increase in the next twelve months, online marketing is likely to continue to prosper as we leave the recession. With PPC campaigns being relatively cost-effective, and able to be tailored to suit all budgets, and email marketing campaigns having the capacity to reach large numbers of people, online marketing is a low-investment strategy that can be very effective.

If, as Britain begins to recover, agencies continue to capitalise on the online marketing opportunities that have arisen during the recession, there is a high chance that online marketing positions, such as SEO jobs, will continue to be in demand.

Rising Above the Recession

Recessions are difficult for everyone, and it can be all too easy to assume that the end of a recession equals instant recovery. It is important for jobseekers to remain positive during this recovery period. Opportunities exist no matter what the state of the economy, if you can work out what they are. As Britain works hard to continue pulling itself up and out of the recession, so should marketing agencies continue capitalising on the move from offline to online, and jobseekers try to reflect this in the sorts of jobs that they apply for.

Being in the middle of a recession does not mean the end of your business, however it does mean thinking ahead and changing the way you currently do business.

For example $47.5 billion is about to be spent on back to school supplies. However, almost half the people making those purchases will be looking for ways to save money.

A lot of those people will be looking online for those savings. The problem is that if your website is not ready then you’re running out of time. In order to prepare for an event like Christmas or a back to school sale you need to start getting your website ready months in advance.

Lots of people wait until the last moment and there is just not enough time to prepare the site and get the most out of it.

The recession is over yet 450,000 jobs were lost in the month of June, after the recession had ended.

I’ve seen a lot of my competition begin to struggle and many others go out of business. Yet prices across the board for web design services have remained intact. The recession caused people to tighten their grip on their wallets and useless products are no longer being purchased.

People are now thinking about how they spend their money and many are starting to pay off credit debt. If nothing else we’ve learned that nothing in life is for sure, including your job or the faith of the company you work for.

Companies have now started calling outsourcing, Cloud Commuting and it is being looked on as a good thing. It’s one of the things that have kept many companies in business and allowed them to keep prices low and keep current employees.

Geeks on Steroids has been busy this year helping many companies improve their web presence and turn old websites into money making machines. Source that have not been considered in the past are being considered today.

The difficult times are far from over but the companies that see this as an opportunity to change the way they do business will remain in business and continue to grow.

I’ve started playing with a new web site today; it’s a web design website for web designers. We’ve made it through the recession with one of our best years ever; however, the hard times seem to be just getting started.

As Obama creates more programs that will cause tax increases across the board, I’ve got a feeling the worst times are still ahead of us. We’ve decided it was time to increase the ways we make money and in doing so we’ve started some offline businesses as well as more online businesses.

It’s time to step up our game while it’s still doing well.

The new website will add a new division to our current company and will be tailored towards web design companies that want to outsource their web design work. We know that it is important to deliver on time and under budget, so we’ve had to update our staff as well as our computers.

It’s a long process and one we are just getting started with but we hope that it will allow Geeks on Steroids to stay ahead of the pack.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

I ran across what I thought was going to be a very good topic by Jordan over at WPW, however like most things on the web it fizzled out before ever hitting a high note.

This isn’t an attack on Jordan, as a matter of fact had it not been for Jordan I wouldn’t be writing this now.

I believe Jordan’s thread would have been a lot better had he tried new things as he went along. Other words, if something isn’t working try something different.
I currently make a decent amount of money online and have learned over the years that there are two important things when it comes to making money online.

They are the traffic and the sites ability to convert that traffic.

I’ve got sites that make me money day after day on some extremely boring topics. And even though the rest of the world is seeing problems in the economy, I think God that my business has continued to grow.

However, it’s not been without effort, I’ve changed directions more times than most people change their underwear. I’ve spread out into other areas to pull traffic back into the sites I’m trying to make money with.

Let me give you an example;

I’ve got a website selling silicone wristbands; November was the worst month we’ve had in a long time. In December we redesigned the site and hit a record breaking month however January and February sales started dropping off really bad again.

We decided to build a website about fundraising events and once again drove sales back up and hit an all time high in the month of March. As a matter of fact we broke records that had been set over the past years in that one month.

Why the rest of the world is dealing with a recession, I’m dealing with how to break records that were set last month. There are times in life when we have to change directions and try something new.