New report: SEO and Content Marketing jobs see salary boosts in 2019

The average salary for seven of ten surveyed content marketing and SEO positions in the U.S. increased in the past year – including an average $20,000 increase for SEO Manager.

That’s according to the seventh annual “Inbound Marketing Job + Salary Guide” [free, registration required], released today by content intelligence platform Conductor. The report was based on job listings on four job sites – Indeed, Glassdoor, PayScale and LinkedIn.

‘Intertwinined’ content marketing and SEO

Conductor’s Senior Manager of Content Strategy Christine Schrader told ClickZ that, between 2017 and 2018, there was only one position that saw an average salary increase: Content Director. But, this year, there were increases in seven of the ten.

One of the reasons for the increases, she said, is that many brands are taking their SEO and content marketing tasks in-house, away from agencies, as many are also doing for adtech. The big $20,000 jump for SEO Manager, Schrader said, is likely because that role has to manage more in-house people.

These across-the-board increases aren’t surprising, Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder Stephan Bajaio added, since search engine optimization and content marketing are increasingly “intertwined,” although SEO includes such other areas as ecommerce optimization.

PPC experience

The Guide found that, for the first time, a majority (56%) of content marketing jobs now require SEO skills. Eighty-one percent of SEO jobs require content skills, a 6% increase over 2018.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click Ads) experience is also becoming more of a requirement, with 42% of SEO job now making it a requirement (a 9% increase over 2018), and 20% of content jobs requiring PPC skills as part of content distribution responsibilities.

In the last year, there was also an 81% increase in SEO job openings and a 112% boost in content marketing job openings.

Average salaries, cities

Here are the ten job titles that were tracked, along with the average U.S. salary:

The Guide also includes profiles of the tracked job positions, with averages for advanced degrees, years out of college, average tenure, and top skills.