A lot of people have questioned me about how much salary should an SEO be paid. The answer is simple. It depends on the company, your skills, your knowledge, your portfolio and your dedication towards learning more.

Many companies that I have been to judge SEO’s by looking at their qualification and pay them whether if they have a degree or not. Please don’t do that. This is a request! If a person has a degree in marketing that does not necessarily means he knows about internet marketing just like any other? It’s good to have a degree. However, it has nothing to do with SEO or internet marketing . It is just a plus point.

Since I belong from Pakistan, I will list the SEO job titles with salaries of how much should an SEO in Pakistan get paid a month. Please refer to SEOMoz for SEO salaries in dollars per annum for USA and international.

These salaries are per month, not annum.

Director Of Search Marketing

80,000 to 100,000/-RS

This person is responsible for managing the SEO team and creating strategies, setting up goals for his team and looking after reports. This is a very important position. The person has to have a good knowledge of internet marketing and should be able to lead the team.

SEO Specialist

30,000 to 50,000/-Rs

This is a very important position. This person has to work on the content optimization, link building strategies, keywords research(mostly) , on-page optimization (mostly) and working with the rest of the team to insure better and high rankings through others methods like link building (ethically) and of course reporting to the director.

Link Builder:

20,000 to 25,000/-RS

This person is led by the SEO Specialist by giving him the directions and the relevancy of the links, this position depends on the ROI can later be very important.

Content Writer:

30,000 to 50,000/-RS

This is the most critical position. Without this position a link builder or an SEO specialist would have to suffer a lot of burden, the salary is given depending on the candidates experience in writing. SEO Specialist checks the QA of the content he writes.

Research Analyst:

15,000 to 20,000/-RS

This position provides data for the Link Builder, SEO Specialist and content writer, normally helps SEO Specialist with keywords research, this is why this position is mostly filled by an internee SEO, and hard to find someone who is good with research skills, the only person who can do a good research skill is an SEO itself since most of the research is done through the Search Engine itself, therefore – only internee can fill this position.

These are the salaries of people belonging with a background of SEO, internet marketing. Please keep In mind that the salary depends on the “demand and supply” as well and the economy.

These salaries are for Pakistan only, this was to help Pakistani companies but please remember a lot of it depends on the candidates portfolio, make sure he has ranked website on top for a lot of highly search keywords before hiring him. This applies only for the higher posts like “SEO Specialist”, pay looking at their previous SEO work.

With regards to the salaries mentioned above, I’d like to hear from you as well. I may not be correct 100% with the figures, the salaries may be high or low, what does your experience say?

- SEO Pakistan