A recent blog post that caught the attention of readers included a summary of the annual report from online employment platform Elance. Another Web employment marketplace, oDesk, has released its own year-end report with similarly positive views of both the year in review and the year ahead.

The report from oDesk says that employers spent $115…

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

I would like to do work at home. Thing is many people are looking for SEO type work. I know a bit have done SEO article writing and some backlinks the old fashioned white hat way as they say. Can anyone help me on what skills I need? Im a Psychology grad so not that techie. I normally source my job offers at Craigslist and Odesk if this helps. Hope anyone can help my out. Thank you!

To be good at SEO and to enjoy doing it all day, day after day, month after month, year after year from your home office with just a pet or two around for company the majority of the time, you need to be a lover of words.

For people who love writing, playing with words, making equations out of words, juxtaposing words, and making up words, search engines are like the ultimate playgrounds. Search engines algorithms are all about words–words on websites and keyword searches–and we SEOs spend large portions of out time keeping up to date on how the algorithms may be changing and what words need to be changed or added to a client’s site in order to advance up the rankings for keyword searches.

And speaking of clients, you’ve got to love them too–and you have to love selling to them because the best SEO in the world can’t be an SEO if he or she isn’t making money at it. If you can’t sell yourself and your skills to a client, you’ve got to at least sell them to an employer who will pay you to do SEO tasks for them. You’ve got to be a good business person to be an individual SEO consultant or agency.

As far as all the other stuff, reading blogs (as Jason mentions) (How’s it going Jason?), on-page and off-page stuff, web page programming, backlinks, etc., you’ll pick that up as you go if you really enjoy the work and you’re smart.

SEO ain’t the sexiest job in the world and it may not always be the most fun but if you are great at playing with words, few other jobs can match it.