While being at a show is a hectic time to pull together a YOUmoz post, I couldn't help but feel that it would be rather symbolic while being in The Emerald City and the land of SEOmoz. Fortunately, I also had a post in mind already. Unfortunately, the original title I had in mind was a little more targeted, from catchy - "Maximize the Marketplace," - to practical - "Optimize Your Way to Your Next Job." But in a true symbolic gesture, perhaps the chosen title is even more appropriate.

While here in Seattle at another great SMX conference, I had the pleasure of dining with Jane, Scott, Danny, and a great crew of fellow SEOmoz community members. In true Moz fashion of giving, Scott picked up dinner for the lot of us. So the least I felt I could do was to offer up a blog post, hence the post title. This post is doubly appropriate because it further acknowledges SEOmoz for giving back to the community and hopefully allows me to give back a bit in way as well.

Nearly 7 months ago, SEOmoz introduced the SEO Services Marketplace. Like SEOmoz itself, the SEO Services Marketplace was a wonderful addition to the community as a whole.

The Marketplace provides SEO companies the ability to post their company details to help attract new clients, to post job listings or contracting opportunities to help attract SEO talent, and perhaps best of all, an opportunity for individuals to post their resume or details about themselves - and all at no cost.

While I don't know how many total jobs have been posted since launch, I can tell you that as of the time of writing, there are apparently 493 companies listed, 200 jobs and contracts, and 90 resumes. What is especially unique about the resume section is it provides users with the ability to classify themselves as "Happily Employed," or "Currently Looking." This is an important point that maybe needs extra attention. Simply put, you needn't be on the hunt to post your details, which also means there ought to be a lot more than 90 listings...especially if there are 493 companies listed.

As the goal for the Marketplace was:

The SEO Services Marketplace aims to be the go-to place for everyone in the search industry to find contacts, work, contractors, businesses to help with SEO, and potential employees.

Then I fear Rand and team have failed - or perhaps more accurately, we've failed Rand and team.

Especially for individuals, even if you aren't looking for a job, you shouldn't miss this opportunity to showcase yourself. Of course, if you are looking for an SEO job, then this is a no-brainer. While I have a few thoughts and ideas that could be implemented into the Marketplace, the original focus for this post was actually to encourage users to maximize the value of their own listings.

Here are five basic tips to help you maximize your SEO Marketplace resume:

• Whether you use the Marketplace as a full resume listing, or just a few key blurbs, make it meaningful and compelling.
• Be sure to include some details about areas you specialize in.
• Include the link to your website or your LinkedIn profile.
• Manually add important details that don't have designated form fields, such as whether you are looking for employment or for contract work as these can be critical details that impact interest. If you don't, readers may interpret one or the other based on the other information you do provide, which may or may not be an accurate interpretation. And in either case, it may be helpful to specify the geo-location, especially if you are looking for employment and willing to move; otherwise your current location may hinder consideration if it varies considerably from the locations you are willing to move to.
• And like any kind of listing, be sure to circle back around once in awhile and do a little refresh and update.

Now I'd like to encourage you, if you haven't already, to head over to the SEO Services Marketplace and set up your profile. While the SEOmoz Rank shows over 5,000 members, there probably won’t ever be 100% participation.

So here's the goal I'd love to put to the community. Let's break 1,000 resume listings before the end of the month. That's still only going to be around 20% participation out of the current users (though some of these user accounts are probably dodgy spam accounts as well). And while we're at it, why not shoot for achieving this before the end of June.

And please share your own Marketplace success stories or tips as well.