I'm pleased to announce that after many hours of work and testing by SEOmoz, our beta testers, and yourself truly, the SEOmoz SEO Services Marketplace is officially launched!  You may access it via the banner above, or on every page via the "Marketplace" link in the main navigation at the top.

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.  As Rand mentions in the sidebar of the Marketplace homepage...

At SEOmoz, we get more than a dozen requests for business every week, and constant emails asking if we know people who can fill a particular position. With the SEO Services Marketplace, we finally have a scalable solution that lets search marketers and web professionals of all stripes connect with businesses seeking services and candidates. It's a match made in search industry heaven.

The Marketplace is free to browse by anyone and everyone, but only registered and logged in SEOmoz members are able to create their company profiles and resumes or post jobs.  The Marketplace has also usurped the old Recommended List, which now redirects to a list of SEOmoz Recommended Companies.  As with the recommended list, these are companies we've found to offer the highest level of effectiveness and customer service in their respective fields.

How can I use the SEO Services Marketplace?

The Marketplace essentially preforms 3 functions:

1. Help individuals network & find search industry jobs
2. Help companies increase their online presence
3. Help both find search-related jobs and contracts

Companies start out by creating their company profile.  They're able to craft a profile with their logo, description, phone, fax, and email, and list out any services they provide.  SEOmoz users can assign themselves to companies they work for, and will then appear as an employee on the company profile page.  Users of SEOmoz can also leave referrals for companies if they have experience with them.

Individuals should first work on and then activate their Marketplace resume, which will allow them to be listed in the resumes directory.  From there they'll be part of database of search professionals, an excellent resource for search companies looking to hire great talent.  Referrals may also be left for individuals, which help bolster your qualifications as a search professional.

Finally, both companies and individuals may post  jobs + contracts.  Jobs are positions companies are looking to fill, while contracts are more meant to be search-related projects that companies/individuals are looking for an SEO expert to help with.

What happens from here?

Outside of SEOmoz & a select group of beta testers, nobody else has seen or used the Marketplace.  As such, this is still very much a public beta.  We've squashed all known bugs, but there may very well be bugs that you all run into.  So please, if you run into any issues, feel free to send me an email or write a note in the comments of this blog post.  Same goes for any feature ideas/requests that you think may be a good idea to implement.

Thanks again to all the beta testers and everyone who has helped up to this point.  Happy Marketplacing!

Note: I forgot to mention that while currently all external links in the Marketplace are nofollowed, users who have 100+ Moz Points have the nofollow removed. :)