Search engine optimisation (SEO) skills are among the most wanted technical abilities by small businesses from their new employees.
Proven knowledge of the modern marketing methods and link building are now being considered crucial by employers, who also put a high premium on candidates who are conversant with PHP scripting language.
PeoplePerHour.com, the marketplace website for freelance IT workers, determined the figures by analysing projects that had been posted on their sites and looking at what the employers wanted.
Their research found nearly two-thirds of the small businesses researched were planning to increase spending on IT this year, with 38 per cent planning to raise their use of IT freelancers over the next two years.
CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou said the boom in remote freelance working has been led by the IT industry, in which freelancers can easily work through remote connections.
However, he warned because of the rapid pace of change in IT, the list of in-demand skills "will doubtless look quite different in a year's time".
After SEO and PHP skills, small business also required people who had good command of blogging sites, such as WordPress, and basic web development tools, including HTML and Flash game development.
