41 replies to this topic

[Big Bill]

Did anyone see the dot com crash coming? 

Yes, everyone with an ounce of common sense and everyone else who'd ever heard of the South Sea Bubble, of which this was pretty much a replay.

As to the speculation on SEO crashing, I'd like to see the crooks and scammers weeded out but we really do need a responsible industry association with conspicuous establsihed integrity to distinguish ourselves from those who happily take client's money for non-existent services.

Speaking of which, I think PPC will crash unless it improves its model. No-one seems keen to upset the gravy train there though, neither engines nor practicioners.

BB

[SmellieNellie]

Also, as the industry matures, I would anticipate consolidation.  Ten years from now there won't be nearly as many 1-person operations as there are now.

I agree totally with you here Cline. We are seeing a shift here in the UK as more and more PR and Advertising Agencies are trying to bring Website Designers and now Web Marketers in-house.

I persoanlly feel the shift is also going to be away from SEO and toward Web Marketing with "Marketing" being the emphasis as apose to promotion.

Hopefully, this will also help to stop the less than favourable techniques being adopted as companies demand more from the SEO companies in terms of taking more of a marketing view of the websites and less of a technical one (in their eyes).

As Scottie Claiborne's recent articles in SiteProNews highlighted, so often the importance of copywriting is overlooked. I myself have such a situation where a client's website is performing well for all the search phrases, but people are not doing what we want them to do when they get to the site and that is to contact them! I personally believe this is because the copy does not fit with the customer but persuading the client of this is proving more difficult!

[cline]

I persoanlly feel the shift is also going to be away from SEO and toward Web Marketing with "Marketing" being the emphasis as apose to promotion.

I certainly agree that there will be a move towards providing more holistic web marketing services, but I don't think that entails a shift away from SEO. So many companies that are excellent candidates for SEO haven't touched it. I see no diminished demand for SEO services.

[SmellieNellie]

I certainly agree that there will be a move towards providing more holistic web marketing services, but I don't think that entails a shift away from SEO.  So many companies that are excellent candidates for SEO haven't touched it.  I see no diminished demand for SEO services.

No - absolutely - what I meant to say was that I think it will move away from being thought of or called "SEO" and brought into the marketing fold. But, I certainly can't see why there would be decline, in fact as someone has already pointed out, while there are search engines changing algos there will always need to be someone out there trying to keep up!

[Randy]

I agree completely.

While "SEO" as a term may eventually go bye-bye, the actual work of marketing anything and everything on the web will most certainly continue. At least where natural or organic listings are concerned.

It's more a matter of a change in focus that some so-called SEO's have been missing the boat on forever and a day.

FTR, I also agree that advertising agencies are going to most certainly continue to be in the market to snap up SEO shops. And larger SEO shops are going to continue to snap up smaller ones. It just makes sense.

The buyers get value added to their portfolio, especially the ad agencies who already have established connections to the corporate world. Based upon the Advertising conferences I've attended over the past couple of years it's quite evident to me that the agencies are all getting inquiries from their clients about web marketing.

[rankforsales]

I actually had a long conversation with Chris Sherman from Search Engine Watch about this in Toronto last week. He is convinced that we haven't even gotten close to our peak yet.

I agree with Jill and Chris.

[incrediblehelp]

If the engines ever decided to fully monetize all search results, organic SEO (the good stuff) will obviously disappear, but even then they will still need us to manage those CPC campaigns.

I do feel one day web design and SEO marketing concepts should merge. Why isn't at least the basics of SEO being taught in college?

[DarrenSR]

I remember back in the late 1990s when web design companies were popping up all over the place like daisies? Today most of those web design companies are out of business. Where did many of them go wrong? They didn't evolve with the industry. I find it amazing that even my former college professor who taught a webmaster class and owns his own web design company doesn't understand the concept of back linking, and he still submits to all the search engines. Needless to say his business is struggling against high school kids who are doing sites for $200.

Lets face it, SEO isn't rocket science. I believe the SEO market may eventually become saturated just like the web design industry did, and the SEOs who remain on top will be the ones who constantly educate themselves on the changing trends just as the few savvy web designers from the 1990s educated themselves to stay in the game.

The Internet industry is evolving rapidly and requires our constant attention in order to remain competitive.

[DJKay]

Interesting thread. Will share from my own experience.

Had a very robust seo/sem/online marketing practise for a few years, but as time went on, more and more people were hanging out a shingle [you know, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing ].

I could see the writing on the wall, in that the major advertising and marketing firms would be getting into the business [Isobar acquires iProspect, and other firms like Digitas, trying to staff up in this area]. Even Jill started Search Creative, LLC--[which I think is awesome!] and she is not a lone gun anymore.

Over a year ago, I chose to give up a major portion of my practise and take a day job for a number of reasons. The main reason was because the unique niche of being just a "specialist" in SEO/SEM/Online Marketing was shifting. I knew I would be starting to compete with all those bigger firms, and I did not want to own an agency and did not want to be in the agency/marketing services business any more.

Overall, its been a very good change, as I am preparing to embark into other areas, I still have a few clients on the side, and tons of recruiters call because companies want experienced seos and sems, but its still new and companies have not even really got their heads around why its important.

Best,

DJKAY

[robbinsr]

I have a question, as it stands now, there seems to be several different specialties within the diverse "SEO" community, specifically, copywriters, web designers, true SEO, SEM and PPC experts, etcetera. It seems to me that a lot of you are experts in one or two of these areas, but not all, naturally enough, so you seem to have partnered up with other experts to help you out where you are weak.

Instead of crashing, do you see one company forming with one roof, with all of these specialties offered within that company for one price, kind of like what Jill has moved to with her new company, or do you see individuals continuing to specialize individually and be hired as sub-contractors or sub-trades kind of like is going on now?

In my case for example, ycopfiles.com Designs is a web design company that is Search Engine Optimization friendly. Even though I can copywrite, and can SEM, that is not my area of expertise. And SEO is something I am learning and constantly getting better at, mostly through this forum, so I can't honestly say I am a SEO expert yet either, but I can web dev and website design with no problem.

So where do you see all of us ending up eventually? Under one roof as one great big happy family sharing a client, and therefore sharing the money, or competing with each other by trying to out "service" the other, I can do this and this, hire me, or as hire me, and I will sub-hire him to do this, and her to do that?

[Jill]

Instead of crashing, do you see one company forming with one roof, with all of these specialties offered within that company for one price, kind of like what Jill has moved to with her new company, or do you see individuals continuing to specialize individually and be hired as sub-contractors or sub-trades kind of like is going on now?

I would imagine that it will be both. In fact, I still have both. I have my Search Creative stuff where we have people in house, but I also have my virtual team of experts for consulting purposes, and reports and stuff. The in-house people are still learning and end up having to do most of the "grunt work" kinda of stuff. Where as the virtual team does the high level stuff.

[Hungryfish]

We all have a different opinion of "Crashing".

Seo as a tactic may change with time but I don't think the idea of "website Promotion" as a specialized practice will disappear. The thought is this.

The more the internet continues to evolve and grow their will always be a need for someone to help business grow and outperform their competition in positioning, advertising and converting browsers into buyers.

All in all I think the focus will become more on optimizing your "business", rather than being concerned with just ranking well for a specific keyphrase.

[ElizabethReynolds]

Then I guess the same is true of the SEO crash then.  Not sure when or how though

One thing I'll throw out there is that SEO's may find competition with us crazy in house kids. My company got fed up with the lack of service and accountability of their firm, and found me. My title is Internet Marketing Specialist, I work with PPC, Natural Optimization, web page/newsletter research, and moving into email marketing and much more in the future.

Just so warn you, you may find the field becoming a more integral part of MarCom departments.

my $0.02,
ER

[torka]

I think it's going to end up like a lot of other creative and consulting specialties. I look at business writers (copywriters and technical writers) for a model.

You'll have some experts who go it alone, totally freelance, getting their own direct clients. Some of them would be well-known, like copywriter Bob Bly or our own Karon; others might be "local experts" who have simply built up a stable of satisfied customers and referrals in their region or city.

You'll have some people who prefer not to deal with the client acquisition hassles, who will subcontract for others. Those "others" may offer specialty SEO services or may subcontract the SEO as part of a comprehensive package of services. (There are companies today that specialize in providing technical writers and general consulting firms that offer technical writing as one of their services. Both can and do hire independent contractors to actually provide the services to their clients.)

You'll have some people who will become the employees of consulting firms. As above, these firms may be specialty SEO firms or may be more general in scope. The main difference between these people and the subcontractors above is that these will be actual employees who only work for the one firm, while the subcontractors are free to work with any number of firms at one time.

I worked for my last four years in the NYC metro area as a tech writer with firms of both types. You had more flexibility with the first type, but better benefits with the second.

Then you'll have true in-house people who are employed by a company to perform SEO-type services specifically for that company. That would be the type of position that Elizabeth now holds.

There are plusses and minuses to each approach, both for the service provider and the service buyer, and the different models are appropriate for different situations. For the service provider, it's a matter of how comfortable they are with self-marketing and sales, and how much time they want to spend on business-building and administration versus actually doing SEO work. For the service buyer, it's a matter of how much they want to spend, whether they anticipate ongoing work over a very long time frame, whether they have enough work to make it worth hiring a full-time person, how much they typically spend on benefits per employee, and what the labor market is like in their area.

I don't see any reason why SEO couldn't be like business writing, or consulting, or any number of other similar knowledge-based professions, in which all business models are accomodated.

--Torka

[DJKay]

"Just so warn you, you may find the field becoming a more integral part of MarCom departments."


Yes, that's what I was trying to get at with my last post---The discipline of SEO/SEM/Online marketing has been permeating through for a while to what is thought of in the corporate setting as part of "Marketing".

Now as to what stage they are at, I cannot say for sure, I do know that qualified search/online marketing professionals are in demand. I do know that I was hit with alot of inquiries from "agencies" up until about February of this year. Now, most of the inquiries I am getting now are for companies that want to hire seo/sem people, like they would hire someone to do direct mail or the pr function.

In my opinion, this is a similar kind of progression other marketing vehicles have experienced over time. Historically, you could look at the progression of direct mail marketing integrating into the marketing skillset. One could draw a few conceptual parallels in terms of how it was initially adopted and came to be part of the marketing mix--ie, one of the tools in the tool box. Albeit, its a different mechanism and does not have the parameters of online vehicles and environments.

With all that said, in my opinion, there will always be a place for marketing services providers, so I DO NOT BELIEVE SEO/SEM/Online Marketing will crash.
Ultimately, I believe it will be like it is now, you hire an agency when you need fabulous talent, or have very large priorities, or for a host of other reasons.

As many senior marketing people will tell you, its always been tough to recruit and have on staff phenomenal copy writers--the best ones work for themselves for agencies walled up in their apartment, working at 3am [you get my drift here]--if you do hire a super copy writer and have them on staff for a while, they get stale because they are just doing your stuff, and, I believe, so it goes for SEO/SEM/Online Marketing people. For that matter, this is even true of the disciple of marketing in general, because many people move frequently to new companies and new products.

Best,

DJKay