Is The Seo Industry About To Collapse? Options

[Prodo]

As the importance of Search Engine Optimisation gets home to the masses the amount of good high quality search engine optimised sites increases. The potential profit margins of a good SEO site heavily outweigh the margins of a successful PPC campaign. Eventually every man and his dog will have a good high quality, relevant search engine optimised website. Adding that to the fact that Google appear to not be making very many serious changes to their search engine algorithm, where does the optimisation stop? Will we hit a point where everybody has equally optimised sites? If Google do not change their algorithm and sites are getting built automatically with good SEO practice would the SEO industry as a whole collapse?

Neil Hancock

This post has been edited by torka: Mar 8 2007, 12:48 PM

Reason for edit: Removed live link per forum rules. Add a signature if you want to link to your site.

[Bradley]

To play devil's advocate, I'm not so sure Prodo. I've been looking at search from a local perspective lately, and it appears there's a lot of work to do. It's amazing how many people have never heard of a title tag, to say nothing of SEO. Add to that the 70% or so of small businesses who have yet to build their first site...

As for algorithm changes, they happen all the time. And with things like local, mobile, personalization, and social media, it looks pretty dynamic out there to me. Should keep the engineers busy for some time.

One thing I wouldn't worry about is an excess of quality. One thing I appreciate about search technology is that it does weed out much of the crap. And there's plenty of that out on the Web, and more every minute...

[torka]

Eventually every man and his dog will have a good high quality, relevant search engine optimised website.

See, that's an incorrect assumption, IMO. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Through the web, through formal classroom training and seminars, and through the local bookstore, there is at least as much information available on the topic of "general small business marketing" as there is on the sub-topic of "search engine optimization" (which is, after all, only one part of an overall effective marketing campaign).

Since marketing and advertising have been around in one form or another for thousands of years, you'd think it would pretty much be down to a science today, wouldn't you? Basically, any small business owner should be able to do a quick search or two on the Web, go down to the local bookstore, or attend a class or seminar and learn everything he or she needs to know to be able to optimize their Real World marketing and advertising for maximum ROI.

"Everyone and his dog" should have a well-written, budget-conscious marketing plan and be able to effectively implement that plan, with no need for professional assistance, right? (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yet there are still literally thousands of marketing, public relations and advertising agencies and freelance specialists in the USA alone.

This is because marketing -- whether "Real World" or online -- is not a "paint by numbers" formulaic exercise. It's not just a matter of "follow steps one, two, and three exactly as laid out here and you'll have a well-optimized site." There is a measure of art involved, and some of that art can only be learned "hands on" by actually getting out there and running a real-world campaign or two (or ten or twenty). It takes experience and skill and a bit of innate talent to be really good at it. And even then, sometimes even the top professionals miss the mark.

To my mind, "an optimized site" is not a goal, it's a process. I've said for a long time now there's no such thing as a "finished" website, and I've come to the conclusion over the past few years there's no such thing as a "completely optimized" site, either. There's always something that can be improved, especially when you move beyond thinking of "optimization" strictly in terms of rankings and you start considering usability and the customer experience and conversion maximization as part of a holistic "optimization" process.

I think you're right in a way, though -- I believe those "SEOs" who think it's only about rankings are on the way out. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

--Torka (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[WebGeek182]

As the importance of Search Engine Optimisation gets home to the masses the amount of good high quality search engine optimised sites increases. The potential profit margins of a good SEO site heavily outweigh the margins of a successful PPC campaign. Eventually every man and his dog will have a good high quality, relevant search engine optimised website. Adding that to the fact that Google appear to not be making very many serious changes to their search engine algorithm, where does the optimisation stop? Will we hit a point where everybody has equally optimised sites? If Google do not change their algorithm and sites are getting built automatically with good SEO practice would the SEO industry as a whole collapse?

Neil Hancock

Not changing the algorithm? I guess you haven't heard about the recent Big Daddy update. They just made some huge algorithm changes, and will continue to as time progresses.

1. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bigdaddy-progress-update/
2. http://www.google.com/search?q=google+big+daddy+update

[SearchRank]

I think we are a long way from every site being properly optimized. The vast majority of sites I look at on a day to day basis could be optimized better, if they are even optimized at all. I also recently spoke to 20-25 small business owners on the subject of SEM and only 2 out of the bunch had ever done any search marketing at all.

While we who are embedded in this industry think that the majority of people understand it and are doing it, the reality is that a very small percentage do.

[Copywriter39]

I work with a lot of companies whose focus is local and I know for a fact that most web sites aren't properly optimized. I can't even find these sites by searching for their company name and location. I'm working with a contractor now who has had a site for a couple of years, yet none of his pages are indexed by Google. Even his Google Local listing doesn't list his site. There could eventually be a time when a lot more sites are optimized, but this could be a good thing. It could force sites to develop copy that connects with their prospects on a more meaningful level.

[Jill]

Prodo does make a very good point. A few years ago very few sites had even rudimentary SEO done to them. That's far less common today.

But yes, there is still many segments of the market who don't know anything about SEO. Still, eventually they will, and the SEO industry will die and/or be transformed into something else.

Those that don't change with the times will go the way of the dinosaur for sure.

We have at least another good 5 years I'd say. But after that it's anyone's guess...and even that may be too long.

[Hyperformance]

I have to agree, short of GYM (Google, Yahoo!, Msn) providing a standard form that everyone builds their website through (bite my own tongue... it begins with sitemaps).

There are still millions upon millions of websites. Agreed, many of them are still junk (not to hurt feelings), many do rank well and are competitive (but it still depends on the niche), and many just can't be found no matter how good they are (short of surfing 12 pages deep). And then there are "us" - SEO and website marketing specialists and those even those that just follow the leaders in education and industry... in numbers, maybe 10's of thousands? And as you can see, not all with the same beliefs, results, or levels of experience.

I think saturation is a long way off, if ever... and I have to agree with Jill, while it may change (and has), there will long be a need for optimization, or like Torka said, when you have discovered what really works, it's a continuing project far beyond the the page elements of optimization.

Good Thread.

[Simon - Shopfitt...]

The good news for the SEO industry is that even if every single page on the web was tuned both from a code and content perspective there would still be loads of work for web marketeers.

This may seem like a rash statement, however, lets consider what we're dealing with and look at a comparable creative industry.

What many developers overlook is that we're targeting our work at people and not robots. The analogy I like to use is that the sites we're working on are a vehicle, the search terms in those sites are the passengers and the destination is a potential customer. That destination is rarely the same because habits, trends and attitudes change. There are fashions in the words that people speak and, therefore, in the terms they use in their chosen search engine, as a result the job of an SEO is ever changing.

OK, that may be obvious stuff, the 'people factor' is well known and some marketeers are better at getting into the end users' heads than others, hence why some of us can charge more than others.

In my view, as the SEO market matures there will be more strata for a variety of skill levels, budgets and customer needs in much the same way as the offline advertising industry has developed. In fact, I feel that we'll see more money spent on web marketing to achieve smaller gains in much the same way as happened in TV advertising until the market reaches a plateau and becomes subject to fluctuations seen in other sectors.

Probably the main effect in that development will be that it will become more difficult to get the desired results because SEO competition will become greater. As time goes on, the better you are then the greater the fees you'll command.

But thats not the whole story, I think that creative SEO professionals will concentrate on conversion a lot more, broadening their skills in end user communications making the value of their services much greater to their clients.

The one thing we can all be sure will stay the same is that things change (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Simon

This post has been edited by Simon - Shopfitter.com: Mar 9 2007, 04:51 PM

[Infonote]

True with wordpress, typepad and blogger, everyone can just focus on content as the CMS is usually already for the most part SEOptimised.

However no one has all the time in the world to focus on SEO, especially if you are a sole owner or a business that just started. At least if I was in that position, SEO will be a low priority.

[Scottie]

SEO is just a small subset of Internet marketing. If anyone is making their living off adding titles and keywords to pages and getting a couple hundred directory listings, their time is already up, IMO.

Without a broader understanding of the technical issues, usability issues and some clever marketing strategies an "SEO" isn't very useful.

[cline]

Yes. Of exhaustion. About all the work required.

[Copywriter39]

Without a broader understanding of the technical issues, usability issues and some clever marketing strategies an "SEO" isn't very useful.

Shouldn't we add the ability to create meaningful copy

[AlDugan]

SEO is just a small subset of Internet marketing. If anyone is making their living off adding titles and keywords to pages and getting a couple hundred directory listings, their time is already up, IMO.

Without a broader understanding of the technical issues, usability issues and some clever marketing strategies an "SEO" isn't very useful.

Very well said. This is what separates successful SEOs from the "Yeah, I got your Monkey site to rank for 'Disposable Chimpanzee Diapers' so pay me" SEOs. To be a truly successful SEO you have to have a knack for Marketing and an understanding of the big picture. If you think the goal is to get rankings then you are not seeing the bigger picture.