May 7, 2008

How the future of SEO looks to be developing

Written by Brian Turner

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Jennifer Osborne at SearchEnginePeople provides a very interesting post predicting the life cycle of search as an industry: SEO is about to grow up.

The graph illustrating changes probably works best:

A couple of pointers really strike out as on the ball, as it’s clear that there’s already a trend in this direction:

Shortage of experienced SEO talent
SEO is going to attract better capitalized, stronger competition
Increased integration of offline and online marketing

The shortage of SEO talent is already very acute - I know many SEO companies have difficulty recruiting people with the online marketing talents required.

This is probably not least because a lot of SEO companies are still SME’s with limited buying power - ie, it still pays those with the skills more to work as an independent small business.

However, there’s definitely a scent of capitalised spending in the air for the future.

Big Mouth Media is already one of the UK’s biggest SEO companies, and apparently is already on the hunt for a global presence in SEO through targeted acquisitions.

However, I think most capitalisation will be driven by large marketing, advertising and public relations companies/agencies which will be looking to provide a fuller set of marketing skillsets for client work - not least because of the need to cover offline and online marketing with precision.

While agencies may try and hire on the cheap, I think market forces - and client demands - will see these larger marketing operations companies bring in very real SEO skillsets.

This is not least because they have the corporate budgets to lure SEO talent through high-salary direct employment, plus acquisitions with relevant contractual obligations in buying up small companies.

In fact, I’ve even tried to explore the possibility of acquiring one or more other small SEO companies myself - only to find that banks, who are suspicious enough of that “new-fangled internet thingy” as it is, are now extremely risk averse due to the credit crunch. So no joy there. There remains the option of small SEO companies merging, though…

While it could be great to think our own SEO companies are potential acquisition targets for the future, it’s worth considering how the world of web design has evolved so far - and so far, I’m not really seeing a lot of corporate movement here.

Sure, plenty of big companies have their fingers in the pie, but not yet part of a larger and co-ordinated marketing strategy.

I think the big opportunity currently being missed is a single “all internet services” provider - a company which can provide a comprehensive range of internet services outside of traditional webdev/SEO/hosting and provide for tech requirements as well, such as telecoms and IT services.

While such a company could threaten to be an unwieldy monster, I think there’s plenty of room for it - it’s just crossing the bridge between internet services and tech services.

Meanwhile, I think as SEO’s already have to dabble across a range of marketing and development services already, I think any large agency bringing on board quality SEO talent will definitely be able to offer a competitive edge, and that the need will increasingly manifest itself.

However, I’ve been following how the tech side of the internet industry has been developing, and to be honest, it looks like outsourcing could actually become an even larger market than at present.

I think the SEO industry model that will develop over the lifecycle Jennifer originally described will center more on in-house manager purchasing outsource services for specialist marketing niches - local, media, links, social, video, etc.

If this is the case, then corporate budgets or not, the internet could still provide a very protracted opportunity for the entrepreneur, and that niche specialisation will probably offer excellent long-term prospects where bringing these specialities in-house will not prove cost-effective for agencies.

in other words, the money is moving into generic online marketing services - but those who specialise as niche leaders will create more long-term demand for themselves.

Filed Under SEO