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Amazing Marketing News: SEO Isn’t Quite Dead (Yet)!
By dave_pasternack | March 25, 2008
I made the mistake of opening my e-mail this morning to read an article by Sarah Holoubek entitled “The Return of SEO.” While it wasn’t the worst example of pro-SEO boosterism that I’ve seen, it contained enough misunderstandings about the objective health of the SEO industry to warrant a response.
Ms. Houlebek (quoting the SEMPO 2007 State of the Market Survey) notes that while most marketers (89 percent) engage in SEO, “the majority of SEO spending in 2008 will be in-house.” In other words, most of those highly touted SEO agencies with $500 per hour “SEO rockstars” are going to be missing out on this business. She also notes that only 40 percent of marketers are happy with their SEO firms (which is why they’re fleeing from these agencies in droves). This is a very damning statistic: if doctors or lawyers had the same satisfaction rank, we’d call them incompetent cranks, but that doesn’t seem to bother Ms. Houlebek. Frankly, the only reason we’re seeing such a strong movement toward in-house SEO teams is that marketers have decided that the “professional SEOers” can’t be trusted.
The SEO industry is on life support and despite Ms. Houlebek’s characterization of the in-house search director job as “the new brass ring in search,” it’s more likely a temp job that might pay OK for awhile but will soon be obsolesced as the search engines finally close the door on search engine spam.
Topics: SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Shady Marketing Tactics |
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