This question has never been answered anywhere. I believe there are about 10,000,000 SEO pretender companies, consultants and freelancers in the world offering services or have offered as part of the business they run. 41,498 companies categorized under "web sites" in yellow pages which is usually about 10% because you got your mom and pop shops, basement and garage companies, your online companies and resellers/affiliates so bring that to about 400,000 most proclaim SEO and then include Europe,Asia,India and Pakistan which is 10 to 1. and SEO is usually a 2 or 3 to 1 on web design because everyone thinks they can rank a website or at least charge for it . Amount of people that actually are experts probably in the 10,000 or less range. About 1/1000. Or less? Other Jobs for understanding high numbers.. USA alone employment stats: numbers are rounded. Servers/waiter/waitress 2.4 million Licensed attorneys 1.3 million Licensed Doctors 1 million There are an estimated 31 million bloggers in the United States alone in 2012 Digital Point members 749,053 BHW around members 661,967 Warrior Forum members 893,290 How many do you estimate?
hmm tough question I know for a fact there are 15+ in our small town alone, not including the entire region! But like you say, most are pretenders (we outranked 1 for their brand name in 11 minutes for fun ) Even so, I wouldn't worry about it too much, the fact there is competition proves the market is fruitful Heck, there are 5 sushi restaurants on 1 street here! There's always a bigger market to sell to
lol all these million seo company claim to rank your site on first page, if 500 competitor goes to 500 such company, only way to show up on top page is to increase search result per page by going in google setting.
There are hundreds of thousands to millions of "SEO companies" but only a fraction of these companies actually make good income. It's a competitive business and only a few survive. Many companies offer SEO as an upsell service to their web design services. A lot of freelancers also do SEO part time. There are standards of practice but SEO is an ongoing learning process, as search engines rapidly change their algorythm. I'd estimate "real" SEO experts are in the tens of thousands.