I’ve been signed up for daily Monster job notifications for a few years. Over the past few months I’ve noticed more and more large companies hiring for search marketing related positions. Most of them are entry level “link building†positions but I’ve seen 1 or 2 that look a little more high level. Do you think large, more “traditional†style companies (as a whole) are starting to take more notice of search marketing? Seeing positions on Monster has made me start to wonder if at some point just about every large company will have a search marketing division and what impact that would have on search marketing as a whole. After all, large companies could potentially throw resources at search marketing that the “average†webmaster could never duplicate.
When I was talking to SEbasic at this Internet trade show in London last week I said to him how the best SEO tactics soon might well be to forget about SEO. The search engines are catching up with whatever we try anyway so in the end it pays off to just have quality copywriters who write naturally optimized for end-users. Besides that, yes it seems SEO is leaving the underground scene and starts to become a mainstream marketing channel. But it's still got miles to go. At this tradeshow there were at least two dozen CMS vendors offering their solution but none that I saw were pro-actively advertising SEF as being a USP. I'm intersted to see where this increased SEO awareness eventually will lead. In a way we're making it easy for the SE's if all is white hat. But in the end even white hat SEO remains ranking manipulation so if the big names start pumping money into it the indexes might get skewed more and more. Whilst the fragmented internet market consolidates more and more I think established brands will become more important than ranking. We'll see...
I’m starting to see a larger and larger spread between a search engine marketer (SEM) and a search engine optimizer (SEO). Seems to me the SEM, which is the field I think I think “corporate†will adopt, is more about the entire marketing process as it relates to Search Marketing, where as SEO is more and more a term that seems to be tied to people who do little more than link building. Plus, large companies are used to the “marketing†term. I see the professional SEM carrying out a number of duties for the larger company – evaluating copy and modifying where needed (better targeted titles for example) and working with IT on the proper structure to present that copy for example (I’ve seen countless large corporate websites that hide their best copy behind javascript or bury it so far in a site it will rarely be found). I could even see the professional SEM prioritizing the subjects that should be written about based on current estimated search potential. Link building will always be part of the process – at least for as long as links carry value in the search engines. There are other areas, such as news penetration for example, that I also see the professional SEM taking the lead role on. I’ve been excited to see SEM seeming to inch a little more towards mainstream marketing. I think it could be good for the industry as whole. If I owned a large company I would seriously consider hiring someone as my SEM Manager. I would charge them with capturing the traffic available today and keeping current with industry trends to best position my site for future opportunities and changes within the industry.
Most of the CMS systems were SEO'd though. Some of them didn't seem to take any SEO in to account when developing the systems, but many were. There was a lot of BS flying around at that fair (The IIS hosting guy sticks in my mind), most of it regarding SEM/SEO. SEO is clearly a bit of a buzz subject at the moment and almost everyone is jumping on the band wagon. Longevity is the key here. Those companies that develop real systems for promoting their sites will succeed, while those that focus on getting "Just enough done" will fall below the fold in the next 12-18 months. The industry is getting harder to do well in. It will continue to do so.