Discussion: The Future of SEO

[rmccarley]

The end of the year must be making me take a look forward. There have been a couple of really good threads here that got me thinking, too. Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that basing a career on SEO is short-sided.

Here's why: http://www.14thc.com/seo-future.html

As always, I appreciate your feedback.

[toddieg]

nice article RMC.

SEO is only as good as the search engine. there will be a time and a place when the search engine no longer plays as important of a role as it does now, and then 'internet marketing' will come back into play...

[skitzzo]

I am not quite sure what I think about all of it... I agree that search will definitely evolve but I dont foresee it dropping off the face of the earth. No matter how personalized search or the internet experience becomes, there will always be that desire to search for something new. Whether its new information, or a product you hadnt ever been interested in before, search would still play a role. What trends make you think that search will become less important in the big picture?

[toddieg]

What trends make you think that search will become less important in the big picture?

social tagging sites and niche search engines... G can't take the cake forever.... (or can it? )

[skitzzo]

social tagging sites and niche search engines... G can't take the cake forever.... (or can it? )

Even with those things though, search would still have a place wouldn't it? It would take a while for people to get pigeon holed even with the best and most personalized search. Also, how are people going to find these social tagging sites or niche SE's? Through the larger SE's right? IMO, its like Amazon, they are great at suggesting other popular things I might want but I still use the search function a TON.

[rmccarley]

When a friend once tried to warn him to stay away from a particular game he knew to be crooked, Canada Bill responded, "I know, but it's the only game in town."

I think that's a big part of how search has been seen over the last few years. With the rise of social tagging and other online communities the reliance on search will decrease.

I'm not saying it will go away either, just that it will change and evolve and as it does, SEO will likely get squeezed out.

As you mentioned, people will always want to look for new things online. But will those things be commerce-based, informational, or something else entirely? The SEs are working on ways to pick up user habbits so they can return more relevant results based on personal assumptions and past choices. It's not a question of "if" but "when". Targeting a KW won't be nearly as easy when that happens because you will have to target the market instead (think of the Adsense Ford ad...). This is an area of traditional marketing, not SEO.

What's interesting is I see this movement for personalized search as feeding the movement for online communities. Search will help reduce reliance on itself by promoting/guiding users to places like mySpace or SEO Refugee.

Add in Digg and del.icio.us and other similar programs and you've moved away from search reliance. Even if the social bookmarking sites don't pull viewers away from the SEs, they still effect the SERPs based on the BLs coming from them. Either way online communities will have a growing voice over the next few years and anyone with a web site will have to be an idiot to ignore this trend.

[toddieg]

think of search like the history of Television.

in the beginning of TV (united states) there were 2 networks NBC and ABC. in just a few years TV expanded to 98 networks all specializing in different niches. - today there are god knows how many channels, and even more options including satellite and pay per view channels.

while NBC and ABC are still around (and big players too), there are still many more options to choose from...

IMO i believe search will go the same direction: maybe not anytime soon, but Google and their evil ways can't rule the internet forever.... at least i hope not.

[Nadir]

Many of good ideas here. Rmc I was about to write the same thing as you did.

While search engines have an important role when it comes to find websites, with the growing numbers of blogs, forums, online communities etc, more people exhange their ideas about stuff from everyday, but also, they talk about products they just purchased, they display links of products they like or they give advice on forums to people who are actively looking for services.

For example, you often see people asking for a cheap web hosting or something like that in our forums, and people always reply and share their experience about such services. IMO, it's much more better than just typing a keyword in a Search Engine and take the 1st link that comes up! There's no interaction in that!

I really think that the way we are behaving online is about to change, it will more be something focuses on communities. It's just like the real life, you hang out with your friends, they have their new iPod,they tell you it's good, you wanna buy it! Same thing happens in forums for example. Last time one guy said that X was good and because I like that guy (actually that was because he had a lot of posts and ), I got a hosting from X. That's that simple!

And Search engines companies have understood that trend, that's why you have Google groups, Yahoo Groups etc! They know that people are going to search less, because they won't have too, they will have their own group where they can get advices from them.

I'm not saying that everybody is going to be part of a group and don't use the SE anymore, I just believe that search engines cannot be the only mean for people to hear about websites. It's very primitive to look for something by typing a keyword, don't you think? Isn't it better to actually interact with someone?

As for the future of SEO, I believe that our job is going to be more focused on making a website GOOD. SEs are even saying that they want every website that is relevant to be indexed properly and they are always working on it... For example Google said that they are going to find a way to read the text in Flash pages.

So, we really just need to concentrate on marketing and don't forget that we are dealing with HUMAN PEOPLE and we should all make some money online....

[jadibones]

Nice article RMC. I don't think it will be 100%, but think that things are definitely moving more toward personalized search. Whether it be social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg, or google's personalization features, these kinds of services are definitely making an impact.

Personally, I'm not using Google's Personal Search tools, but one thing I'd like to do is ban the site http://www.experts-exchange.com/ from my results.

When you are frustrated as all get out and trying to get Spring, Struts, and Hibernate to work, and the number 1 result on Google for the ultra random search query you came up with is that stinking experts-exchange site telling you to pay money and join when I really doubt that they even have the answer.

<one_more_thing>

I was also thinking about mobile search. Ive been wanting to get a handheld that has wi-fi that I would be able to actually do some work on. But then I thought. It doesn't really make sense for there to be a whole separate infrastructure for mobile devices. It makes more sense that the mobile devices should conform to the regular web standards and make software that can better interpret standard web pages. So im not so sure about the whole "mobile web" thing.

[Nadir]

Mobile thing? Yeah, I know someone who is ready to do that, why do you think Google got all these mobile numbers for with Gmail? They are maybe going to test something first and then let's roll! Adsense on your mobile with a call per click system maybe or even cost per message? who knows where they are going?