Changing nature of the SEO industry

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Changing nature of the SEO industry

Independent consultants going in-house?

anallawalla

12:23 pm on Oct 25, 2017 (gmt 0)

We all could think of some SEO consultants who have gone on to work for an agency or an in-house role. That suggests that their ability to sell SEO services was exhausted. A few agencies have shut down or have merged. Large companies now have in-house SEO staff (regardless of their actual SEO skills). There's also some truth in the observation that many non-SEOs think they know all they need to know about SEO, which affects their ability to hire/not hire consultants. Many web designers sell new sites with SEO "thrown in" or as a paid extra. Without speaking just from your own consulting experience, what are you seeing "out there" in general? What has changed? Is it for the better?

keyplyr

10:51 pm on Oct 25, 2017 (gmt 0)

I do think the SEO *bubble* has busted. For a time, the buzz word was SEO. It was used as the cure-all for just about anything a web property needed done. I think that trend is declining to a more focussed ala carte work prospective.

Never referred to what I do as an SEO service, but I've often done exactly the same thing for clients as far as working to get better ranking in the SERP for their web properties. I always thought this process was more long term, and tried to warn clients about the fast-fix mentality.

Most all work coming my way currently is for the upcoming Mobile-First Index [webmasterworld.com] and switching a site to HTTPS [webmasterworld.com]. This should keep every developer as busy as they can handle.

Some of the SEO work I've been involved with lately is to make product & info pages more supportive of Voice Search, especially from Mobile Devices. This is (part of) the future IMO and should be regarded as a high priority.

I don't have a comprehensive evaluation of whether or not the SEO industry as a whole is declining or not, but I sure see a lot of changes on the web and someone has to be equipped to do it.

martinibuster

12:19 pm on Oct 30, 2017 (gmt 0)

Jon Henshaw, founder of Raven Tools has joined CBS Interactive as their Senior SEO.

Full announcement on his blog:
https://henshaw.me/entrepreneur/next-chapter/ [henshaw.me]

jebernier

8:08 pm on Nov 3, 2017 (gmt 0)

SEO is getting impossible esp. for some business websites that I've worked on. Unless it a unique niche business, they have no chance in ranking no matter what.
Most clients want immediate traffic!

I tell them if that's what they want then they are going to have to pay for clicks (AdWords).

Mo $ for Google.

Essex_boy

9:45 pm on Dec 16, 2017 (gmt 0)

Ive watched job ads on a major UK site for Adwords and SEO, Seo V Adwords is around 1seo to 5 Adwords jobs.

A lot SEO firms have given up that I know of, should be interesting how Adwords turn out in 5 years time.

anallawalla

10:10 pm on Dec 16, 2017 (gmt 0)

I saw a comment today that even AdWords implementations are very lack-lustre. This is certainly true at my employers, where SEO is far removed from PPC. Big agencies chuck thousands of keywords into a mixer and create hundreds of campaigns with little thought given to negative keywords, for example. I see campaigns not intended for my country and wonder what the advertiser was thinking. I don't see many large companies with in-house PPC management roles, so perhaps the agencies are still dominant there.