SEO is dying! SEO is dying!

So once again we have people posting in the pointless debate over the impending death of search engine optimization. The latest craze in crazy assumptions seems to be that since more companies are hiring in-house optimization specialists the demand for out-house — er, outside specialists must be doomed or something.

Let’s review the facts before we get into anything resembling speculation and opinion.

First, there are always new companies starting up. So it’s not like the pool of companies needing search optimization services before they can afford to hire in-house specialists is drying up.

Secondly, existing companies go through periods of expansion and contraction. Historically, specialist fields see a lot of internal hiring during heated buildup periods like the one we’re currently experiencing. There is a downside to every uphill climb, and this rising hillside will eventually crest and turn into a declining slope. That is, eventually a lot of these SEO jobs will be merged into other positions or removed from payrolls because the need will no longer be justified. We may have to pass through 1 or 5 recessions before that happens, but as an IT professional I have watched the programming industry downsize twice.

Why internal resources are eliminated depends in part on economics and in part on technology. The day when every industrial strength company had to hire staff programmers or expensive contractors is long gone. Most basic accounting applications are now performed either through off-the-shelf software or through service bureaus. The demand for internal programming capabilities is driven largely by administrative needs that cannot be met by off-the-shelf software and which can be satisfied more economically by hiring on-site staff.

The search engine optimization industry will go through similar periods of growth and reorganization. There is a difference, however, between search engine optimization and typical business information technology services. Search engine optimization advances in response to changes in search technology. That is, when new search engines appear and when algorithms change, search engine optimization specialists have to develop new techniques and resources. In business software applications, the same core concepts stay in place for years, sometimes decades.

That is, every 2-3 years we SEOs have to change out a lot of our practices and resources. In the field of business applications programming, there is still software being sold today whose core code was written 20 or 30 years ago. The life expectancy of a robust software application is considerably longer than the life expectancy of a search engine optimization practice (a practice is a collection of methods and resources that are used to achieve a specific goal).

The inherent tension or conflict between search engine technology and search engine optimization continually adds new fuel to the fires of advancement. It’s true that most SEOs today are stuck in the “you need to look at Yahoo!’s backlink reports” zone, but eventually the SEO industry will figure out just how useless it is to dwell on Yahoo!’s bogus backlinks. It takes about 2 years for the SEO industry to unlearn any idea. And that is 2 years from the time when leading voices in the industry start pointing out just how stupid it is to do your link analysis through Yahoo!.

As long as search drives converting traffic to business Web sites, there will be a need for search engine optimization. All the flowery techniques being passed around the SEO blogsphere today will not last long, and those techniques do not constitute the core process of search engine optimization. Most SEOs don’t yet know how to engage in advanced search engine optimization.

For example, people think only “large companies” can provide worthwhile revenue to the SEO industry. The fact is, any company of any size with a large enough potential search revenue stream is an opportunity for search engine optimization. A lot of these firms’ Web sites have some serious crawling issues, and the average SEO is ill-equipped to identify (let alone fix) those crawling issues.

In a service world where everyone looks at Google Analytics to find out what is going on with a Web site, the guy who knows how to dig deep into your server logs is the one who is going to advance your revenues the most. That kind of experience doesn’t grow on SEO blogs. They don’t teach this stuff at SEO conference and seminars. Most SEOs don’t look at server logs, so whether they are consultants or in-house SEOs doesn’t matter.

Your server logs tell you where your links work and where they don’t work. Your server logs tell you what people like and what people don’t like. Your server logs tell you what the search engines like and what they don’t like. Your server logs tell you everything you need to know about why you’re only achieving this much as opposed to that much with your Web site.

Deep log analysis, particularly on a large Web site with a lot of traffic, is a time-consuming process that requires (in my opinion) some programming skill. Every time someone asks me to recommend a “good” Web analytics package I’m at a loss for words because, frankly, I’ve been using lots of Web analytics packages through the years and I’ve never once found a reason to stop writing my own analytics tools.

Advanced search engine optimization also has to stay on top of query trends. Most SEOs today don’t even talk about query trend analysis, query space development, or analyzing event-driven query spikes. If they are not talking about it, are they doing it? The majority of SEOs are still trying to figure out where to get more links from — how much time do they actually devote to search engine optimization?

The return on investment has to be greater than the investment, and there are still many lessons to be learned in an industry that has no standards. We have not yet resolved the credibility issue. Far from it, actually, because as an industry we have no credibility. Which means that search engine optimization is still seen as a strange practice by many business decision makers. They don’t yet realize what the value is because their business classes and seminars don’t talk about it.

That is, search engine optimization is still being birthed. We have yet to reach maturity as an industry. There is no way that “SEO is dead”, “nearly dead”, or “about to die” because it’s still growing and won’t stop growing for at least the next 5-10 years. Too many people are playing SEO-by-the-numbers, meaning we have not yet accumulated enough horror stories of failure and frightful abuse for the public to demand real standards, real accountability, real professionalism.

Search engine optimization is still very much a frontier service trading in beaver skins and buffalo hides that has yet to build its first railroad or factory. In terms of industrial processes, search engine optimization is a baby just on the brink of entering its first year in school.

When the corporate world can quantify the steps it takes to optimize for search and compute the return on investment, things will begin to settle down. But the need for new theory will never go away until search technology stops evolving.

You cannot optimize once and walk away. You have to constantly monitor your query spaces, relevance factors, and build new resources. Many companies will assume, at some point, they can afford to let their on-staff SEO specialists go. The inevitable backlash will create a new period of demand for SEO consultants.

But that day is still far off. For now, the demand for on-staff SEO specialists will continue to rise for at least a couple more years, if not longer. And while that demand rises the need for outside consultants and specialists will also increase.

The next time you find a blog post or news article that talks about the impending death of SEO, just yawn and get back to work. You can prove your worth in the ROI column far better than in the SEO blogs and forums.