2007 has been a very interesting year in the SEO/SEM industry. We’ve seen Google gain even more of the search engine market share and the rise and fall of some of the major SEO players. SEO itself has become more of an institution and it seems every company wants in on it whether or not they are qualified. SEO/SEM has become increasingly more visible as hosting and design companies are pushing ’search engine exposure’ as an add-on. There have been feature articles in many popular marketing and business magazines as well. The question has shifted from ‘what is SEO?’ to ‘how much benefit can I get from SEO?’.
With the transition of the industry into the mainstream marketing arena, more and more companies are springing up and more ideas are being tested. 2008 will be a great year for SEO with the influx of new talent and ideas. Search engines themselves have grown into some of the biggest companies in the country and there will of course be big announcements from them. The following are TreeHouse’s major predictions for 2008.
1.) Death of DMOZ
DMOZ may not be so well-known outside Web and tech savvy circles, but DMOZ still has a lot of influence on Google, Netscape, and AOL search. DMOZ is a non-profit open directory that is maintained by editors. Web masters submit their site to the directory and editors approve or deny the listing. This is of course in opposition to Google’s automated indexing. Google and the other engines do spider and use the DMOZ index as a ranking factor for their own results. DMOZ has always worked fairl closely with Google due to Google’s ties with the Mozilla foundation (creators of Netscape and FireFox). In the past 5 years or so, the accusations of corruption and willful manipulation of directory listings by editors has grown more and more apparent.
The incredible difficulty of getting listed in the directory mixed with rampant corruption charges has pushed most Webmasters and SEOs to give up on DMOZ all together. I believe that sometime this coming year, Google will distance itself from DMOZ and signal the death of the directory. DMOZ is indexing pages far too slow to be a real effective tool for Google. It was more helpful when Google had a smaller index and had to determine the relative longevity of sites. Now, with a massive index and years of data, Google no longer needs the DMOZ directory for anything other than bad publicity. Google ending its official relationship will cause DMOZ to slowly die.
2.) Purchase/consolidation of major SEO companies
It would be very suprising if the major SEO companies didn’t start receiving more offers for purchase from larger traditional marketing companies. Because SEO/SEM is so alien to most marketing companies, the risks and costs are far higher to start an SEO division than to buy an existing successful SEO company. It is also becoming harder and harder for larger SEO companies built around old methodologies to deal with the influx of new talent in the industry. The SEO indsutry has not yet adapted to freelancers and skilled contract SEOs. It also has had problems dealing with the protection of their intellectual property and research.
My list of most likely to sell all or part of the company to a larger marketing/Web company:
ICrossing - Big lay offs when they hired new CFO Michael Jackson. They still claim to be trying to set up an IPO, but it seems likely that they could be purchased by another publicly traded company if the IPO bid does not pan out. SEO, Inc. – One of the older SEO companies and still privately owned. It seems likely they may take the IProspect route and sell to a much larger marketing firm. SEO, Inc. has reached the level where it has to grow to a larger corporate entity, sell to a larger corporate marketing company, or stagnate as a small business. Submit Express – They are one of the few original SEO companies to maintain rankings for ’search engine optimization’ after the Google flush of last year. They should take notes from SEO, Inc. and ensure they can market and sell outside of #1 rankings. They are growing rapidly and are in a prime position to sell. Marketing companies would buy the company simply for the rankings it already has in Google.
3.) Record growth in the SEO/SEM industry
SEO is here to stay. The industry has grown year after year and the core methodologies are far more refined. The major search engines are no longer doing massive changes to their ranking algorithms and ethical SEOs have learned to work together with the engines against of against them. Google has gotten very good at weeding out spam and unethical tactics forcing many of the ‘less-than-ethical’ SEOs out of business by simply making them ineffective. More and more companies are realizing how powerful organic search really is. I predict the best year so far for SEO.
The main thing to keep an eye out for is the blending of SEO with more traditional Web marketing. SEO is finding its place in the marketing realm and beginning to coexist quite well. Instead of being a stand alone service, it will be far more commonplace to see SEO offered as a facet of an overall online marketing program.
4.) Google will continue to dominate the SE market
Despite what many market analysts and bloggers like to fantasize about, Google will not fall from grace this year. It’s predicted every year now, but the stock is stronger than ever and continuing to climb. Google is expanding into radio and television now and bringing a whole new model for advertising to the forefront. I don’t see anything but good things for them again this year.
5.) Google will start being very apparent in the television advertising market
Google has a history of expanding before waiting to see results. They expanded into radio and allowed PPC clients to run ads on the radio with the same ease as running them on the Web. I do not think Google will sit around crunching numbers to see if the PPC model applied to radio is the next evolution or not. I think they will expand into television as soon as possible. Most likely, this will happen this year and initially be announced quietly. It’ll be a new feature in Google Adwords accounts sometime in 2008.
6.) Yahoo! will unveil a reworked PPC advertising model
Yahoo! has always had trouble in the PPC market and sought to attack Google directly with a new search advertising model called Panama that was launched in February of 2007. It was a dismal launch that only saw Google take even more market share. Later in 2007, the CEO was let go. Considering that 80%+ of Yahoo!’s revenue comes from advertising, they will need to do something huge this year. Whether it be a totally reworked PPC program or intense advertising of their system, they have to do something to increase the number of PPC customers. Of course, advertisers go where the users are. If Yahoo! manages to pick up a better share of the search market, advertisers will naturally migrate there.
7.) YouTube will cause Google more headaches
The RIAA, MPAA, and television networks have grown more and more militant about their content ending up on the Web. The RIAA, especially, has escalated this into a full blown war that has them in court on a daily basis suing pirates and content providers. YouTube has been in hot water for hosting copyrighted content for over two years. It’s purchase by Google has seemingly provided it with more slack and negotiation powers, but the facts are that a huge portion of the content on YouTube is copyrighted (and not by YouTube). I seriously doubt the major media companies will allow it to continue as it does now. Expect more negotiations between Google/YouTube and the major networks, studios, and record companies. Considering Google could buy up many of the people suing them, it adds a strange new twist to the issue.
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