Has SEO Outlived Its Usefulness?

When I first read this provocative title to a 9/12/05 article on dBusinessNews, my curiosity ran wild knowing that SEO is really still in its emerging growth revolution stage, even though it's constantly changing.  After reading this mostly promotional piece, I then knew that it was written by an internet PR firm who was pushing press releases as an alternative vs.a part of traditional SEM which includes SEO. 

While I believe the article is mainly posturing for this firm, it made a good point about how small and medium sized businesses are finding it harder to justify the increasing costs of SEO.  Certainly, the less competitive the keywords are for the client, the less certain portions of the SEO services should cost, since theoretically, good results should be easier and less time consuming to attain.  Inbound link building, SEO copywriting, and good site architecture-design are different stories as they can be time intensive. But, maybe even less work on those things are needed when primary, yet uncompetitive keywords are involved?

To be fair to the SEO firms, SEM is getting more complex and therefore more time consuming for the more comprehensive kind of SEO-SEM work.  Jim Hedger wrote a great article entitled "SEM Growing More Complex".  I especially liked his first reason, of three, for increasing sophistication (and therefore price increases) in the search marketing sector:  "..consumers are becoming much more Internet savvy, as are the businesses that advertise on the net."  I think this trend will continue, even for the SMB's.

Let's face it, it is tough for the potential long term buyer of SEM to make sure that he is getting true value pricing, and tough for the ethical-value driven seller of SEM to make sure he doesn't undercharge or overcharge.  So when I read this recent Search Engine Watch article entitled "Chasing Search Engine Algorithms: Wisdom or Folly?, Greg Boser's quote in it reminded me of my post on "Pay For Action = Performance". 

Greg Boser of Web Guerrilla said in that article "One thing many people don't realize is that "algo-chasers" DO care about conversions—not just rankings. "This is because most of us are compensated on an affiliate-type payment model. We don't make money unless our clients make money."  I am wondering if this compensation model is for off-line sales as well as online sales, as I don't think that it is workable (from the buyer's or seller's perspective) for search marketing firms to have their compensation based on off-line sales?  It does come down, though, to the length of the buying cycle, and how many "middlemen" are involved for the product or service sold.

In any case, if the buyer's SEM pricing is tied to "CPA" basis, I believe that SEO-SEM will never "outlive its usefulness"!  I also think this same kind of commission based "Pay Per Action" form of pricing is what is causing "The Rise of CPA Ad Networks".  What do you think?

Comments

[Technology Evangelist]

Cost per action works great for businesses who's transactions are fulfilled online. Probably the best example of this is affiliate marketing, where CPA is what it's all about.

The statement saying that SEO is ever increasing in costs is somewhat odd. I'm not sure how that's tracked. Any ideas

[Brokerblogger]

We are in complete agreement about CPA only being workable for online sales. I said this very thing in this post: http://www.brokerblogger.com/brokerblogger/2005/07/pay_for_actions.html . I am now doing a five part series (so far) on updating that suggestion due to the extensive research I've done on it since then (It starts with my 12/11/05 post).

I have personally tracked SEO prices ever since they were my "competition" in selling online and offline buyer guide advertising (started about 1998). But, price increases have been acknowledged in the industry by many authors, especially in the last two years. This post of mine talks a little about it: "SEO - It All Comes Down To Money (Pricing) vs. Value" = http://www.brokerblogger.com/brokerblogger/2005/11/seo_it_all_come.html . The bottom line is that as SEO becomes more complicated, SEO's have to spend more time, which is money, on doing a quality job.

Thanks for the good comment, and the great question.