The Future of SEO

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The field of search engine optimization has been one of the fastest growing areas of expertise. It's a skill that has been overhyped at times, but is still a necessary component to any sort of online marketing or communications strategy. At Advent Creative, we've been talking lately about what the future has in store for SEO.

In one way, this is the future of SEO: http://www.mastertrafficbuilder.com/

This group contacted one of our clients a while back. The client passed it along to us asking if it was legit. My response was that they might do a good job with link building and for very cheap. The question is if you want this group representing you on the Internet. With a William Hung look-a-like and a free Survey Monkey program for a website, probably not. But that's going to change soon.

Dan Pink, a best-selling author on the changing world of business, describes what I think will be the future of SEO in his book "A Whole New Mind."

In it, Pink argues that the future belongs to creative, empathetic, right-brain people. His reasoning is that anything that is analytical or systematic in nature will eventually be outsourced to a place that can do it for cheaper or even completely automated.

We're already seeing this with SEO. Let's look at link building specifically. Link building is absolutely necessary to any comprehensive SEO strategy. You've got to have it. However, it's not work that requires a whole lot of finesse or creativity. Leaving comments on blogs requires someone capable of reading a post and making a pertinent comment without sounding like a spammer. Something like that may never be automated, but it can certainly be outsourced.

So, the future of SEO is not going to be in the implementation, which can be outsourced or automated. Instead it will be in training and strategy.

Advent Creative has already made the switch. At this point, we have a training-heavy SEO thrust. We teach our clients everything they need to know about SEO so they can then pass on that knowledge and push the execution down to the lowest possible level. This saves them money and makes their whole operation more efficient.

We also work on overall marketing and online marketing strategies that include SEO and social media campaigns. This is something that is inherently creative and therefore will not likely be outsourced or automated.

The third thing we do at Advent Creative is incorporate onsite SEO into the design and development of the websites we build. We work it into the creative process, which greatly increases the functionality and effectiveness of all the sites we make.

As far as implementation goes, i.e. link building, directory submissions, social bookmarking, etc., we don't do much of it anymore. That's because we feel like the future of SEO is going to be training, strategy, and creative development. It's a brave new world.