Will Search Engine Marketing - Replace - Search Engine Optimization

It seems that larger companies like EBAY and AMAZON will automatically get high SERPs - just because they BUY the top spot
- or their pagerank will transfer down to any new site they create (including Dyanimic sites (urls)...


Will SEM eventually replace SEO as the easy way out for most companies - especially with vacillating Ranking Algorithms - and Google's expected loss of Yahoo (making it LESS monopolistic)

I dont think so...many companies who do PPF try organic SEO and then reduce their PPF campaign. So no.

Yah, SEO has the goal of gaining general visibility. Sure, you target N keywords, but really you're trying to generate as much relevant traffic from any keyword combination. Shameless plug, but check out this piece I just wrote about keywords vs. optimization: http://www.portentinteractive.com/optimization.htm.

SEM, on the other hand, is best used to target very, very specific keywords/phrases that have a high probability of generating a direct ROI.

So SEO is a way of getting attention, for relatively little money, across a broad audience (bragging modestly) and SEM is more comparable to traditional marketing (except it's much more easily measured).

Just my opinion, BTW. I'm sure I'll hear everyone else's now

OK.....

I have PR6 pages that are highly optimized, being defeated by amazon product pages with whitebar PR and no backlinks. The first relevant content on these amazon pages is buried under over 200 lines of scripts, image maps and tables. Plus their title tag does not even contain one word out of a three-word search term. My title tag has the three-word search term.

Earning a PR6 through backlinks and building pages takes some work but there is a limit to how much firepower you can expend to sell a $14 item. And who knows what it would take to defeat these amazon pages.

The SEO marketplace is being constricted in much the same way that Wal-Mart has been running small town merchants out of business.

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Forget about what I ranted about above and think of this.....

Look at what has happend over just the past few years. Here are just a few ways that free SEO visibility is being whittled away...

Adwords on the side of the SERPs

Sponsored listings above the SERPs

Froogle

Paid directory listings at topSERPs

Price Comparison Sites

Adsense on content sites also reduces use of the search engines

Goliath auction and shopping sites that the customer has bookmarked instead of using the serps.

Finally, don't think that bonus points in the SERPs will never be on sale. We have heard no report of it yet but they will be sold if the right amount of money is offered. That's what business is all about.

I'm 51 years old and long term money making opportunities are not something that I need to worry about much longer. But younger folks making a living doing SEO should give at least some thought to a back-up plan.

A few of my friends used to own nice specialty stores but they slowly lost all of their customers to Wal-Mart and amazon.... now they are rounding up shopping carts for Wal-Mart for an hourly wage that is less than they paid their own employees.

Times are changing - they always have been and they always will be.

SEM is the future, SEO will always survive, but not in a "Pure" sense. Think of it this way:
Big companies throw money at problems. Search engines need to make money to survive. Soution? Get into bed together.

I think Egol's example is a bad one, I think Amazon gets there fair and square, and Amazon can still be beaten, but I think, in general, SEM will rule the roost in the long term. The question will just be a matter of the mix. of free versus paid.

That said, an SEO that can do the following:
1. Improve usability.
2. Improve a sites sales, not rankings but sales.
3. Advise on technical issues that effect SE rankings and indexing.
4. Help develop search and sales friendly copy.
..will still exist. So many times people talk about increasing rankings. Why? Rankings mean nothing. Selling is the key, and often SEO and selling are at loggerheads. Companies that get the mix right will reap huge rewards.

Selling just rankings and traffic is not a long term job description. Why pay an SEO to help with rankings, when it will take time to have any effect, when you can do paid placement, i.e. AdWords, paid inclusion (Trusted feed) and see near INSTANT results? And better still, you can have sales copy, not SE copy, and still deliver good traffic.

SEO and an understanding of search will continue to be vital, but will increasingly either be a value add service, or transform into WSO: Web Site Optimisation, wereby you help companies achieve more sales and focus on websites as a sales / marketting avenue.

Personally, that is all fine with me. I see no problem with this situation, and far from bitchen' and moanin' about it, I think you just need to adapt. If you are an SEO who doesn't know what a 500 error code is, you are probably in a bit of trouble.

If, however, you are on the other side of the fence, and rely on SE traffic to survive, the trick then becomes: how do I survive in this new world? As Brett at WMW always says, a business model based on free traffic from a company with which you have no contractual arrangement, is a business model that is doomed to fail. So, IMHO, the more of your business that is generated by actually paying SE, the better. At least that way, if something goes wrong, they tell you what. Having the ear of a SE is very useful. Very useful indeed!!!

Yah, but Sears was once the Walmart of North America, too, and look what happened to them.

It's all cyclical, and those cycles are compressed on the Internet. So, while I agree SEO has lost some ground to SEM where paid listings provide better functionality, I also believe the pendulum will swing back. probably in the next couple of years, when a new 'Google' springs up.

Call me an optimist