Become a SEO freelancer or not?

Is there enough future in SEO to think about going freelance and get hired by different companies? Or is the trend that al larger companies get an inhouse SEO pro?

That's like asking is there any future in being an astronaut...

"Yes" there is; but there is a huge difference between "wantabee" and "is".

You tend not to get any handouts and you gotta perform... and in that lies the rub.

Search is all about performance and if you're not that good... you're future is at minimum "inhouse" and more likely a quick career change - say a "MacDonald Employee flipping burgers instead of keywords; working the backshift at minimum wage".

Dear fathom,

Thank you for your reply.

I think you give a SEO pro to much credit when you compare him to an astronaut.

I was just wondering if SEO won't be a part of general online marketing and the demand for a SEO will become smaller.

What do you thing about that?

Build a few sites of your own and see if you can make money.

If you can't make money on your own sites you will probably not be able to make money if I want you to work on a site about "hydraulic lifts" or "milk paint" - at least not enough to justify my cost of paying you.

If you make nice money from your own sites then why would you want to work for me?

I think you missed the point...

As always Egols advice is right on... if you can't do it for yourself nobody else will want you, but if your good then don't waste your time for a piddly freelancer salary... most seo who are worth their salt work for large companies or only for themselves.

I am not sure however why everyone keeps asking the question will there be a future in seo... internet is only getting larger and more competitive which will put good seos only in higher demand.

This salary survey previously conducted by SEOMoz might be of interest to you. The data is good but I can't speak for the integrity of all of the people who provided data.

http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-industry-survey-results

The other three respondents here are three of our best contributors so I would take their advice into serious consideration.

I am close to 60 years old (yes, an old fart) and I wonder how important SEO will be as I finish my career.

More and more people are finding reliable and deep content sites such as WebMD. Once they find them they are bookmarked and you return there whenever you have a medical question. These sites are maturing in many topic areas and many people go straight to them instead of to search.

More and more people are also discovering large content sites like wikipedia. Now, even I go straight there instead of to search when I have a need for certain types of information.

Those are for info sites but this also extends to retail. There are lots of great discount or brand name retail sites. I go straight to Dell or NewEgg when I am buying certain things. I don't search because I know where to buy what I want.

I love search but I use search less now than ever before. I am sure that I am not the only person who behaves this way.... and the number of people who behave this way is growing.

I challenge you to go to Google Trends and look at the search volume for about ten different words or phrases. My bet is that most of them have declining volume.

Another thing.... competition is getting insane on the web and a person who owns a small website had better get big and bad fast or the massive sites with heavy funding are going to run completely over you.

I am willing to bet that if you searched for 1000 different terms four years ago you would find a lot more different domains holding top position across that 1000 terms than you would find today. Big sites are taking over the web and these means that smaller sites are being squeezed out. Just like the supermarket biz a few decades ago. The mom and pop stores are gone, replaced by supermarkets and now superWalMarts. This means less sites to SEO.

Finally... improvements in search engines are going to make it less important to optimize pages. They will determine the content and its value by using visitor actions or language patterns that eliminate the need for title tags and code mark-up. Also, blogging software and page editors will have better page optimization built in.

So... for an old fart like me, there might be a way to retire while SEO is still important - MAYBE. Young farts better be ready to jump to some new occupation or be squeezed out just like the mom and pop grocery stores.

dear respondents including "the old fart" , thank you for your views and opinions.

I'm new to this forum and this thread convinces me that this site will be a good source for questions I will have in the future.

Actually I give too much credit to astronauts!

They really don't operate on their own and they can't do their jobs without a very big billion dollar triple redundant net.

As time goes on it will become increasingly important to research your niche and create goals based on data...
I actually don't go straight to wikipedia when I have a question, I type it into my google toolbar as I know wikipedia is nearly always at the top... but the result is the same

Things are getting more challenging, that is why I still believe good seo will only become more and more in demand by companies seeking a reliable solution to their dilemma.
Maybe I am just blind but I have not seen a decrease in demand for seo, I have actually seen it increase greatly through the past few years...

I have general agreement with this... the demand for Good SEOs will increase as the competition intensifies and as search engines and software eliminate the need for drudge optimization.

So if you want to survive at SEO you have to be a lot better in the future than you are now... and you better have a much higher skill set and knowledge base.

But this will not last forever.... the last SEO will be like the Last Samurai. They will only be successful if they can get so close that enemy guns are no longer an advantage.

I can see what EGOL is saying and that's part of the reason why I am in the process of stopping SEO for others, and trying and to setup my own sites, on topics that I love.

SEO is becoming more and more competitive, and the big companies are becoming more and more web savvy. So I need to stop working for others and just work for myself in an effort to get a larger share of the SEO pie before the big boys move in and eat it all up.

I do very little work for other people - almost none.

The reasons....

1) If I work for clients I earn money. If I work for myself I earn money AND I build equity.

2) If I work on my own sites I have the enormous advantage of knowing the sites completely, the content area thoroughly and have long-established relationships with other webmasters in my field. I have none of that working on client sites.

3) If I work on my own sites I spend zero time getting familiar with clients, zero time marketing, zero time reporting, and zero time billing and zero time explaining all of the above. All of the time that I spend benefits me.

4) If I work on my own sites I develop a strategy that suits me and can follow it even if it does not suit the client. Sometimes I intentionally follow strategies that are more fun than profitable because it is my site (but those often attract great links).

5) Working on your own site as opposed to someone elses is much faster. I build 20 times faster for myself than for a client. This kinda goes hand-in-hand with 3 and 4.

As far as the death of Mom and Pop, I totally agree. I've thought this way for a long time. The web 10 years ago was the wild west, now it's like the industrial revolution, and 5-10 years from now the web will be made up of only multi-conglomerate corporations. Mom and pop SEO's will be working on the assembly line dreaming of what could have been if they had started earlier and smarter.

IMHO The only way for an SEO to survive in the future is to:
1. Get a job with a big company.
2. Start a new site that is so unique and popular that it explodes like a wildfire.
3. Build your own site early on and make it a huge powerful MONSTER!

4.Go Viral... Brilliant thread.

I to see the game getting harder. As soon as SEs can read video/flash files and index content the smale website winning large money terms are going to be very difficult.

Still as with other retail businesses to continue with EGOLs analogy such as niche markets, localised products, service industries will still be small sites.

Big SEO will continue to be more a merging of other forms of marketing.

Content creation is the future in SEO. Good content, best on the web quality will be able to compete. The others will need money in order to compete or will fall by the wayside IMO.