If you don’t know who Michael Martinez is, he’s one of the best people writing about SEO right now at his blog, SEO Theory. Today he takes a look at the SEO business, and where things are headed for some companies.
But mostly, I enjoyed his take on the SEO Conferences.
The SEO conferences are notorious party magnets and most conference insiders willingly admit that you get more and “better” information after the panels have ended for the day. What does it say about our industry that people are getting the best technical advice from other folks with drinks or drugs in their hands? Alcohol-based SEO instruction is not optimal, so there is considerable irony in the notion that you’re learning how to optimize from someone who may be three sheets to the wind and is willing to mumble something about how to steal links from Web sites.
If that is the best this industry has to offer, I can almost guarantee you that government mandated licensing, certification, and regulation are only a few years away. All the professional organizations and training programs in the world won’t stop the lawsuits, coinsumer complaints, and search engine penalties.
Haha, ain’t that the truth? As a teetotaler, I only attended one SEO Conference. I never did learn any “big secrets”, even at the bar. My sense of the event was it was more of a social event, where people are traveling on someone else’s expense account. Not exactly the type of place for small businessmen and non-drinkers like myself and my wife.
In the end, Michael’s conclusion that change may very well be forced upon the industry seems likely. If the issue of SEO Malpractice becomes big enough, the whole game will change overnight. Bad SEOs hurt everyone, the same way scammers do in any industry.