In the interview:
Matt Cutts Interview on Personalization and the Future of SEO
Matt Cutts also mentions AJAX and
SEO.
Matt:
"I think there still is a place for you for a pure
SEO consultant but it's also true that over time those consultants have to keep adding to their skill set. A few years ago no one would have even thought about the word Ajax and now people have to think about Ajax or Flash and how do I handle some of these new interfaces to still make sites crawlable? So I definitely think there will still be places for consulting and improving crawlability of sites and advice on keywords and personalization will add some wrinkles to that, but I have faith that, over time we’ll see the benefit to users and if you make good site for your users, you will naturally benefit as a result. Some people spend a lot of time looking at data centers and data center IP addresses and if people want to have that as a hobby they're welcome to it but a lot of people don't do that anymore and they're just worried about making good results and yet, everything still comes out pretty well for them".
Also note the start of the interview where Matt says:
"I think that it’s natural that some people would be worried about change, but some of the best
SEO’s are the
SEO’s that are able to adapt, that are able to look down the road 4 or 5 years and say, “What are the big trends going to be?” and adjust for those trends in advance, so that when a search engine does make a change which you think is inevitable or will eventually happen, they’ll be in a good position."
So I think Matt agrees with me that
SEO is a moving target.