Evolution of SEO companies

[mkyuen]

As SEO becomes more important to current marketing practice, I'm interested in the evolution of the SEO service providers and am studying the industry structure.

I've an impression that most SEO companies started as an entrepreneur business, correct me if I'm wrong. With the rapid development, many of them are covering full scale of service from web site design. SEO to web promotion.

I'd like to ask for assistance/information of how these companies have grown, such as are they remaining to be small, creative companies or growing to have more than 30 employees, departmentalised companies.

What I'm really interested in is to study their future growth path and industry structure.

Any information or opinion is welcome.

Regards,

M.K. Yuen
Chief Strategist
Global Business Strategies
www.gb-strategies.com

[awall19]

I think the key to the growth aspect is just continual learning. Getting feedback. I still am somewhat green, but with as immature as the market is...its very easy to give people killer ROI. Also you get to see many things as various entrepenuers run their ideas past you in need of marketing help.

[snair007in]

Hi M.K. Yuen,

We have started our Search Engine Optimization Company in United Arab Emirates (Dubai). Earlier we found very much hard to get work. But now.. People are aware of the importance on Search Engine and Traffic.

We are basically on Web Design and SW Dev. We have 3 members in SEO Team. In Middle East the market is growing of SEO.

But clients in middle east are very afraid to give their web site pages to us. We used to create keywords and give them, IT guys in their company wud update the page. (Eg. "currency value" in Google.. www.alansariuae.com)

Anything else on this.. Plz let me know..

Regards,

[Mel]

I feel that a holistic approach to SEO is the way forward.

Customers may come to you for SEO but what they are really looking for is increased profits. In order to satisfy thier logical endgame you have to address many aspects of thier online presence which fall outside of narrow definitions of SEO.

Appearance, copywriting and useability are often just as important to the bottom line as good rankings are. I find that the best approach is to outsource work to experts in these fields, and to fine tune that further an English copywriter, for instance, will often be more effective on a website that targets English audiences than will an American one, due to subtle language and cultural differences.

There are very few very large SEO companies, I suppose perhaps because a small firm using excellent outsourcing resources can do just as good a job, until it comes to things like having 200 highly ranked sites at your disposal which you can use to create links to customer sites.

[snair007in]

Hi Mel,

I completely accept ur ideas. Copy writer.. But in Middle East, when we start working with a web site, we ask abt the Search Engine Optimiztion.. they agree to do so.. But when we ask abt the copy writing they disagree.. coz, they wud already have their company profile ready. Thats the main constraints we face.

And also Mel, as u said, people expect revenue or enquires from their web site. But Middle east companies, they make a web site, and ask us, No one is visiting our website.. why? When we talk abt Inet marketing.. they are not interested. But some clients do good in Inet. They make good revenue..eg, www.alukkas.com/www.buyluggageonline.com

I beleive SEO will become unavoidable.

Regards

[janeth]

Search Engine Optimization?

We started a web design business in April of last year. The problem we had was getting customers so we started working on our site and learning how to do SEO.

If someone has the time I think doing your own site is the way to go but because most people do not have the time they hire someone else to do it.

We started doing SEO work a couple months after being in business.

It works great for us because we can help out in the design along with the search engines.

It is all the same thing really. An ugly website ranked #1 is not going to help anyone. So because we do design, marketing and SEO it all works out good for us.

We have 10 people here at this time and really need more.

As things change it can be a full time job just keeping up.

The forums are great and probably the best way to keep up with all the changes.

[AussieWebmaster]

I agree there is a need to integrate SEO with design work etc.
The days of doing a few things and getting people listed well in the engines have gone...
The factors all mesh together... a sloppy site at number one in SE will not get as much work as the number 2 guy with a humming site... but it may get more work than the guy on page 2 or more of the results pages who have incredible looking sites.
Also if a site looks good and has great placement but does not make the contact process simple will also lose to other sites...
Design, Functionality and Marketing all must be optimized.... the SEO is being replaced by the WMO..
Web Marketing Optimziation...

[joelkatona]

All your posts underscores one thing, search engine marketing is becoming main stream, along with that SEO companies and even small web design shops jumping into to the game in hopes of reaping the benefits of web site owners desperately trying to market their products and services on search engines.

As the developers of SEO software tools we see more and more companies buying our products to work on their client's web sites.

It’s clear the word is out there on the street about the importance of search engine marketing, that means hard working ethical SEO companies will grow by leaps and bounds in the next few years.

[Anita Campbell]

M.K.,

The field of search engine optimization is still relatively young, diverse, and highly fragmented at this time. The majority of SEO and search engine marketing firms are still small and entrepreneurial, and many are experiencing rapid growth, as Janeth describes. Especially as the number of sites on the Internet explodes and it becomes ever harder for your site to stand out.

From my observation, there are 3 general models co-existing right now:

- small, niche specialist firms with 1 - 30 employees, specializing just in SEO and/or SEM (most prevalent as far as I can tell);

- generalist web design-and-build firms or advertising firms that have a division which handles SEO and SEM;

- the emergence of larger specialist SEO/SEM firms. An example is iProspect, which made the Inc500 list for 2003.

The third group (larger specialist firms) is a growing phenomenon, but not dominant at this time.

The field of search is highly dynamic right now, with much going on in pay-per-click, local search, and other developing areas such as book excerpt search. As Internet search develops and matures, the SEO/SEM firms will also grow and the industry will mature.

But my best estimate is we are several years away from seeing widespread SEO/SEM industry consolidation. Indeed, this may be one of those industries which never consolidates completely, especially as to SEO/SEM services for the small business market. In other words, there may always be a large number of smaller SEO entrepreneurs serving small businesses.

Best,
Anita

[fathom]

What I'm really interested in is to study their future growth path and industry structure.

If you look at the traditional "marketing agency"... the ones that you hired to develop a slogan, a jingle, a new promotion, a new campaign, etc. etc. where you worked your butt off brainstorming and developing the "mood"... for a boardroom of client executives and they give you the "thunbs up" or "you stink" results.

This is the future of SEO. A bit less dramatic - but the jest is the same.

Mainstream means "widely accepted" -- SEO has a long way to go to be "widely accepted".

When you are "widely accepted" there are rules and regulations... not self-regulation.

We have a little bit of a hike to get there. :-)