Will SEO Ever Die?

There has been a lot of controversy in terms of SEO lately. First, there’s this scathing article by Daniel Dessinger about the SEO industry, which prompted a lot of questions, many of whom are wondering if Daniel is on the money, or at least close, but others who have tried to invalidate the claim. I give Rand another thumbs up in terms of his excellent refutation, but I can’t help but wonder from the standpoint of a SEO newbie (if I’ve even made it there yet): with more people like me who have the interest in SEO, will the market get oversaturated?

Let me rephrase the question. As more and more people become more educated with what makes a good SEO, we can face two dilemmas:

1. There will be more Aaron Walls, Barry Schwartzes, Danny Sullivans, and Rand Fishkins in the world. Will the industry be able to handle them all? Better yet, is there even room for newcomers to move up?
2. Is the current industry too competitive? Will more and more people get better at SEO, forcing it to collapse entirely? Will the exposure of more and more individuals to correct SEO strategies ultimately cause the SEO as we know it to change — possibly to even eliminate it?

Both questions have been playing me for awhile now.

I can only aspire to be like the industry gurus one day. (My SEO Newbie status is generous at best, but hey, if I make it to level 7, I know I’ve fulfilled one of my main missions in life.)

I personally do not think that SEO will fail, and as newbies gain more knowledge, so too do the experts. With that said, I would also like to extend this to Lee Odden’s blog on SEO becoming obsolete.

Lee makes some good points, and I think that that, when applied correctly and appropriately, the social sphere will be able to influence search trends. (Even so, proponents of the social aspect in terms of SEO already have a few challengers.) Still, I’m pretty confident that this is a good healthy direction for a site, because it works very similar to the “trustbox” that Graywolf refers to.

Here’s why:

Being in the “sandbox” (if you will), I see myself getting only a few diggs for a few articles. My content is only in its beginning stages and the real goodies are still being generated (please do not disturb great minds at work). My blog is a work in progress and I am not expecting an overnight miracle. To be a success, one needs to work on a multitude of things, including networking (link baiting is not necessarily what I’m after here, but rather, community involvement) and solid blog building topics.

In other words, my blog still has not gained the trust it needs both as a social media outlet (I’m not all over digg or del.icio.us yet) or as an authority by the search engines. Similarly, Google is still treading upon my site content with caution. Another way to say it: not only am I not trusted yet by Google, I’m not trusted by the social sphere either.

So again we revisit the original issue: Will SEO ever die? I think that Google will eventually trust my site, and nowadays, I see this as occurring with a boost of social networking. Therefore, SEO will change, as it always does, and I believe that Google will place greater emphasis on the most popular digged articles whereas the lesser ones will still take time to get trusted by the search engines, and for those, regular SEO tactics may be just as sufficient.