It’s all really a matter of definition. If by SEO you mean twiddling metatags, doing keyword research, and fussing with title tags and on page content tweaks, yes I agree that this will lose its value over time. However, I predict that this will happen MUCH more slowly than people think. We just published an SEO case study that showed a 4.5 X gain in search traffic for a site primarily based on “technical SEO”. Think people will pay for that? Ayuh (Mike G, if you read this, that’s a technical American English term, you know, the real English, meaning “Yes”).

In addition, as a crusty old veteran I have seen this story many times. The first time was when I was told that Fortran would disappear as a language. After I first heard that it took a decade before it really fell off as a programming language at all. And let me tell you something, these are MILLIONS of Fortran programs still in use in corporate America today (and COBOL programs too). People who know how to program Fortran or COBOL get paid BIG bucks.

Nonetheless, there is much more to SEO than just the traditional technical SEO tasks. Top tier SEOs know that you need to address the content of the site and the promotion of the site. In fact, this is a major strategic role for the SEO, and here are the major components:

1. Determine where the opportunities are for promoting the business of the site, and size all of these opportunities
2. Evaluate the current site content quality – would someone link to it?
3. Find out what the client is willing to invest in content development
4. Determine if there are any “brand” related restrictions (e.g. the company does not want to produce videos that poke fun at the use of their products)
5. With these points in mind, decide where future content development resources will be invested

This whole process involves seeing the bigger market picture and is the type of discussion that inherently involves the CMO/VP of Marketing, and in some companies, the CEO. This is not twiddling a few bits in a dark corner of the back room. It is driving the process of determining the entire strategy for the web site.

So I know that Mike knows everything I have said here, and his article was really pointed at pure technical SEO shops. Yes, those will fade in value. Want to make sure that your SEO shop does not lose value over time? Then expand your role. Become the strategic visionary for your client’s web sites.

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There’s no real text book, and if there was it would be outdated right after it was published I’m sure. The best place to get the best information in Search Marketing is from immersing yourself in the blogs of SEO and SEM.

Thankfully, Matt McGee comes to our rescue with the SEMMY’s (note…SEM=search engine marketing, the rest is to give it the Grammy’s feel). This “award ceremony” goes through the best posts in the previous year in the search marketing world. The nice thing is, it gives you a fantastic list of articles to read and get caught up on in any of the following categories:

SEO
PPC
Viral Marketing
Social Media
Link Building
Local Search
General Online Marketing
Blogs & Blogging
Reputation Management
Small Business
Analytics
Google
Search Tech

and just for fun…

LOL Funny!
Rants

To my surprise I have 4 articles nominated, in 2 categories! In the SEO category, one called Learn SEO Basics: Long Tail Keywords and another 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours (that also has a great follow-up with 80+ comments called 24 Hour Site Indexing Works Again). In the LOL Funny! category (no one has ever really called me funny actually) I have our most visited and commented post ever, What the Customer Actually Wanted, and the other is LinkedIn Wants Me to Accept or Deny Jesus?.

Matt even made some cool little badges for nominees, which I’m not really into, but I thought I’d branch out a little:

I do think there is a ton to gain from reading the articles being nominated, which I bet you could do in a couple of days. And if you’re really looking for the cream of the crop, the judges are going to be narrowing each category down to a handful of articles (and even letting us vote on them).

Head on over to the SEMMYS for some great reading!

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The nominees this year are highly controversial, because they are inspired or originated from Matt’s own reading list, and are the posts which he highlighted in his monthly roundup posts as being the most important for his clients and subscribers to read if they missed them.

As such, the Semmys represent a subset of the content that is created, but possibly that also allows Matt to highlight articles that were in some way ground-breaking or were the centre of the news more than useful howto articles which might present excellent content, but are not necessarily "must read". They are certainly going to be controversial…

Judging is broken down into 2 stages, with 25 judges being asked to come up with a short list of posts in their assigned categories. I am sure assigning judges was a hard task, because so many of the judges have their own articles nominated, and because of quite visible professional ties with other marketers.

The 25 Judges

• Aaron Wall
• Andrew Shotland
• Andy Beal
• Andy Beard
• Barry Schwartz
• Bill Slawski
• Brad Geddes
• Chris Winfield
• Christine Churchill
• David Mihm
• Deb Mastaler
• Eric Enge
• Jeff Quipp
• Jennifer Laycock
• John Andrews
• Lee Odden
• Lisa Barone
• Logoworks
• Loren Baker
• Matt McGee
• Michael Gray
• Rand Fishkin
• Simon Heseltine
• Stoney deGeyter
• Sugarrae
• Tamar Weinberg
• Todd Malicoat
• Vanessa Fox

The Articles I Had Nominated (yes 4 of them)

SEO Category
SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make

Google Category
Dancing With The Gevil – Defamed By Google?

Digg Favorites Slapped By Google

Blogs & Blogging

Optimizing HTML Links In The Aftermath Of A Blog Storm

For some reason none of my articles about Google and paid links were classed as rants, maybe I need to add some more attitude to those or keep them shorter.
In some ways that is a good thing, it has allowed me to be a judge for the Rant Category as well as SEO Tech

Take a look at those categories and let me know what you think – I will try not to let you sway my choices too much, but if you have a favorite, do let me know.

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*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

Now a panel of 20+ judges are tasked with reading or in most cases, re-reading the posts and picking 3 finalists for each category. Many of the judges have also had their blog posts included in the judging, so Matt has been careful about assignments to avoid conflict of interest issues.

The posts for the two categories (Social and Viral) I am judging include some really great content. When reading these posts, I decided to make things a little more interesting and take a look at some metrics besides the actual content including the inlinks reported by Yahoo Site Explorer, the number of comments and also whether the posts were submitted to: Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us or Sphinn.

Here are the posts for the “Social Media Marketing” category.

Here are the posts in the “Viral Marketing” category.

Keep in mind, this is not a “Best Post for all of Search Marketing 2007″ sort of thing. These posts come from Matt McGee’s personal interests and selections over the year. That said, Matt has pretty good taste and there are plenty of excellent resources in this list. I know it was very informative to review many of them causing me to take notes and send reminder emails to our team.

Once 3 finalists in each category are selected, then they will be posted to the SEMMY site Friday January 18th for open public voting to decide the winners.

The judges and the categories they’re picking finalists for include:

• Rae Hoffmann: Small Biz, Rep. Mgmt.
• Barry Schwartz: Local
• Tamar Weinberg: Blogs
• Christine Churchill: PPC
• Loren Baker: Viral, Rants
• Vanessa Fox: Metrics, LOL
• Jennifer Laycock: Online Mktg./General
• Lisa Baron: Google, Rep. Mgmt.
• Rand Fishkin: Google
• Bill Slawski: Links
• Todd Malicoat: Small Biz
• Andy Beal: SEO
• Stoney DeGeyter: Online Mktg./General
• Deb Mastaler: SEO
• Aaron Wall: PPC
• Lee Odden: Social, Viral
• John Andrews: Links
• Eric Enge: SEO, Tech
• Andrew Shotland: Small Biz
• Jeff Quipp: Social
• Simon Heseltine: Social
• Brad Geddes: Metrics, Local
• Chris Winfield: Google, LOL
• Andy Beard: Tech, Rants
• Michael Gray: Blogs

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