By Chris Lee

The great and good of the UK’s search marketing and digital media scene met at Brighton SEO this month to discuss best practice and even the very future of the search engine optimisation (SEO) industry.

First up on the day’s agenda was a heated panel debate into the future of SEO and whether it was “doomed”, which concluded that the industry’s own definition needs to change and, in the words of one of the panellists, independent SEO strategist Rishi Lakhani, the industry needs to “grow up”. Jamie Freeman of Web design firm Message was even more scathing.

“With SEO we’re always two steps away from black hat [cynical SEO techniques],” he said. “I don’t see a difference between black hat and white hat [ethical SEO techniques], it’s all ‘shades of grey hat’. I’ve been a commercial [Web] designer all my life and there’s something at the root of SEO which is all about getting things found, not about quality.”

Adapt or die

Andy Budd from online marketing agency Clearleft compared the SEO industry to the financial sector and denounced it as “morally bankrupt”.

“I don’t know any black hat doctors or airline pilots,” he argued. “As Google removes the value of link building it forces SEOs to become real marketers. Great content means a great experience.”

Lakhani was in agreement that SEO professionals need to adapt – and fast.

“Where SEO is doomed is if you continue to be link junkies and don’t migrate to full-time marketers and understand how people interact with search engines in the sales cycle,” he said. “SEO needs to grow up. It’s still in its infancy but SEOs need to grow up to become real marketers.”

Nichola Stott of digital consultancy The Media Flow argued that the public relations industry was out to “steal [SEO’s] lunch”.

“There’s still a huge need for SEO skills,” she argued. “It’s evolving to become a technical marketing exercise.”

Creating value

With the general consensus appearing to be that SEO needs to adapt, what form should this maturing take?

Brighton SEO organiser, Kelvin Newman of Site Visibility, told NMK: “I think we’re all getting older and wiser and realising that we need to be creating value. I expect search marketers to start trying to understand psychology, economics and more traditional marketing disciplines to deliver more value for their clients than just working out ever more inventive SEO tactics.”

So does this mean SEO agencies are destined to become, in effect, full service digital marketing agencies to survive or will there still be a niche for search marketing in isolation? That depends on the client, according to Newman.

“Not every client wants a full service agency and while they don’t there will be a need for specialists. But as a specialist firm we will have to get more comfortable working with and collaborating with agencies and freelancers of different backgrounds,” he concluded. “We’re all trying to do the same thing - deliver more business for the client - and it’s easier to achieve that working together.”