It seems like every time I check up on blogs someone is decrying the bygone days of search engine optimization as if it has been dead for years. This strikes me as more than strange. Granted, many of the old black hat techniques are certainly no longer viable. Google continues to create better and better algorithms to stop search engine spammers from ruining the web, and because of continual failure, many old school SEOs (myself included ) have hung up those black hats and decided to pursue something else.

But here is the reality. SEO is thriving! I might even go so far as to say it is in its prime. A number of key factors have come together very recently to cause a dramatic uptick in demand for SEO services. Among them are the following:

• Paid search is becoming more and more popular and very expensive as an advertising method
• Google is no longer shunning most SEO as black hat. The company is embracing it with guides, videos, and search engineers who now act as SEO evangelists
  
• The complexity of paid search is almost on par with SEO
• Serious investors are getting involved in SEO

Paid search is becoming more and more popular and very expensive as an advertising method Read the rest of this entry »