It seems like everyday, the field of SEO is getting spread farther and farther into new territories that we never saw coming the day before. It’s amazing to look back at the turn of the century, when the term SEO got birthed out into the web development community, and how many webmasters laughed or just sat there befuddled by such an overly fancy name for marketing. But here we are now, and this multi-million dollar industry juggernaut is nothing to sneeze at.
Just like any other industry out there, the more technical breakdowns that start happening, that is to say, the more micromanaged parts of the SEO routines become, a new vacuum effect begins to form where there is a need for specialists in those micromanaged routines. For example, just off the top of my head I came up with the following types of SEO specialists;
- Link building specialists
- Social Media Marketers
- Email marketing specialists
- Visitor usability analysts
- Online reputation firms
- Web copy writers
- On Page SEO specialists (like yours truly *wink*)
I already know there’s more that I didn’t mention… but you get the point. The SEO industry is not isolated from the same effects like the medical industry already has in place; doctors only practice certain kinds of medicine, SEO’s practice only certain kinds of techniques too.
This Could Create SEO Standards
Ah yes, there’s a hot topic that I can tack on to this subject! Think about it for a second; looking back at the medical field reference I used, would you want a physical therapist to perform a spinal tap on you? How about a foot doctor to treat your flu? You could call on a General Practice doctor… but what if you need something beyond what they can do? You won’t ever see any medical professional out there claiming to do certain things they were never trained to do. If you do, then they’ll be in court before you know it for misrepresentation and malpractice.
Maybe the same thing should go for SEO practitioners too. If you’re a link builder, you got no right fiddling around with writing 500 pages of copy for a new site. The same could be said for on page SEO’s like me trying to get out and do a massive social media marketing campaign; to put it mildly, I just don’t have the time or mental capacity to be 100% successful at both at the same time for a project. But more importantly, I’m a specialist in on-page SEO and not an inbound link or traffic builder… I have no business doing that.
So if I can stand here and feel comfortable with saying what my limitations are, what my focus is, and what my areas of expertise are, then I can sell myself on that alone. But the beauty here is that perhaps this approach will weed out the weenies in the industry, the fakers and under-educated passing off services they really can’t/won’t do. Quacks in the SEO industry…
Be Proud, Be Loud
Over time, I imagine, we’re going to see these micro-niche specialists grow into large hordes of dedicated professionals. And as that could happen, we’re going to watch the pool of SEO talents grow to a point where we have more competition, a harder time explaining to business owners what we can do for them, and a larger network of peers that we’ll have to call on to get something done. The biggest thing that’s gonna drive this is how the search engines are constantly evolving, pushing us to really reevaluate how we do what we do for sites we have, and how we’re going to have to keep readjusting our technique. Eventually, there’s only so much you can know how to do effectively versus passable in order to be successful.
So self marketing is going to become a little more frantic, justification for your services are going to be a little more preplanned when you’re presenting yourself to a potential client, and lastly, your costs could take a hit because so many other hands are going to be touching your project too.
Conclusion
Find a place to make your stand now I say. Declare your specialty, be king/queen of your SEO niche before you have to share your spotlight with hordes of others.
