SEO: A Career with a Future - Future Outlook for SEO
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According to a report from Piper Jaffrey Investment Research titled “The User Revolution: The New Advertising Ecosystem and the Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium,” search engine marketing is on the rise. The research company expects total search spend to rise from $15.6 billion in 2006 to $44.5 billion in 2011. That’s nearly triple the money in only five years. Writing about the 425-page report, Dave Pasternak observed that Piper’s growth estimate “is more than four times larger than earlier estimates published by other research organizations.”
The report points to four drivers of SEM growth. Interestingly, at least one of those drivers is potentially at odds with EGOL’s observations, for Piper sees increased use of search engines. Indeed, the report notes that more people use search engines to navigate to web sites – nearly twice as many as those who use bookmarks. The numbers even edge out those who type the URL directly into the address bar.
Another reason Piper sees the field expanding is that direct marketers are increasingly adopting search and SEM. These marketers used to rely almost exclusively on offline marketing methods. They’re beginning to “get it” that SEO and SEM is important. How well they actually understand what it can do for them is another question.
Large brand advertisers are also beginning to get SEM, which is a third factor Piper points to as driving SEM growth. The fourth one is growth in the use of local and vertical search properties. This growth means that SEMs can aim their advertising at specific targets – audiences that are truly interested in their messages. General search engines such as Google are working to make geo- and demographic targeting easier too. This added complexity means that SEOs and SEMs in the future will need to rely on automated tools even more than they do now.
You can be certain that the SEO field won’t look the same in five years as it does now. Opportunities in the field will change (more companies are doing SEO in-house rather than working with SEO agencies), and even the kinds of things that are defined as SEO will almost certainly change. Looking further out – say 20 years – we may not even be using anything we’d recognize as a search engine anymore. As long as you are prepared for change, however, and treat learning about your field as a continuous process, you may find a career in SEO to be very rewarding.
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