SEO Companies Starting to Earn Less
The SEO industry is known to be one lucrative marketing wing. The advent of Internet made innumerable businesses understand the need for online presence with the help of search engine optimization companies. However, Dave Pasternack, the president of Did-it.com, a search engine marketing firm pointed out that revenue from the SEO industry has reached a painful decline in growth.
Pasternack based this information from MarketingSherpa.com’s research, which have shown a good increase in SEO companies’ revenue growth rate of 124% from 2004 to 2005, and stalled in 2006.
Here are three reasons Pasternack gave behind this revenue slump of the lustrous SEO industry:
1. Marketers Are Discovering That SEO Isn’t Rocket Science
2. Marketers Are Realizing That SEO is a “Fix-it-Once” Task, not an Ongoing Service
3. Marketers Are Wary of Pushing the SEO Envelope
Jim Hedger of ISEDB.com gave a good insight about the Pasternack’s speculations. According to Hedger, SEO is neither easy or a one-time-fix because quality SEO companies actually go about a great deal of planning before employing any SEO technique. SEO Spam makes marketers nervous is, unfortunately, too true. The unsung SEO heroes should be given more credit.
An analysis of the MarketingSherpa’s research, showed two more agreeable reasons behind the slow in growth of SEO companies’ revenue in 2006:
- flaw with the labeling of the years when revenue was generated and PPC’s (Pay Per Click advertisement) onslaught
- and bigger businesses creating their own in-house online marketing departments
I was hoping one reason could be because other companies with lower SEO budgets have been outsourcing their SEO requirements to India and Philippines. But I have yet to check MarketingSherpa’s research coverage of SEO companies.
Pasternack’s Troubled Times for SEO Firms
Hedger’s A Troubled Look at SEO
SearchEngineWatch Forum Thread

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