Is it odd that I agree with Calacanis?

I finally got around to reading Jason C’s post on SEO / SMO as crap, and largely I agree. This may seem strange as I 1) strongly focus on SEO for my sites and 2) have been hired by a handful of sites to do SEO. That said, Jason is primarily right; for every 20 seo sites I see at least 19 are doing something wrong. A while ago I posted about this.

Now we have people arguing for social media optimization, and telling you how hard it is and how you need them. This is the essential problem with SEO/SMO it’s not that hard. SEO will only last as long as there is a learning curve. This leads SEOs try to make things sound complex and tell you how much of a difference they’re going to make, but that’s all bound to change. As the next generation of marketers begin learning this stuff as just one of the handful of tricks that they have, the SEO specific firm will begin to disappear.

So enjoy the SEO business while it lasts, because it won’t be around forever, at least not as it currently exists. Sure, there are other areas of marketing that companies could do but choose to outsource - such as advertising - but the difference with SEO is that it is so easy that it cannot possibly last forever. I’m sure a number of companies will still choose to outsource SEO - they do outsource other easy things - but the pie will certainly begin to shrink, and the bad SEOs will find themselves where they belong: unemployed.