Remember how awkward and geeky and freakish you felt in your adolescence and teenage years? Do you recall the nastiness of high school gossip, kiss-and-tell social cliques, and angry aggressive jocks/gangers? Have you come to terms with that weird overarching sense of exstistential angst almost everyone confronts in their teens? If I remember correctly, it sucked.
Flash ahead a decade or so. At age 15, the search marketing industry is acting well, like a 15 year old.
There is always simmering debate in search marketing circles about the value and virtues of SEO. Once in a while that debate flares into flame-wars and cat-calling. In the past, these disputes tended to confine themselves to industry forums and chat-rooms, rarely escaping the inner-world of the search marketing community. It doesn’t work that way anymore.
What might appear to be an adolescent squabble to all but the keenest of observers is in fact the fallout of four years of increasing specialization. You see, the practices of the search engine marketing have changed dramatically over time. Where only a few years ago search marketing meant SEO and perhaps some PPC, today’s online environment demands proficiency in social networking, audio or video editing and constant content management. It is rare to find a search marketing agency proficient in all aspects of online marketing. The SEM sector is factionalizing behind skill-sets, forming cliques who will argue for or with each other like high school kids. Our good growth is being expressed in our latent regressive tendencies.
For the past four months or so, there has been a lingering tension between two dominant factions of the search marketing community. It started with an article by the president of a prominent PPC firm in a prominent digital marketing magazine. He like, totally diss’ed on SEOs man, like, totally.
That article was answered with another which in turn was answered with another and another and another. Between the articles, the blogosphere was blitzed with comments on both sides of the debate. The SEOs and the PPC’ers are be squaring off in an argument over optimized organic SERPs vs. planned ad-budget spending.
The SEO is unnecessary argument put forth by that prominent PPC firm’s pres got enough traction to attract a second absurd argument that says SEO is easy. The typical counter argument goes something like, “No it’s notâ€. It often takes 1500 words to articulate the argument, proving that, if anything, SEO provides enough material for 1500 words. BTW: SEO is NOT easy for most people. Similarly, fixing a washing machine and replacing the valves on a Slant-6 are both easy for some and quite complex for most. It helps if you know what you are doing.
The tenor of debate in the industry at this time is overly harsh and wondrously immature. It is also being listened to in places we would likely wish to make a better impression for ourselves and our colleagues.
The search marketing industry has grown to become part of mainstream advertising consciousness. When a number of well-known search marketers get into a public flame-fight, the mainstream marketing media takes note. Search marketing gets a lot more attention today than it did two years ago. In previous years, the tools we used to communicate where less accessible and the content far less interesting to anyone but SEO practitioners. Today, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of subscriptions available for serious information about search marketing.
Some corporate types are even said to consider search an important component in a competent online marketing strategy. As a matter of fact, most savvy corporate types can read the writing on the server room walls. The Internet is becoming the only media that matters. If only they could find service vendors who acted like they knew what they were doing.
Many of us left high school behind us one, two and in some cases even three decades ago. It is truly amazing to see how hurtful habits formed in our formative years can come back to hurt us on a far larger scale in our adult ones.
Can’t we all just get grown up?
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