SEO Blog

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the ill tide washing over the digital marketing industry because of the economic collapse happening in the United States and around the world. The financial crisis has not affected Western Canada as thoroughly as it has other parts of North America I visited in the past two weeks. As I wrote previously, it is difficult to fully grasp the enormity of the problem until you see it in action or talk with those affected by it. While traveling across America, I received a crash-course in fear and desperation. Today, I intend to write about hope.

“I am going to cover the ugly stuff in this post and save the great stuff for tomorrow or Wednesday’s post. There is a method to my madness, one that will hopefully become apparent in the next post.”

Exactly two weeks ago today, Americans elected Barack Obama as their new president. I was fortunate enough to do a live-cast of the election for WebmasterRadio.FM from the Bridges Bar at the Midtown Hilton in New York City. We were in New York for the ad:tech conference, arguably the largest Internet marketing conference in the world. Where there was palatable fear on Monday November 3rd, there was hope on Tuesday November 4th and the morning of the 5th.

“… we’re WebmasterRadio.FM and we are everywhere.”

The words above form the tag-line for an online talk-radio station I work with, WebmasterRadio.FM. I’ve spent the past two weeks on the road as part of the WebmasterRadio.FM touring crew moving from conference to conference, coast to coast. Our job was to interview as many search and Internet marketers as possible at two of the largest search engine and Internet marketing conferences in the world, ad:tech New York and Pubcon Las Vegas. To do my part of the job, I flew nearly 10,000 miles (9971 mi to be exact), or 16,047 kilometers across the continent and back again in a rather nifty reversed N shaped pattern.

That’s a lot of travel in pursuit of whatever the heck I am trying to find out. During the trip, I questioned my sanity nearly as often as the brutal schedule and sheer amount of work challenged said sanity. What prompts an otherwise level headed Internet marketing expert to throw his or her life into a meat-grinder like that? This is a serious though quasi-rhetorical question. It’s not the fun of being away from home or even the sensation that one is somehow important.

An enormous apology to all readers for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been city hopping for the past two weeks from search marketing conference to search marketing conference to search marketing conference. It’s been a long fourteen days and I have literally crossed the continent twice in the endless quest for better information about search, search marketing and online business.

There is a lot of flux in the search marketing marketplace right now. The economy is wrecking havoc on US based SEM firms, some of which are starting to see the extremely rough conditions their clients are going through affecting them. The wonky economy has not effected Canada nearly as badly as it has the United States and, unless one is down here talking to business owners, it is difficult to fully grasp the enormity of the economic crisis.

I am exhausted so I am only going to make a couple notes here before taking a few hours to sleep. Tomorrow is the opening day of WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon.

For the past ten years the Internet has consistently presented new advertising opportunities to businesses of all sizes. For search marketers, the rapid development of so many unique online communication products has offered a virtually unending number of venues of opportunity. From the earliest days of the banner and general search results to today’s cornucopia of marketing channels, search and internet marketers have been able to get messages spread using an ever growing variety of interlinked venues.

The only notable slow-down in tech came in the period of 2000 - 2003 after the dot-com meltdown in March 2000 followed by the shock of the multiple terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Innovation in the form of paid search advertising (and bid-by-auction) pulled tech out of the hole and in the process propelled Google on its current trajectory. Since then, the search and Internet advertising market has enjoyed five years of solid prosperity, growth and extraordinary innovation.

That’s about to change.

This economic downturn will force a lot of change to the search and social media advertising landscape. This is a sobering time and the high-flying days of buying eyeballs before knowing how to monetize the traffic are over. Valuations are again more important than innovations. The free-ride gravy-train of investor or VC capitalization come to a rapid halt, in some cases thousands of miles away from its passengers’ destinations.