Having attended numerous interactive events around the country and heard many people speak on the topics of SEO and SEM, I have more than once heard the “industry heavy’s” refer to SEO as a dying art. Well I couldn’t disagree more. Like John C alluded to in his last post, SEO’s are now also “protectors”, playing an integral role in refereeing site design and feature enhancement. Their expertise can help companies avoid the headaches and potential disasters that can ensue when a major site redesign is implemented or feature enhancement takes place. If you don’t believe these “disasters” can and do happen, I suggest that you spend some time on any SEO message board and read the horror stories.

I have recently encountered a situation that proves the validity and usefulness of SEO. I have a client that’s core business is providing backend software and support to online poker related websites. Google, and the rest of the tier 1 engines have strict policies against allowing online poker, gaming and casino companies to participate in their PPC programs. Legal woes and more importantly, misunderstanding, have lit fires under the engine’s legal teams despite the HUGE business opportunities these companies represent.As a result, the gaming companies have been forced to rely on natural ranking to secure prominence in the SERPS, as the majority of their traffic comes from web searches for related terms.

My client understands exactly how important their ranking is to their bottom line. They are currently ranking at the top of the SERPS for several key poker-related terms. Thanks to web analytics software, we can see exactly where the incoming site traffic is coming from, down to the keywords used in the search queries. Armed with this information, we quickly realized that a drop in natural rank for any of those traffic-driving keywords would greatly impact sales. Because of this, when a major site redesign was initiated, I immediately recommended an SEO analysis. This proved to be a very valuable recommendation, as we identified several major design components that would almost assuredly cause a drop in rank temporarily (if not permanently). Disaster averted.

Companies that don’t experience SEM participation restrictions have the luxury of securing 1st page real estate through PPC ads but should still pay attention to and value SEO. Dollar for Dollar, SEO is the best deal going. Getting free algorithmic traffic for highly relevant terms that will drive sales at little to no cost should excite any CEO. For companies who cant participate in PPC, SEO will continue to be an integral technology responsible for the majority of the traffic that hits their site.

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