Danny Sullivan Interview
John Scott: In 2005 we heard a lot of webmasters and search engine optimization professionals complain that Google is filtering bought text links, reciprocal links and sandboxing new websites. Some suggest that professional SEO will die out in favor of pay per click advertising. Where do you see SEO heading in the coming years?Danny Sullivan: SEO isn’t going away.
I still see that there will a base level of organic results, the editorial content if you will, which provides a necessary balance to advertising. I expect that the bar will continue to be raised so that those without good content sites will find it harder and harder to do well. But having said that, I’m also sure we’ll continue to have loopholes or techniques that those who want to chase the algorithm can use.
Ultimately, my big message is rather than chase the web search algorithm, people should be thinking verticals. Vertical search results are going to grow and at some point, a switch will flip where they’ll be the default results you get. Do a search for something shopping related, and it will be shopping results you get first, then web search as backup. The smart SEOers will be looking at vertical now and succeeding there. Then when that switch flips, they’ll tap into even more traffic.
In short, Go Vertical, Young SEOer, Go Vertical.
From the V7N Interview of Interview of Danny Sullivan