I’m an SEO Celebrity! Please listen to me…

An article caught my eye last week, written by Lee Oden and posted on WebProNews, it talked about the concept of the SEO Celebrity. Lee cites examples of job candidates explaining how they want to be famous SEO’s in 2-3 years. He asks is all the link baiting effort and networking worth the effort? Is it bankable?

Somebody once said that everyone of us has a book in them and that the blog is brining that book out. If you are in the internet marketing industry, what you write in that book is crucial to building trust and credibility in fellow marketers and potential customers. But what if you are writing just to get noticed? This ‘notoriety crack’ as Oden refers to it, is addictive and leads some bloggers to equate feedburner stats to online nutrition.

Web marketing consultants are appearing in ever increasing numbers and a lot of stock is put in certain SEO’ers who have been around the block for a few years. Rightly so these guys should get some kudos as being first on this new landscape and some have consistently interesting articles and opinions. But is there a future in this business where a handful of websites or blogs hold sway over what is acceptable and what is not?

I believe for this industry to start to move on from its early start up phase it needs to start to integrate with existing traditional businesses , e.g. traditional advertising houses, or start to consolidate with the SEO industry itself. I’ve seen the later start to happen with some well known consultants getting together to start agencies.

Online marketing specialists have found it relatively easy up to now to create a buzz, either for themselves or their clients. But what happens when the SERP’s become ever more contested and PPC becomes ever more expensive? Will the clients pay for the increased CPC? Will it be worth it in terms of ROI?

As the industry starts to mature more and more companies are drawn online, they are sending their staff on online marketing training and starting to take this business in-house.

It’s there that I see the real opportunities for this business? The in-house teams in the bigger SME’s and blue chip companies. What tools are these teams going to use? How will they gain access to the increasing amounts of information and training that they need?

To remain an SEO celebrity you need to feed the masses with original content which may or increasingly may not have to be related to SEO.

To take a long term stake in this business SEO’ers need to start offering long term value, and that value needs to be accessible in new ways.

What do you think? How is the internet marketing industry changing? Are you an SEO who is changing the way they look at their business model?