The Stars of Search Marketing [Infographic]
Inspired by August’s famous Perseid meteor shower, the “Stars of Search” infographic spotlights some of the brightest lights in the SEO universe.
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Now keep in mind that this is not a complete list of the search industry’s most gifted personalities, we gathered the troops and grouped 24 people we felt influenced search the most. Several were interviewed and their responses were sharp, witty and a bit revealing at times.
Sadly, the infographic didn’t have room for most of the information gleaned in the interviews.
Who knew Rand Fishkin is obsessed with the NFL and considers himself a foodie?
Tom Critchlow trains in Wing Chun Kung Fu and Jordan Kasteler loves punk rock concerts and tattoos.
We also learned that drinking too much coffee caused heart conditions for Bruce Clay and that Will Critchlow plays basketball in the London premier league. Eric Ward claimed he can eat two dozen donuts in one sitting and you should watch for a rollerblading Danny Sullivan next time you’re in Southern California.
There were no plans to leave the search industry anytime soon, and even though the future is unpredictable, those interviewed said they were optimistic about where organic seo might be in a decade.
“I think quality will continue to be important, and that social signals will begin to take over from the link signals that have been used so heavily over the past 10 years,” said Danny Sullivan.
According to Marcus Tandler, “As long as there are organic results at Google, there will be search engine optimization. But no one can know what will be in 10, or even just five years. But as long as you have valuable, unique and crawlable content, you should be fine.”
“It could be a completely different landscape,” said Rand Fishkin. “Honestly, though, that excites me. This industry moves as fast as any in the history of business, and that’s exactly where I want to be.”
Tom Critchlow replied, “SEO will be dead, in the same way it was five years ago =).”
The stars have spoken and have given their predictions. Where do you see search engine optimization heading in the next 10 years or beyond?
I don’t know that we will ever see links completely fall out of the equation for the algorithms of the search engines, but I do see them becoming a watered down factor as social signals pick up strength.
However, until Google can get it’s hands on the “majority of social signals” (aka Twitter and Facebook)I don’t think they can rely too heavily on social signals over links. I also have a hard time seeing them using Google+ heavily as a signal because I don’t see a mass exodus from Facebook to Google+ by the non-techie people in the world, thus the social signals coming from Google+ are likely heavily slanted in the technology direction.
Can we assume that the position from top to bottom has little relevance in ranking?
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Good mirrors to improve every day but would take only parts of each one, each one specializes in something and I think all of them have read any articles that are sufficiently attractive.
But Avinash Kaushik did not know or rather I do not remember
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I agree with Rick on the social argument.
As for other future Google modifications (granted that this is what Google has been doing for years), I think that website and content quality will play an ever-more prominent role in ranking. I don’t know if this will be done by punishing low quality or by rewarding high quality – my guess is that it’ll be a combination of both. Yes, this is not really a unique insight, but I see a lot of sites out there that still get ranked using black hat techniques. The fight is far from over.
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Very cool infographic, James! And I think it’s very indicative for where search is going to that David Mihm – a local search star, is at the top.
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Real good stuff. Liked it!I like the way how the blog is presented. Truly inspiring.Thanks James for sharing such a nice post with us!