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Sadly the future of SEO is mostly a topic for people outside the industry who grab attention by reinforcing prejudice. On the other hand we’re in the middle of huge changes taking place in the SEO industry or should I say… yes, what.

Already at present we rarely speak about SEO anymore. It’s always part of a composite term or a larger concept like search marketing. Here are the 5 most common SEO futures already visible right now:

1. findability
2. advanced SEO
3. SEO 2.0
4. web design for ROI
5. search marketing

Findability
Findability is a concept stemming rather from the web development community and usability experts. It’s almost all encompassing and covers not only SEO aspects of web design. It also reflects off site factors and new developments like social media. It’s been revived recently but it didn’t catch on as much as I’d expect yet. Findability is a great term for all those who struggle to explain SEO again and again. Findability is kind of self-explanatory due to the non-acronym nature of the term.

Advanced SEO
Advanced SEO has been highly debated recently and then it seemingly disappeared from the daily buzz. Is advanced the new better SEO or just a part of it like basic SEO? I don’t know, the pundits do not even agree on what advanced SEO really is. It certainly has something to do with programming and web analytics, examples like “ip delivery” and “ROI analysis” get mentioned in this context. Some bloggers dispute that advanced SEO is another term for “black hat SEO” but there has been no final agreement reached on this.

SEO 2.0
SEO 2.0 has almost gone main stream when Lee Odden coined it’s most popular definition of “digital asset optimization” in 2007. Others have come up with numerous other definitions. Then the talk of the town kind of subsided partly due to the growing wariness of everything “2.0″ and corresponding buzzwords. It seems that SEO 2.0 is not only SEO for Web 2.0 but a holistic new approach highlighting social media engagement and techniques like link baiting, reputation management as well as viral marketing. It hasn’t really gone main stream yet though in spite of many SEO specialists already adopting it.

Web Design for ROI
Web Design for ROI is a highly influential book that basically, like the findability concept, re-contextualizes SEO along the lines of larger business objectives. These get translated via web design and information architecture in order to realign them in favor of higher returns instead of “good looks”. While it’s not a term that realy caught on it really describes what SEO nowadays is about. PageRank, rankings and traffic are not enough as return on investment is key. The concept is already widely accepted and I’d love people to use a short version of the term like ROI design or something. They do not yet though.

Search Marketing
SEO and SEM are intertwined for a few years. some people even define SEO as a sub-discipline of SEM. While I prefer SEM to refer to paid search (PPC etc.) the term has morphed to search marketing recently. You rarely say “SEM” by now. Not only the term gained traction, the approach did too. Search marketing dropped the “engine” as it’s about reaching out to people who search, be it on search engines, static websites (Adsense!) or social media. You don’t need strictly an engine to search. You need a search marketer to help you perform on the various media and platforms though. This term ist the most popular right now as describing the whole industry.

These are possible ways that you can take. SEO in a way branches out in many directions. You can choose which one you’ll take. Also the 5 new SEO paradigms overlap and are used sometimes as synonyms. Which way do you go? Quo vadis SEO?

Search engine optimisers are often treated like the plumbers of the web. In many cases they have to clean up the mess architects and construction workers left. Also they get treated as if they do some kind of dirty work. The ensuing reputation problem comes along with a low self esteem of many in the SEO industry. Now the newly revived concept of findability can make this problem a woe of the past.

What is is findability? To be honest the current concept of findability proposed by the author of the book “Building Findable Websites” resembles simply on-page or on-site SEO best practices. There are some added novelties like Microformats which haven’t been widely adopted by the SEO industry yet. All in all findability is about website optimisation for searchers and users alike, or in other words making a website work both in search as well as from the user standpoint who already is a visitor. While there are also references to off-page factors the focus is clearly the “building” of “findable websites” like the title of the book already suggests.

There are a few great introductions into the findability concept so I won’t add another one. I want to make you aware what findability means for the SEO industry and/or community:

1. Findability, usability and accessibility are interconnected along with other facets of information architecture
2. Findability is marketed as the last missing ingredient in website design and development, it’s not as seemingly detached discipline like SEO might appear
3. There is no black hat findability
4. There is no findability reputation problem
5. The concept of findability allows others, non-SEO people, to do the groundwork

So basically the people who often for years ignored or frowned upon SEO finally will realise that they were wrong: The information architects, web designers and developers as well as the copy writers or other content creators. Findability is all about making these people do their jobs properly. Now will this make SEO specialists unemployed? It won’t. It just means the we can finally let others do the dirty work or simply groundwork as I do not really assume that SEO is dirty work. People out there do though.

SEO is a dirty word. Findability isn’t. It’s nice and clean. So offer findability along with usability and accessibility, formerly known as SEO services. This way you also don’t have to explain the acronym S.E.O over and over again as findability is a simple English term everybody has some basic understanding of just based on the well known verb to find.

So how will SEO experts survive this? SEO long ago ceased to be about making websites findable. It’s much more than that by now. SEO by now is the work of translating websites into profits, whatever it takes, be it findability, SMO or viral marketing. The SEO industry is the fastest evolving online industry. I don’t want to deal with h1 tags and image based menus. The basics must be implemented by those who are originally responsible for them, I want to do the really cool work, the link baiting, the viral videos, the blogging. Reclaim true SEO!