I have been catching up on my reading and ran across a chart in Advertising Age, December 31, 2007, entitled "Digital-Marketing Spending" (source: Forrester Research's "U.S. Online Marketing Forecast: 2007 To 2012", October 10, 2007).

The reason this chart is interesting to me is that it shows a sharp increase in the ratio of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) spending in relation to Paid Search spending by 2011. The fate of SEO has been a hot topic within our company as of late. As we continue to increase our understanding of where the Web is going, more of our time is spent researching and contributing to the notion of a Semantic Web (Web 3.0). Briefly, this is where websites and Web-based applications begin to think about the needs/preferences of individual visitors. They will appear more intelligent and, hopefully, make our Web experiences more convenient.

One of the likely changes will be the personalization of your search experience (Google, MSN, Yahoo, ChaCha [BTW ChaCha if flippin' cool - try sending a text to 242242 from your mobile phone and ask any question - you'll be blown away!], etc.). In other words, my search results for the exact same keyword may be different from yours based on what the search engine knows about me or is able to detect. This is especially exciting for ThoughtLava, as we have a patent pending on the dynamic display of Web content based on detection of specific profiles through detectable attributes. For example, Spanish Speaking people in the United States that prefer a Puerto Rican dialect over a Mexican dialect. If they type in the words "Bus Schedule", the search results for someone in Florida who speaks Puerto Rican Spanish might see results from bus transportation companies located in the Southeast using the word "GuaGua". Whereas a person in Dallas that prefers Mexican Spanish might get results for locations in Texas using the word "Autobús".

What this means is that our approach to Search Engine Optimization is going to change over the next few years. Especially as it relates to our client interactions. Imagine conversations like "I thought you said we ranked number one for "Bus Schedule". I just looked and we weren't on the first page of Google." That may be true because each of us will receive personalized results. We don't think linking strategies (working to increase the number of websites that provide a link to your website) will change. We also think that the majority of searches will yield a default result that is common across most people. This is because the search engines typically won't have enough profile information to increase relevance with an altered set of results.

So, back to the graph above. I think the increase in SEO spending in relation to Paid Search is suspect. In a personalized search world, the power of advertising is going to increase. Today, Paid Search suffers from irrelevance. Once Google or whoever can provide highly targeted advertising opportunities, based not only on what is being searched, but by whom - look out! Now you have relevance, and we have learned how powerful relevance can be for sales conversion.

Obviously, this is such a brand new topic and I would love any comments or opinions!