Should agencies abandon SEO for themselves?

Back on May 14th Peter Levitan stated: “Google is going to screw your ad agency. Or better said, they are going to mess with your organic listing. Which means, that your ad agency will be harder to find. And, therefore screwed. Many of the ad, digital, etc. agencies I talk with tell me that their SEO is not delivering the power that it once did.” And he went on in case you didn’t see it. That raised the question – with more than 40,000 “agencies” (some even suggest more than 100,000) they’re all building and tweaking their SEO to try to make themselves stand out in a considereable sea of sameness. At this point and under the Google umbrella, the only real distinction one-to-another can be location, even down to street number. I don’t write code but believe that Google’s cataloging of agency particulars is not yet deep enough to discriminate what clients would wish, since agency websites are themselves lacking in more than cursory attribute content. That makes Google just a giant Yellow Pages. We had that years ago.

Add curated alpha sort agency directories to the mix and this conglomeration is now forcing things back in the direction from whence we came. Back apparently to what Dave Currie with The List refers to as “proactive prospecting apps like Winmo.” Take a tour of the roster of agency search consultants as I did and you’ll note many are no longer in business. Scarcity and dilution takes its toll.

Realistically – how can 40,000 agencies, even half that number differentiate themselves one from another? Maybe it makes sense to resort back to techniques and programs en vogue before the Internet. Food for thought – invent something new (Yes Virginia, we know about LinkedIn).

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