It may sound a bit cheesy, but I absolutely love the excitement of knowing a holiday is coming up. Outside my window is a gang of warriors shooting off canons in the street (a few 8 year olds with some fire crackers), and everyone just seems to be a bit more excited this week with the 4th of July coming up. I feel the same with the SEO industry – we’ve had a checkered past, filled with spammers, and we’ve now entered the present, where spam is frowned upon and brands with real people behind them who take the time to reach out to their customers are the ones that last.

It’s exciting to imagine the future of SEO – I feel that SEO and social media will continue to integrate, with search engines even giving value to links in social media realms (I know, we’re a long ways off with all the spam still present in social media, but someday!). To all those who say SEO is dead – SEO is constantly changing and evolving, and I read that 75% of searchers click on organic results over paid. If that doesn’t mean SEO has staying power, I don’t know what does.

The old school thinking of SEO as “trumping” the search engines is definitely dead. New school SEO is very much alive and integrates social media elements and knows that the real way to be ranked well these days is by abiding by search engine guidelines and creating a site, and brand identity, that people actually want to talk about and find.

Goodbye, spammy SEO’s, and hello to the new guard. Time to celebrate. Onward!