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End-of-year review 2008

Even though I feel as though I am quite late, seeing that there has been a flood of reviews since the middle of November, I naturally wish to force my completely subjective view of the SEO-year 2008 on you. It is interesting to also compare it with the predictions that I made in the beginning of the year.

For me, in retrospect, 2008 was mainly influenced by professionalization and consolidation. The possibilities offered by searchengineoptimization were not only realized by the heavyweights of the Internet industry but also many medium sized and traditionally offline-companies are on the search for “SEO-managers”, by now, which leads them to send out pushy headhunters with this demand through XING. The market has grown noticeably – in actuality as well as how it feels. This was clearly shown by trade shows like the OMD which was held for the last time, but also by conferences like Alan's SEMSEO. In many areas, agencies and service providers will have to learn which strategies will still work well with a growing number of customers.

This is especially evident in the area of linkbuilding. Due to the fact that this subject can not be easily pressed into structured processes many companies – including large and name worthy ones – will resort to methods and service providers whose work is either useless or even dangerous. I am disappointed with Google as far as this is concerned. Besides the continuous but consequence-free PageRank-depreciation of linksellers as well as isolated actions against single entities, I am not able to say that Google is extensively embracing this subject. In this case I feel that with a more than 90 percent marketshare and a monopoly-like situation there is also a moral obligation to enforce the rules and laws that they themselves wrote with more commitment. Try to imagine crooks who would have to anticipate as much punishment from the state as linkbuilders, who are impinging on Google's rules, do at the moment ...

For me, the release of the SISTRIX Toolbox, which makes available a lot of data and analytical possibilities that, before, I was only using internally , was surely one of the highlights. The acceptance and positive feedback of many of the customers is motivation for me to keep integrating new and exciting features in the new year as well as enhance and simplify existing features. The introductory phase is nearing its end, but more on that in a separate posting in a few weeks.