The SEO market is growing...

[hugoguzman]

Every day new SEO/webmasters spring up (you can see them in this and other seo discussion forums). The larger and more established seo firms or development firms are expanding their operations. Even large (Fortune 500) companies are begining to see the benefits of professional seo work and are hiring individuals specifically for improving their natural search engine results (I have 1st hand experience with this).

Fortunately, this will only increase the value of a well optimized site (and a proven and experienced seo/webmaster). As more and more folks attempt to conquer the search engine algos it will make optimizing that much more competitive, but the successful seo/webmasters will rise to the top (as they always do) and reap even larger rewards as more and more people around the world begin using the internet on a regular basis.

What gets me excited is the realization that search engine optimization is a brand new industry, much like the automobile industry was brand new 100 years ago and the TV industry was brand new 60 years ago. There is no firm or webmaster that can boast 50 years in this industry. We are all basically brand new. That's why I work on a daily basis to establish myself in this infant industry. Search Engine Optimization is like the wild west or manifest destiny. It's wide open frontier land.

Good luck everyone and keep your head up.

[reli4nt]

That's a great perspective to have.

Time and hard work are still the essential ingredients:

One of the things I love about it is that it still remains fairly democratic, access to the field being relatively public. By that I mean, anyone can have access to the field; and with time and hard work, they can excell. Many professions generally require great financial resources and connections to get in, and there are many positions that can be essentially bought (such as corporate level executive positions) or are limited to those who can afford to pursue them them (such as lawyers and medical doctors).

[reli4nt]

"according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study conducted for the Interactive Advertising Bureau... search made up 40% of the ad revenues in the second quarter of 2004, compared with 29% in the year-ago period."

[joker]

Search Engine Optimization is like the wild west or manifest destiny. It's wide open frontier land.
Yes, it's so, but in some years as in every roughly upcoming industry it'll form elite layer. And only hard working in right direction will bring the harvest.

[eadpro]

I think that it is of upmost importance to always keep up to date by reading publications and forum posts (like this one ;)) in order to stay on top of whats going on in the industry.

However, if you find a formula that seems to work for you stick with it!

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[joker]

I think that's can't be such universal formula in SEO world. Every project requires custom approach.

[netmar]

I think SEO as we know it today started growing at the same time search engines merged and automated url submission services lost their credibility. Am I right?