The new SEO age, from personal search to social network!
SEO age, part 2 - SEO 2009+
A SEO professional nowdays can optimize the content of your web site to get more traffic from search engines. But things are changing really really faster than expected. Search engines now use bounch rates, pages viewed, time spent and so on, to get if the website has really good content for the keyword they provided that page. So now you need also a good designed website, to stay high in SERP...!
Furthermore Localized search, geographical search, personal search, social network search, video search, chatting or twittering...are always more important. How many times do you go on a website clicking on a link inside facebook, twitter or a chat?
So what if huge traffic comes from something different than search engines? For example from youtube, from twitter, facebook or digg? This is what is heppening right now and will put the roots for new works. New professionals (and they are already at work..) are studying tricky or ethical tecniques to drive traffic to their websites. Se new SEO professionals will be Search Engine specilized and Social Engine specialized. They should know many social networks, people "habits" to search on that social platform and so on...
The acronym could be SSEO - Social and Search Engine Optimization! [kidding];-)
Used techniques.
Good website design, good content and different kind of content (Video, Photo). Using different account in social network, creating buzz in them...
required skills.
Technical skill to use the fast web tech field in term of standards (html, xml,rss, atom, json), platform (wordpress, joomla, custom CMS), interconnection between data and platforms.. (API knowledge)..
Social skill to understand people habits and needings on the different social network that will appear
Marketing and Design skill to get the desired action from the user, to let him spend more and more time on the website, to give him a confortable navigation feeling to get him back again..
So in the next years you need a great web team, not just a SEO to dominate SERP. And... you can already see this for not niche SERP...