So after David Pasternacks article about the demise of SEO, Mike Grehan over at Clickz adds further fuel to the fire with an article entitled SEOs going PPC.

Pasternacks comments didn’t go down to well with many in the search industry and some comments made for great reading over at Threadwatch, but Grehans article is not as condeming. He argues only that SEO one stop shops will diminish and that they need to embrace the fundamentals of marketing such as demographics, segmentation, audience targetting and return based on optimisation results rather than rankings moving forward in transition. All of which PPC is already way ahead in.

“I’ve said many times that I sincerely believe the SEO only shop will become a rapidly diminishing corner of this industry sector. Clients want ROI from optimization efforts, not just rankings.”

As paid search moves forward in huge leaps and bounds with demographic targetting the article adds that a change will be needed in SEO aswell.

“SEOs are going to have to embrace marketing and make themselves much more aware of paid advertising as it reaches new levels of sophistication”

In conclusion;

“I’ve gone on record as saying I believe more SEOs should read more marketing books than Apache Server manuals. As search marketing becomes more sophisticated, clients are going to expect something closer to demographic targeting out of organic listings, too. And that means understanding more about the clients’ overall marketing strategy, not just their Web site.”

So what do we think? Will SEO have to undergo a transition to become more like PPC in offering the underlying marketing fundamentals as SEM understanding grows?

UPDATE - Threadwatch has picked up on the story and there seems to be another PPC Vs SEO debate part 2…