Dana Melick, a Seattle SEO who works for BeyondInk, took me to lunch today. We had a terrific time chatting about the Seattle Seahawks and our personal experiences at Seahawks Stadium. We also talked a lot about the SEO industry and some trends that both of us have been noticing. One of our most interesting conversations was about the acquisition of SEOs and small firms by larger outfits.

Both Dana and I commented that we had received many phone calls from customers of large SEO firms who had been unsatisfied with customer service, client relations and, most frequently, quality of work. I had hoped it was just me, but I think it's a trend in the corporate world that large service providers suffer in many aspects of the services they offer. Dana and I talked specifically about some notable examples of big names in the SEO industry who had gone to work for large firms and, subsequently, left due to disagreement in how the company was managing their customers and their employees.

We've both gathered, through the grapevine and direct experience, that corporate management often loses site of the fact that a 6 figure paycheck doesn't guarantee happy employees - there's far more to work, particularly in the field of SEO/M (where the field is so dynamic, outspoken and engaging), than just money. If a firm isn't utilizing its employees' talents, passions and skills to their highest level, turnover and loss will be the result.

Our conversation also touched on the goldmine of links that social tagging and bookmarking has become - helping to make high quality or high interest content visible to the people who can most readily provide links (bloggers, news site owners, tech industry publishers, etc). Dana thinks that within 6 months, the systems will become less popular as they get spammed and gamed more heavily. I think we have a good 18 months before we see a peak. My reasoning is that even if you spam Digg or del.icio.us, you still won't get the links unless your content is phenomenally worthwhile and worthy of being linked to. Thus, while folks might experiment with tagging poor content, the social aspect will help repair and prevent the issue, and the benefit of a few more, largely "off-topic" visitors wont' be worth much to anyone. We'll see who's right...

All in all I'd say that the meeting was terrific - it's great to have an industry outsider outside of your own firm to bounce ideas off, here history from and dish dirt with - thanks Dana! Anne and Beyond Ink are lucky to have you.

p.s. Dana's joined the ranks of Jim, Ammon, Barry and myself and grown a beard in the last 3 months - looking good, amigo!