The world of SEO has always been a fast moving one, and that can make it difficult to isolate a particular moment of change.  Everything is changing all the time.  Yet sometimes one looks up and sees a significant difference all around and feels a need to identify the new paradigm.

Well, for my take on things, Dial-a-phone, a leading UK supplier of mobile phones, is the new paradigm of SEO customer.  The Head of Online Marketing at Dial-a-phone has some fairly extensive knowledge of SEO.  He has worked with multiple SEO providers which in itself an education.  But far more notable than this is that he has been a long-term member at some top SEO forums, and is reading the same blogs and reference material as many of the SEO practitioners I know.

Certainly, customers for SEO services have been getting smarter, and more experienced for some time.  Increasingly, clients are renegotiating their SEO supplier rather than buying for the first time.  Yet Dial-a-phone and others really do seem to exemplify a new level of smarts, a new level of connection with SEO.

For some SEO companies out there, this new breed of SEO smart company is not merely a cutting-edge client.  Rather, a client such as Dial-a-phone may be the sharp point of the Sword of Damocles, representing an impending doom for SEO providers who jump into the market with less than enough professional experience.

I know for a fact that Dial-a-phone’s Head of Online Marketing has more SEO experience than many of the SEO companies who might pitch to him.  I could even go so far as to say that he has to be acknowledged as a peer by any SEO practitioner.  I would greatly pity the average SEO salesman who might attempt to call him with their default sales pitch and with the typical gaps of SEO knowledge.

Dial-a-phone are not unique in respect to a full-on engagement with SEO savvy.  One need look no further than Alan Dick of Vintage Tub and Bath.  Alan is a regular attendee at all the major SEO conferences, happy to buy dinner for a whole group of us in London at SES in 2005, and more than comfortable chatting in a group that included Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Dave Naylor, and many others.

I have dropped a mention of the Cluetrain Manifesto before as a piece of essential reading, back when Rand interviewed me here.  Well, this is a prime example of why the Cluetrain Manifesto is classed as vital reading.  It predicts this very trend, where the customer becomes a peer, and should be treated as such.

So why does this new type of SEO savvy client want an SEO agency at all?  The answer should be obvious.  I will even go so far as to say that if you can not already guess, and you run an SEO service, then you need to adjust your perceptions and understanding of what you provide.  You should understand this instantly, or your future may be bleak.

The new paradigm I am noting is one where companies outsource SEO by choice, not necessity.  Where they hire agencies that represent the very best of breed in SEO – experts they might not hire so easily or economically directly.  Where the company seeks specialists and strategists, and has all the basics covered in-house.

Dial-a-phone has put two internal Marketing Assistants to work on much of the basic SEO tasks.  In addition to handling any of the simpler but time-intensive parts of the SEO work, the Marketing Assistants are also providing significant content.  Dial-a-phone has launched their new Mobile Phone Blog using this in-house writing resource, with merely the strategic and practical guidance coming from their SEO agency.

Their in-house IT team were key participants in our initial meetings, and were keen to develop their own custom analytics systems to provide the information that matters, without the data-overload that existing systems seemed to supply, once that need was identified.  The important and recurring concept here is teamwork.  In this new model, the SEO and the client are not just on the same side, they are part of the same team, and work as a team.

Personally, I am delighted by clients such as these.  I believe that SEO can only truly work at its best when the client and the provider work as an effective team.  Any supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  The supply of SEO is no different, and I have seen too many companies that have wasted an investment in SEO through a weak link in understanding, or in performance management.

A client who buys because they do understand what you are going to do is a far stronger partner than one who buys because they do not know, and want to shift all responsibility for understanding.  Conventional business wisdom will say that the ignorant client has more dependency, and thus represents a locked-in client.  Conventional business wisdom has had its head up its ass through most of the online revolution.

Clients who are ignorant can not tell whether your service is remarkable or not.  They simply can not tell whether you honestly offer anything better than the offers made in the emails they will receive from bottom-dollar offshore suppliers apparently offering all their SEO needs at a fraction of the price.  But even ignorant clients will learn.  Ignorance is not a lock-in.  Ignorance is a short-term situation that only goes to prove that the supplier is unable to convey what they do.

For these reasons, I firmly believe that this new model of client will herald the new paradigm of SEO service.  A true partnership of SEO client and provider, based on mutual understanding and teamwork, will become the norm in future – and that future is here.