Lately the blogosphere is filled with posts about the reputation of the SEO industry and examples about how some SEOs resort to unscrupulous practices of buying links and black hat methods to reign superiority in SERPs.

Nowadays, every Tom, Dick and Harry has a website or an online presence which he wants to promote on the web as undoubtedly the web is the only place where he can tap the targeted global market exponentially.

Marketing is active storytelling , PR is reactive storytelling - Internet marketing is real time, active, reactive and has a local And global reach.

This nature of online marketing has raised high expectations among the people and they have a notion that the moment they will sign the SEO contract they will start getting traffic to their site as the majority of the buyers use search engines to find new suppliers and sellers. This expectation is further raised by black hatters and spammy link builders who second this by assuring them quick results.

The SEO industry is just a decade old and is still trying to gain the rightful position in the whole online marketing scenario. Whenever any entrepreneur introduces himself as a SEO, people still look at him with a quizzing look or a doubtful look. This according to me is largely due to the fact that majority of the people are still unaware about the true meaning of optimizing a website for search engines.

The search engines in the past were vulnerable and even keyword stuffing by spammers would ensure rankings but they have come along way now and made the algorithms more upgraded to see through such spam but this is again an ongoing activity. As long as there will be the web, there will be spammers and the web entities will have to work out ways to beat them at their game.

Any SEO campaign has got its own stages and every website is different and there are many factors on which the rankings of the site depends. Moreover, the search engines keep on updating their algorithms on a regular basis which again have a direct effect on the rankings. SEOs are just helping the websites to adapt to the changes that take place in the display of SERPs and the ranking factors for SERPs.This challenge and dynamism about the SEO industry is what carves a niche for this industry in the whole superset of online marketing.

As an hardcore SEO myself let me affirm that undoubtedly the presence of your site on the first page of search engines is surely going to get you the targeted traffic and potential customers but in order to reach that position and retain your position there the site has to earn its quality footprints on the web which can be achieved only with time. When you decide to optimize your site it is like establishing a business online and no business starts giving results until it has developed a certain goodwill and credibility and that takes time. It has to be earned.

SEO is not only about rankings and SERPs. It is a holistic approach to a valuable web presence. SEO in 2011 is for sure much more than just rankings. The juvenile definition of SEO which mentioned only about getting high rankings is no longer applicable. The SEO fraternity who have been promoting websites online since the time when the term SEO itself was not coined surely know what I am talking about. SEO in 2011 is not only about getting high rankings but about building a brand for the business that you are promoting. It is about helping the client establish his goodwill online and have a true online persona for himself and his business.

The reputation of the SEO industry is getting tarnished because of two main reasons:

• False promises by people who want to make a fast buck by calling them SEOs
• Very high expectations of website owners

If you see both are inter-connected if SEOs give realistic perspective about the whole SEO process then the expectations of the website owners would also be realistic. On the other hand if the website owners do not have false notions about the SEO results and they do not put pressure for quick results then the scene would be much different.

But, we cannot play a blame game as that will not help us gain any reputation. If the SEOs educate the client about the SEO process and set realistic expectations the reputation problem faced by SEOs can be solved to a certain extent. Secondly, if the search engines too take some measures to penalize the spammy link building techniques and other black hat methods more aggressively then it would solve the problem further. As no SEO or website owner would like to get their site blocked.

Why should the SEOs following ethical methods and who work so hard to help their client sites get the needed reputation and rankings on the search engines if they themselves suffer a bad reputation?