IMO one of the most alarming trends in 2005/6 has been, and will be the automation of SEO related tasks. I agree, some tasks like rank checking deserve to be automated but out there are people who seriously combine phrases like "generated content" and "wholly automated website analysis" to their SEO agenda for 2006. The recently launched Google analytics also falls into this category by giving sheer analytical power for free. Times when SEO was a specialty service where one could charge just about anything will be over in short time, because with existing / coming tools the entry and even medium level SEO is at the reach of every business owner and developer.

I personally love good handcrafted items whether it is a piece of furniture, a website or service like SEO/SEM. Good handcrafted works carry always a special feeling of uniqueness and quality that makes them stand out. In addition they usually have a long life expectancy with nice aging behaviour. Bulk productions and services are usually…bulk. The problem is however the price – handcrafted work can rarely compete with bulk productions which is why so few create or buy handcraft items.

As most professional SEOs know about 90% of potential customers have a very limited budget and unrealistic expectations. With a dawn of new kind of services and tools available for the art of traditional handcrafted SEO is facing a tough challenge but also a possibility. Challenging part is facing the lowering prices and telling potential customers why handcrafted SEO is something they should pay; alternatively one could simply jump to train passing by and start providing bulk-budget SEO solutions.

Possibilities come from using and adapting the automation with a reason and building handcrafted solutions that match the professional requirements. Log analysis is one of my favourite areas and during years I have developed several features that make my life a bit easier. Currently I use a combination of Analog and an in-house log cruncher. Analog does the "fast & simple job" like most off-the-self automation packages. The in-house solution provides me full access to log files, but it is way more time consuming.

Take for example viewing keyword reports. Normal analysis programs just put everything in one single report; for most uses this is enough and if you get if for free then it is more than fine. With in-house solution I have also possibility to view keywords per search provider and even drill down to specific domain or even site’s internal search; this is vital when doing very targeted SEO with specific goals. A step further feature is possibility to view rankings and competition in various search engines (thanks to APIs available) for those keywords. Another step further is invoking keyword research like KEI analysis directly to log analysis, and so on. So this is a professional tool that requires some manual labour and loads of SEO knowledge to use it precisely.

The big question however remains unanswered – how to sell the benefits of handcrafted SEO to customers when the alternatives rely on free/low-budget automation tools? IMO the bottom line for handcrafted SEO is superior value of service combined to superior return of investment. Is this enough for customer, and how to make it concrete? Or should professional SEOs move on selling SEO knowledge instead of SEO services? During the coming weeks I will discuss this topic in more detail from various views and services related to SEO, and hopefully find an satisfactory answer to my question.

PS. If you are wondering about the image next to blog entry, get used of seeing it in my future posts. Finding topic appropriate imaginary next to posts is a hard task, so I've decided to start using a *customized* logo of our website. It may not be pretty, but it always beats a picture of me smiling ;)