What even is SEO? Back (5+ years ago), when I was working as a consultant, most of our clients had SEO teams that were responsible for their sites’ Google Analytics installations. Why is that? Google Analytics is not a search engine. It could easily be the purview of the UX team, or the Paid Search team, or engineering/tech/product, etc.
At least part of the reason for this common delegation is that SEOs have carved out a niche as being generalist technical marketing problem solvers. I recently heard Pierre Far describe SEOs as de facto website product owners. And, while I like that framing, even that does not capture, for example, the off-site work that many SEOs do.
One thing we can likely all agree on is that many SEOs do not have a positive outlook right now. I view agencies as both the dynamic core and the talent factories of SEO, and many traditional, scalable SEO agency activities are seeing their ROIs squeezed over time, primarily by Google’s changes to the SERPs and algorithm. A recent survey by Rand Fishkin and my former colleague, Paddy Moogan, shows that while there are green shoots, many digital agencies (84% in the survey offer SEO services) are seeing weak sales pipelines and slow closing. There is perhaps a reluctance to invest in SEO amidst so much uncertainty.