Here are a few thoughts about where SEO is heading in the new year. Some may be wishful thinking, and some may take more than one year to happen, but these are the trends I'm currently seeing:

SEO consultants will move more in the direction of "fixing" existing pages of sites to rank higher, as opposed to creating new ones, due to the high level of long-term effectiveness this approach has. We've seen this trend in 2001 and 2002, but it will become more the norm in 2003. Those that refuse to change with the times will eventually close up shop, or perhaps become PPC experts.

The line between SEO and usability will become increasingly blurry, as many will realize that a people-friendly site is also a search-engine-friendly site.

Companies paying for full-service SEO will expect a total package that includes usability as well as copywriting for sales conversions and high rankings in the search engines. Optimization companies will need to have specialists in each of these areas, or have partnerships with specific companies that do.

PPC will continue to grow in popularity, but so will the price tag. Bids for keywords on Overture and Google AdWords are already out of reach for many sites, and this will only get worse. This in turn will make "organic" search engine optimization more popular than it currently is (and it's pretty darn popular).

For those willing to learn how to do SEO for their own sites, it will be cheaper than ever to optimize a site for high rankings in the "regular" search results. Paying for inclusion will no longer be necessary, as the search engines will attempt to keep their databases fresh and as full of as many pages as their spiders can index. If not, and it actually gets more expensive, then Google will jump that much more ahead of the pack as search engine of choice for most searchers.

It will be more expensive to hire SEO consultants to optimize your site, as the good ones will have more work than they can handle. Smart SEO companies will offer paid site analysis at a price small-to-medium-sized businesses can afford, while providing solid information that will enable the client to do the SEO work in-house.

Google will remain the dominant player in the biz, with more and more *regular* people believing that Google = Search Engine. We will also see Google continue to get bashed by Webmasters who can't figure out how to get a decent listing.

If Google goes public in 2003 (and I'm not making any predictions on that), we will see it start to suck by 2004. By "suck" I mean become like all the other engines.

The mainstream media will keep printing everything negative they can about Google, but the general public will not give a hoot.

If HotBot spends time and money publicizing their new format of gathering results from the top four search engines, AND if they keep their interface clean, heavy-duty searchers will flock to them. (I've personally been using HotBot when I need to find something obscure, and really like it -- just wish they had a cache function.)

I will hold a search engine optimization seminar in Atlanta in the spring.

This newsletter will become required reading for every Webmaster in the world and will have at least 25,000 loyal subscribers by the end of 2003.