The previous post explored the concept of transaction cost in SEO, and attempted to illustrate how an intermediary could add significant value to the search marketing industry by focusing primarily on reducing transaction costs for SEO. This post aims to extend that concept by exploring what types of players currently in the search marketing industry could essentially serve as intermediaries to SEO transactions. The intermediaries will need to be able to unite both buyers and sellers, and hence must either (1) already have the attention of both or (2) leverage the attention of one to get the attention of the other.

Forums. Markets are conversations, so wherever this is a conversation between sellers of SEO and buyers of SEO, it follows that a market should be put there as well. This is especially true if they are already talking about ways of reducing transaction cost, which they are (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C....I could go on and on).

Product Sellers. Successful merchants who sell a product (for instance a book on SEO, a software package to assist in link building and/or keyword research) to either SEOs or firms seeking SEO services already have the attention of search marketers and/or web site publishers, and so are positioned to leverage the attention of one to get that of the other. Such product sellers may wish to ensure their product has as widespread adoption as possible, and as such, firms that are willing to look at their product as a marketing expense rather than a direct source of revenue will have an easier time becoming a platform to intermediate transactions.

Search engines. My favorite, albeit least likely, model for disrupting the SEO industry is for a search engine itself to make the market. They have an abundance of attention of both search marketers and web publishers, and given the profitability of PPC marketing, it stands that SEO could be even more valuable. The obvious issue is that of integrity of results for the end user, although I think there are potentially creative solutions to this -- such as the division of a search engine into two components, commercial and non-commercial, the former of which is geared towards enabling commerce, while the latter aims to organize information.

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