Can we expect more SEO agencies to be acquired during 2018? That’s what I predict—but it’s also what I’ve predicted every year.
Around Christmas time, agencies tend to gaze into the crystal ball. What will happen next year? At Brath, we’re just as guilty, and we want to try to look ahead. We’ll do that primarily by looking back at 2017—a year that, for the first time, really seemed to take my earlier predictions seriously.
In 2010, I wrote the following:
Above all, there is one thing I am absolutely convinced of, and that is that the industry will need to consolidate, and that there will be only a handful of Swedish SEO companies left in five years.
2012:
During 2013, we can probably expect quite a bit of consolidation in the industry.
A look into the crystal ball for 2018
Perhaps we can settle for the fact that the times I previously said the industry would consolidate, I was wrong—often. However, during 2017 we did see quite a few mergers and acquisitions, and that’s a trend that actually started earlier, with Jajja – Eurovator and Viva Media – Mediaanalys. Over the past year, we’ve seen, among others, Curamando acquire Conversionista, we acquired Teveo, and Torget.se acquired Getupdated.
I’m convinced this isn’t the end. The industry is still young, but if you disregard the very smallest and youngest companies, it will become necessary to crystallize which agencies will remain as the Swedish search specialists. I still believe we’ll end up with somewhere around three to five agencies of any real size left. The question is whether you’re on the side that gets swallowed—or the one doing the swallowing.
Many of the deals I mention are small, but I see them as clear signs that things are happening, and I believe we can expect larger acquisitions going forward.
As mentioned, I’ve been wrong several times before when making this exact prediction, so I’ll leave the question open: What do you think?
