Since the United States Government has been giving out money recently and calling it a “bailout”, many different industries have been stepping forward and trying to stake their claim. We have already seen a bailout in the financial industry, and we have recently seen the automotive industry go to Capital Hill to explain and argue with government officials about getting a bailout. So, I thought it would be appropriate to come up with six reasons why the Search Engine Optimization industry needs a bailout.

1. Search Engine Rankings are Dead. Bruce Clay recently declared that search engine rankings are dead. Pretty soon companies won’t be going to Google to check their rankings for their top 3 most important keywords. They won’t have a need to keep paying for search engine rank checking programs and services that will “check your rankings” every 5 hours. The software developers who write and update those scripts will soon be out of a job. By giving the SEO industry a financial bailout, those who will soon be out of a job will be able to get trained on how to create content. And it will keep them out of the unemployment line.

2. Barack Obama was elected because of Social Media Marketing Barack Obama successfully used social media marketing to get elected. He’s all behind social media and hasn’t spent a dime on Search Engine Optimization. Barack Obama needs to help SEOs with a bailout because everything seems to be leaning more towards marketing in the social arena..and more SEOs need to start to understand marketing in this new social media economy.

3. It helps the Online Retailers indirectly. Bailing out the SEO industry is really an efficient way of directing fiscal stimulus towards the online retailers who really need the cash. Giving money to SEOs will help them be more efficient and will help get better search engine rankings for their clients, the online retailers.

4. It will help the Internet stocks. Ultimately, it helps the Search Engine Optimization companies buy more links. I can’t believe I said that. But, we all know that lazy SEO companies buy links. By bailing out the SEO industry, you’re pumping more money into the internet. It will ultimately help those internet stocks go up.

5. It might be cheaper than the alternative of letting SEO companies fail. If any SEO company fails, then all of those snake oil SEO salesmen will be forced to move on to another industry: and then the government will spend lots of money hiring Federal Prosecutors to go after them. We all know that the FCC and the US Government is not doing much to prosecute all the rip-off SEO snake oil salesmen out there. Bail out the SEO industry and you’ll keep them in the SEO industry: they won’t move on to another industry where they the government will have to prosecute them.

6. Pumping money into the SEO industry will help the internet companies be more profitable. I said it before. By pumping money into the SEO industry the search engine optimization companies and SEO consultants will be able to make those internet companies more profitable. More profitable internet companies mean their stocks will go up.

I can envision a financial bailout that goes directly to the search engine optimization industry and those who work in the SEO industry, including search engine optimizers and the search engine optimization companies themselves. By pumping more money into the SEO industry, SEO companies will be able to hire more writers and web developers to create more content. By creating more content for clients the internet companies will do better: they will then be able to spend more money on paid search campaigns, which will ultimately not only help themselves (the online retailers and those companies that actually have web sites) but it will also help the search engines because they’re paying more for PPC ads.

So count me in on a strategically-oriented bail-out financial package that benefits the SEOs and SEO companies rather than giving money to the auto industry or any other industry that might beg for a financial bailout.