I found an interesting trend chart at Odesk.com, it shows a huge increase in postings for SEO work over the past year.
I think this is a bit of a double edge sword though; on one hand it is always good to see your chosen career path have an increase in interest but at the same time I know the quality of the overseas SEO’s that are biding on these projects. My hope is that most of the buyers of these SEO services have educated themselves a bit so they know the difference between a good SEO and one that is trying to take advantage of an industry buzz. While I am pleasantly pleased with the apparent surge in interest in SEO, especially in the US and UK (I hope it spreads to Canada) I am concerned with the number of SEO pretenders offering guaranteed results and search engine submisions along with other flakey services, including blog commenting in poor English and a gazillion automated directory submissions. These strategies are close to useless and can actually harm a website in the long-term.
Besides the above I am also worried that decision makers will have one bad experience in SEO and it will ruin the opportunity for the industry in the future.