In the above video from SES Chicago, Bruce clarifies his bold statement.

“There is always going to be a reason to have ranking.”

With all of Google’s efforts to further personalization and localization, SEOs need to focus on the real objective. According to Bruce, this SEO objective is improving or increasing the profitability of the client.

In 2009, Bruce predicts that we will see an evolution toward traffic action and ultimately, return on investment (ROI) as the measurements of success for an SEO program. Clients want a lot of traffic and they will realize that it brings them a lot of ROI.

Bruce explains 2 new tools that he has created to help marketers better understand this objective. The toolbar is designed to literally modify the results of a Google search to provide demographical data. The second tool is a keyword research tool that pulls the exact API’s from a Google or MSN search for a given list of keywords. Bruce is working with Yahoo to make this tool accessible for Yahoo searches as well.

Both these tools are free and are projected to be public at the end of this month. Bruce points out that these tools are beneficial because marketers need this information and the tools help them to reach their specific target market and understand their true statistics.

Also, be sure to look for Bruce’s all-in-one Search Engine Optimization for Dummies book that is set for release in March.