Every so often, when we’re discussing a client’s digital strategy and we get to the SEO portion we’ll be asked, “Isn’t SEO dead? I read an article nearly 2 years ago that said it was a waste of time…”
SEO has been declared “dead” so many times that it’s become a bit of a running joke in the industry. It makes an exciting headline, so who can blame the occasional nail-biting marketing writer who gets excited every time a new Google update is released.
Some great examples of search engine hysteria are…
- When Google released the Penguin and Panda updates, which largely transformed link building, but did not, in fact, “kill” it
- When Google started listing PPC ads at the top of the search results instead of to the side, sometimes pushing actual search results beneath the fold entirely.
- When Google launched local search, which started taking the searcher’s location into account for relevant keywords.
- Just last month, when Google began directly listing popular tweets in their search results.
SEO changes quickly. The field has been transformed repeatedly in just the last few years. By the time you read this, the rules may well have changed again. Over time, it's become more and more important to define SEO as a part of a broader search engine marketing strategy rather than an effective standalone tool that lives on the outskirts somewhere between marketing, programming, and hacking.
Did SEO die?
The short answer is, “No.”
Since that’s a pretty unsatisfying answer to the question, let’s talk about why, and why people keep thinking it’s on its deathbed.
Different SEO Practices are Constantly Dying
Every time Google releases a new update unleashes another penalty, or Matt Cutts makes an announcement the SEO-sphere blows up in an attempt to make adjustments. We’re always trying to adapt to changes in search algorithms, or trying to get a better idea of how to work with the existing one. As we go things that used to be important inevitably become outdated as search becomes better at figuring out how to show people what they’re looking for.
Practices and Results Change
As Google and other search engines make improvements to their algorithms, the way that we get sites to rank also has to change. As search engines have evolved, they’ve managed to become better and better at reliably finding and ranking high-quality websites. Because of this, SEO has increasingly begun to interpenetrate with other digital marketing practices. In recent years, it has become more and more important to view SEO as a necessary part of a larger integrated digital strategy that’s designed to build real relevance.
The Way People use Search Changes
For years SEO professionals aimed to bring clients into the “golden triangle” which encompassed the first 3 results, with most of the attention going directly to the first result. In the last couple of years, however, user behavior has changed, most likely because of the introduction of mobile internet use. Searchers today read results more vertically, scanning through more results to find what they want.
Some People Won’t be Able to Adapt
As with any changing professions, some people are bound to be left behind. As SEO practices have changed, some specialized skills have been rendered somewhat obsolete. Someone who spent years specializing in creating thousands of low-quality links, for example, would find that their services are in much lower demand now than they might have been even 5 years ago. For that person, you might say that SEO has died.
SEO isn’t going Anywhere
As long as we have automated search engines, we’re going to have search engine optimization. The way we do it changes depending on how the search engine works. The only way to kill SEO, would be to kill search engines, and that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Are you having trouble getting your site to rank? Our digital marketing services include SEO and PPC, and can be found here.