For a few years, there were some bits of information being passed around about the death of SEO. These come from far and wide but to be very blunt, no, SEO is not dead.
Let’s look at the facts. The SEO industry is going strong and is worth around $70 billion. That’s quite a high number for a ‘dying’ industry, don’t you think?
To put it very simply, as long as people are searching for things on the internet, search engines will continue to exist. As long as search engines exist, webmasters will have to continue optimizing search algorithms. So, to answer the question very bluntly, no SEO will not die in the foreseeable future.
Why do people think that SEO is dead (or dying)? The most obvious answer to this question is the ever-evolving nature of SEO.
The requirements for your website or your content to get to the top of the search results has constantly been evolving. What was the norm when search engines were first created is nowhere near what exists now? With the evolution of search engines comes the evolution of these requirements. There are some that believe that one day, search engines will be so evolved, we won’t need SEO.
Here’s why those beliefs are baseless. With every passing day, the number of searches keeps building. This only increases the need for SEO. Search engines are always going to need metrics to manage searches, while we have to alter our content based on those metrics.
The only possibility for a search engine that operates without SEO is to have results based only on bids. This would mean search results that are littered with ads. Users would definitely get rid of a search engine that only bombarded them with ads.
While SEO itself is not dead, there are some SEO strategies that are. Employing these would be of absolutely no use for your website. Here’s a look at some of them:
Link-building is an important tool and is still one of Google’s top factors for ranking. Earlier on, if you built as many possible links to your site, you would be right up there in the search rankings. However, nowadays, the quality and the relevance of your links matter much more than the number. Just building huge numbers of links isn't going to get you anywhere.
People seem to spend all their efforts on getting to Number 1 in results. Truth be told, being number one no longer has the effect it did a while back. It doesn’t guarantee increased traffic and visits to your site.
The modern user knows that the internet can be cluttered, so they know to scroll for a bit until they find the result they want. So instead of the top spot, try to maximize the click-through ratings. You can do this with a good meta description and an interesting headline. This will get you more clicks rather than being camped on top.
Bigger is better. This is a policy that doesn’t work with websites. People believe that creating cast amounts of content and huge websites will help push their website up in the rankings. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Google actually ranks individual webpages on the merit of that page in relation to the keyword and search. To create quality content. Forget about quantity.
Earlier on, it used to be very important that keywords featured in abundance in your content. More number of keyword mentions meant higher rankings. However, that's no longer the case.
Google is all about the user experience now. So jamming the keyword into your content multiple times is only going to annoy the user. It creates a cumbersome reading experience. Instead, Google gives higher rankings to websites that have optimized reader content. Have easy to read content that solves the user query.
In the early days of search engines and result rankings, it was all about how you could optimize your content to match the search engine. However, after a large amount of research that cost them a lot of money, Google is now all about the user experience.
Rather than tailoring your content to get higher up on search engines, tailor-make your content for your users. Google now grants higher rankings to websites that have content that is relevant to user queries, and that can actually help them solve their problems.
Search Engine Optimization is still very much alive and kicking. People haven't stopped searching on the internet, and they won't for a very long time, at least as far as we can predict for now.
Optimizing content for search engines is very much relevant now. However, as mentioned above, there are many tactics that are no longer relevant. These were plans that were made in the early days of Search Engine Optimization, which no longer work with the more modern algorithms Google has created.
SEO is changing fast. That’s something we can admit. It’s changing and modifying very quickly, like many other internet verticals. However, that doesn’t mean it’s dying. What it could mean is with all the constant changes and updates to the algorithms, it could get a lot more complicated.
The best thing you can do is to stay in touch with the trends. Stay up to date with what’s happening in the SEO world. Keep reading about it, keep doing research about what changes are being made to SEO plans and search algorithms. Make sure that you update your SEOZ strategies periodically.
Google is constantly making changes. If you don’t stay up to date with those changes, your website will get left behind very soon. Being good at SEO means being adaptive and proactive. Try to stay ahead of the curve. Try to make changes and experiment with them before you are forced to do so.
In short, SEO will live as long as Search Engines live.
