Is SEO Dead?
No, SEO is not dead. SEO is a powerful strategy that changes with Google’s algorithm to help websites meet new search demands.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has been a high-profile marketing strategy for years. As the Internet changes and grows, can SEO keep up? Is SEO dead?
Luckily for us and your marketing team, SEO is not dead. This post will answer the following topics regarding the future of SEO:
- Is SEO dead?
- Why do people think SEO is dead?
- The impact of AI on SEO
- 5 times SEO supposedly died (but didn’t really)
- Why SEO isn’t going anywhere
- FAQ on SEO
Keep reading to learn more about the status of SEO!
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Is SEO dead?
No, SEO is not dead. Instead, it is evolving as strategies and technology change and advance.
The Internet, specifically search engines, is constantly growing to suit users better. Google has implemented many changes over the years to serve searchers and help people get the content they want. Yet, through all these changes, SEO has persisted.
Part of SEO’s function comes from its adaptability and scalability with changes. Since SEO is ongoing, most SEO specialists expect updates as they create campaigns. These changes point to SEO sticking around for a while!
Why do people think SEO is dead?
People may think SEO is dead for many reasons. In particular, their fears are often based on one of the following three common causes:
- The techniques they’re using don’t work
- They don’t get immediate results from their SEO campaigns
- There are many other digital marketing tactics to choose from
Let’s dive into these reasons below!
1. The techniques they’re using don’t work
Many people think that they’re trying their best at SEO, and it just doesn’t drive results. The truth is that SEO is constantly evolving, and outdated tactics don’t work. Knowing the latest trends in SEO and the Google algorithm is essential to success.
For example, keyword stuffing was an acceptable practice to help your pages rank. Now, Google is more intelligent and can tell when keywords are used unnaturally.
These changes are subtle, but they make all the difference in your campaign.
2. They don’t get immediate results from their SEO campaigns
SEO is an ongoing process, meaning you won’t see results overnight. Your changes take time, and you are rewarded for consistency and work over time. Usually, it takes about six months to see results from an SEO campaign — sometimes even longer.
That’s one way to tell if an SEO agency is stretching the truth: If it guarantees instant results. No agency should promise you immediate results for SEO, because it’s simply not feasible.
3. There are many other digital marketing tactics to choose from
More digital marketing strategies have been popping up over the years, so how can SEO still be relevant?
While new ways exist to earn leads and target your audience, that doesn’t mean SEO is no longer effective. In fact, SEO can help with other digital marketing efforts like PPC, email marketing, and content marketing. All these combined can help you reach your goals.
The impact of AI on SEO
In addition to the common reasons listed above, one of the biggest things making people think that SEO is dead in recent years is artificial intelligence (AI).
There’s an idea among some people that with tools like ChatGPT, there’s no longer any need for people to read human-written pages to answer their queries. They can simply type those queries into an AI tool and fulfill their search intent that way.
However, this is untrue for several reasons. For one thing, Google is still more convenient for most people than a tool like ChatGPT. Furthermore, AI doesn’t have the best reputation for being accurate. It’s been known to blatantly make up certain answers, often spreading misinformation as a result. Understandably, many people have a deep distrust of AI, preferring to get their answers from human-written content.
What is Google’s search generative experience (SGE)?
Originally, the above concerns related only to tools like ChatGPT. Now, however, Google is integrating AI responses directly into search results, a practice known as SGE. That has led many people to fear that no one will scroll past the AI responses and click on the websites listed below them.
However, this isn’t the case (for several reasons). First of all, these AI responses only appear in certain types of searches. The more niche or complex someone’s search is, the less likely it is that they’ll see an AI response in Google.
Secondly, even if they do see an AI response, that doesn’t mean they won’t scroll past it. Google has been showing featured snippets at the top of search results for years (which we’ll come back to shortly), and it hasn’t hurt search traffic.
And thirdly, Google has made a point of including sources in many of its AI responses. That means that if Google’s AI tool pulls information from your website, it could actually list your site as its source. So, not only will it not hurt your traffic, it could actually increase it.
This does come with a few changes for your SEO strategy. To optimize for AI search responses, you can work to really hone your content for search intent and provide short, succinct answers to queries. In other words, you should do the same things you might already be doing to optimize for featured snippets.
Overall, the rise of AI definitely has an impact on the way that SEO works. But will it kill SEO? Not at all.
5 times SEO supposedly died (but didn’t really)
The current “SEO is dead” conversation isn’t new by any means. We’ve been down this road many times before. People have been saying that SEO is dead for years, and every time, they’ve been wrong.
Below are five examples of times when people have claimed that SEO was dead, only to be proven wrong. There are plenty more examples beyond these, but these are some of the most memorable:
- Panda Update (2011)
- Featured snippets (2014)
- RankBrain (2015)
- BERT Update (2019)
- Zero-click research (2021)
Read on to find out more about each one!
1. Panda Update (2011)
Some of the earliest cries of “SEO is dead” happened back in 2011, the year Google released its Panda Update. Up to this point, SEO consisted largely of keyword stuffing, where websites would shove keywords into pages as many times as possible to rank higher for those keywords.
The Panda Update dealt a huge blow to that approach, prioritizing content quality for the first time over the raw number of keyword occurrences on a page. Many site owners lamented that it was the end of SEO, but of course it wasn’t. It simply required sites to use white-hat SEO rather than black-hat SEO.
2. Featured snippets (2014)
Another occurrence that set off alarm bells through the SEO community was the inception of featured snippets in 2014. Featured snippets are where Google provides a short section of text from a page at the top of rankings to answer the search query.
The initial response was panic — site owners feared that featured snippets would cause users to get their answers from the initial search results pages without ever clicking on any websites. But that didn’t happen. On the contrary, featured snippets actually drove more results to the pages they came from.
3. RankBrain (2015)
Yet another Google algorithm update came in the form of RankBrain in 2015. This algorithm continued the work begun by the Panda Update, lessening the impact of keyword stuffing and increasing the importance of search intent.
Site owners found that the cheap tricks they’d been using to rank didn’t work anymore, leaving them with the belief that the age of SEO was over. But — you guessed it — they were wrong. SEO lived on, it just now required site owners to create genuinely helpful content rather than trying to game the system.
4. BERT Update (2019)
The BERT Update in 2019 was yet another update to Google’s algorithm, and it stood for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. You’re never gonna believe what this update did. That’s right — it made keyword stuffing less effective. I know. Completely unlike any update before it.
You’d think that the SEO community would have learned its lesson by that point, but nope! Once again, everyone started proclaiming the death of SEO. And once again, they were dead wrong. Does it even need saying at this point?
5. Zero-click research (2021)
One of the most recent examples of people saying that SEO was dead (aside from the rise of AI, which we already talked about) happened in 2021. That’s because Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, released some research showing that almost 65% of Google searches didn’t result in any clicks.
A lot of people heard that and started to feel like their earlier fears about featured snippets were now being proven true. Finally, it was as the prophecy had foretold — SEO had lost its power.
But, as Google itself exasperatedly explained, that simply wasn’t true.
See, while it was true that nearly two-thirds of searches didn’t end in a click, it’s also important to note that Google experiences around 6 million searches per minute. That’s an insanely huge number of searches. So even if only one third of all searches lead to a click, that’s still at least 2 million clicks per minute.
Furthermore, that 65% statistic is averaged across all Google searches. But those results are massively skewed by the fact that a lot of searches genuinely don’t require a click.
If someone Googles a simple math problem like “34 + 95,” they don’t need to click on an article to get the answer. So, the percentage of clicks is probably a lot higher for the types of long-tail keywords your business is targeting.
Why SEO isn’t going anywhere
SEO is here to stay for many different reasons. Here are some of the biggest reasons that it’s not going anywhere:
Learn more about each of those reasons below!
1. You get a high ROI
Search engines have about a 15% close rate compared to the nearly 2% rate of traditional marketing. That means that SEO ensures that you get money back on your investment.
Also, many of the changes you can make to boost SEO cost nothing (or next to nothing). So, you can budget for SEO and keep your spending low while earning more traffic, leads, and conversions.
2. SEO keeps you competitive
Other companies are using SEO, regardless of what industry you’re in. For example, WebFX helps clients in the following industries:
- Medical equipment suppliers
- Construction
- Roofing
- Education
- Accounting
Even if you think SEO doesn’t apply to your industry, it’s almost certain that your competitors have some SEO campaigns going on. SEO can help you compete with those businesses — plus, if you do it right, it allows you to stand out from them and find more qualified leads.
3. People still use search engines
Google processes 70,000 searches per second. That’s 5.8 billion per day and 2 trillion per year. Search engines are just as relevant as they were five years ago and will continue to be a part of our everyday lives.
If you don’t know how to work with search engines or get people to find you, that’s where SEO can help. People are looking for your services and products, but you want to be the first option they see.
FAQ on SEO
Still have questions about the future of SEO? This FAQ covers common questions people have about SEO, its longevity, and related topics.
Will SEO still exist in five years?
As of 2025, SEO will definitely still exist five years from now. So many businesses use SEO to help their site and content rank, and that won’t disappear any time soon.
Will SEO keep changing?
SEO will change as the Internet and search engines grow, expand, and update. We have already seen many changes in SEO over the past decade. It’s best to think of SEO as a flexible, ongoing process to help you adapt your plan.
Does SEO have a future?
SEO will still help businesses and users find the best results for their inquiries. Since SEO helps users, Google is likely to keep the factors that help it give the best results possible to users. SEO aligns with their goals, interests, and business needs.
How can you continue to make SEO work and be effective?
The best way to make SEO work for your business is to keep up with algorithm updates and look at other sites’ work within your industry. You want to anticipate the changes and make updates when required.
Or, if you don’t want to add any work to your team, working with WebFX can help you launch SEO campaigns that drive results.
Clutch has personally interviewed more than 250 WebFX clients to discuss their experience partnering with us.Independent research from Clutch has named WebFX the
top SEO company in the United States.
Stay on top of SEO with a professional SEO agency
Now that we know that SEO isn’t going anywhere, it’s likely time to get started on (or revamp) your SEO strategy. If you want help, look to WebFX, a leading SEO agency and a top Fort Myers SEO agency.
In just the last few years, we’ve generated over $10,085,355,239+ in revenue and 24,859,684 leads for our clients. We can do the same for you. Check out our SEO services, and contact us online to talk with a strategist about your custom plan!
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Abbey is a digital marketer, copywriter, and lead editor. She has worked on over 200 client campaigns and WebFX, and she specializes in marketing strategy analysis and industry-specific digital marketing plans. Outside of writing and editing, you’ll likely find her taking pictures of her cat, making a new playlist, or tending to her houseplants. -
WebFX is a full-service marketing agency with 1,100+ client reviews and a 4.9-star rating on Clutch! Find out how our expert team and revenue-accelerating tech can drive results for you! Learn more
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