Is SEO Dead? No. SEO is Alive!

Man jumping in front of a dark red sunset. Spectacular shot! — Is SEO dead or alive? The headline says it already.

Whoa! I started this blog in 2007. That’s 18 years ago.

To enter the scene with a bang I said “SEO is dead” back then.

In 2025 “SEO is dead” is like a running gag or meme even.

So is it true? You might wonder. Is SEO as in “search engine optimization” dead then?

The short answer is of course: “no”. The longer answer is “SEO is alive“!

Don’t believe me? Let me elaborate then!

SEO is alive! Do you have proof?

Screenshot from Google Trends showing that the demand for SEO is peaking in January of 2025.

You could assume I am the most unlikely person to tell you that SEO is alive.

Take a look at the context of my attention grabbing claim back then.

I introduced a new kind of SEO, a better one. Like the next level of SEO.

For lack of any better term I referred to the new school of SEO simply as “SEO 2.0”

My blog is still called seo2.blog despite the “2.0” hype being long gone.

I was preaching business blogging, social media and relationships long before they became mainstream.

So is it just me and my preference? Is it merely nostalgia? Well, not really,

Do you want proof that SEO is alive and well? I usually just check Google Trends.

The number of organic searches just peaked again in January of 2025.
In the US demand showed as “93” after reaching it’s all time high 100 at the beginning of 2023.
Globally the relative numbers were even higher – at 99.

Remember that the numbers are relative so that 100 is the highest. So depending on the tie frame you compare they may differ.

Also the global numbers are still tainted by Korean’s named Seo, despite using the “Internet and Telecom” filters so rather look at the US.

When I look at the US in the past 12 months with the filter mentioned above I even get a 100 in January of 25.

Moving on despite an old name

I could have moved on to become a blogging blog or a social media blog.

Both topics are easier to cover and both audiences are by far bigger.

Despite that I stayed with the SEO. Why? For years I was battling Google.

Google has been plaguing me and my clients with disastrous updates and penalties too.

So there were plenty of reasons to throw in the towel.

For some reason I have stayed with SEO no matter what attention seeking pundits say.

Unlike me they are not interested in revolutionizing or even reforming the SEO trade. They just hate it and want it gone for good.

Or rather they want to benefit from the outcry. Each time someone claims SEO is dead the industry links to it. This way it pushes the offending site in Google results inadvertently.

In 2012 and “the world was about to end” according to the annoying doom-sayers everywhere I didn’t hide in the closet either.

I’m not the natural born optimist though. So it’s not just me laughing off everything and keeping calm and optimizing forever.

The reason I still practice and evangelize SEO, be it 2.0 or whatever is that SEO is alive!

SEO is all over the place. It’s reinventing itself every few months it seems. Everybody does practice it these days by default.

The never-ending challenges of SEO

SEO is alive and kicking and it’s exactly the way it makes me feel every day.

SEO is challenging, never getting stale. Every day SEO is changing – at least at the superficial level.

You have to keep up with the pace and you never get bored. Just look at the other disciplines I cover here: blogging and social media.

I don’t write that much about them any more because most of what have been said is still true.

Changes are happening here too but progress is much slower.

When it comes to social media the names of the tools are changing but the game stays roughly the same.

With blogging it’s even worse. Most of what I have written about 5 years ago are the basics by now.

Every blogging beginner is writing about them. Why should I after a decade of blogging? I get bored with it. With SEO that doesn’t happen.

Waking up to a new Web landscape

Sometimes I wake up and have to rethink my whole strategy because the changes that happened over night were so profound.

I don’t even exclusively refer to the updates that Google is introducing more frequently than ever or the other limitations they impose on us like

not provided
nofollow
zero-click searches
helpful content systems
AI Overviews

For many SEO is becoming too fast and too difficult.

They can’t stay afloat. For others the failure of these people is an opportunity.

While Google makes conventional SEO harder over time by almost completely hiding organic search results.

Google is showing more ads every year and obfuscates the fact that they’re ads even more effectively. There are still ways to get more people to view your site be it

through Google
on social media
directly

I will be among the first people to know them, test them and report about them as long as it’s organic and you don’t have to bribe gatekeepers to get visibility.

The “SEO is dead” worst case scenario

Even in case SEO would “die” most people wouldn’t notice and still seek out SEO services. Just think about

search engine submission
keyword stuffing
PageRank sculpting

Some people were still using them even many years after they have been deprecated or made completely obsolete.

Only gradually over time the demand dwindles.

When it comes to SEO as a discipline it grows again usually.

Yet the only reason I can imagine for SEO to die is that the majority of people and organizations will embrace the more holistic findability concept instead.

Government sites and colleges already do.

By the time findability or any other enhanced version of SEO will take over I will be already there. It won’t be