‘SEO is Dead’ is Dead
Diamond Skull by Damien Hirst.*
One fine day I checked Twitter and saw to my dismay that a post titled “How SEO is breaking the web (and killing Google)” [sic!] has garnered almost 200 tweets.
While I assume that many of them were automated tweets from accounts retweeting everything about SEO and Google I guess there still were people around ignorant enough to spread this nonsense.
How come people spread myths like that again and again without educating themselves about SEO and how it impacts the Web (positively)?
Why People Spread Myths
Anger makes people irrational. Even I almost fell for it. I considered tweeting it myself to get my followers to ridicule the clueless guy but then I decided to just comment on that post.
I wasn’t the only person to voice my dissent with this kind of polemic. Most people were clearly stating that it’s nonsense to denounce SEO as a whole.
Yet by adding comments and engaging with the misleading post people who disagreed with it amplified it even further.
Raising hell by harnessing people’s outrage is the purpose of so called hatebait.
Controversial statements work well for attention grabbing. The post garnered around 3000 views. What did people think about this post though?
I guess 2000 of the 3000 were just shaking their heads in disbelief wondering: “How can somebody who is sane still spread such myths?”
Another Celebrity Talking Nonsense
Then a new search feature called “Google Instant” has been released and guess what, Steve Rubel – who has badmouthed SEO in 2008 already – did it again:
His “Google Instant kills SEO” nonsense got more than 1.5k retweets and numerous links. Does the “SEO is dead” meme still work? No.
“SEO is dead” is dead. Google itself offers official SEO advice at least since 2008 when the SEO Starter Guide has been published.
This time high profile Google personalities including Sergey Brin himself debunked the “SEO is dead” myth people love spreading.
They did it right away during the Google Instant presentation. Also Marissa Mayer whoe then worked for Google and Google’s “Head of Webspam” Matt Cutts stepped in to declare SEO alive and kicking.
SEO is alive but ignorance is as well.
Still the “SEO is dead” meme is dead. Who will believe Web celebs like Steve Rubel in the future when their misguided interpretations of Web reality get refuted within minutes after publication?
Stop Killing in the Name of Attention Grabbing!
Get over it. SEO is here to stay. As long as there is search on the Web, websites will have to get optimized for searchers. Don’t behave like an idiot just to get noticed!
The old stereotypes don’t work anymore. You just embarrass yourself ignoring the obvious and stating that “SEO is dead”.
“SEO is dead” is dead and you will also be dead on the Web in case you spread myths like these.
Who is this Steve Rubel anyway?
While I still knew what the other celebs were doing who have declared SEO dead in the past I don’t even know what Rubel does.
Influencers like Rubel are mainly famous for being famous. Thus I rather call them celebrities. They seemingly don’t do anything else but talking about others.
Probably most people will know him as the person who declared SEO dead while even Google execs disagreed.
The “x is dead” headline formula is overused anyway. Stop killing in the name of attention grabbing! It backfires.
* (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons licensed mage by Aaron Weber.
Hey, good post! It seems like with every new change in the search engines, there are people left and right who are screaming “This is the end of SEO”.
As you said, as long as there will be search, there will be the need for optimizing websites for those searches.
Which bits of the “How SEO is breaking the web (and killing Google)” article is actually factually wrong?
He’s not saying SEO is Dead, he’s saying SEO is killing Google.
His main point is that “SEO should be 20% of a site’s effort. The other 80% of search engine attraction should be driven by quality and relevance of content or a service.”. Why is this not the case?
I get the impression that his problem is with unnatural Link Building and not On-Site Optimisation. That Link Building biases Google’s algorithm in favour of spammers, which now is nigh-on impossible for Google to counter, and so it killing Google’s previously accurate results. Why is link building not doing that?
Most SEO companies do very little on-site SEO (which could count towards the 20%), and mostly just buy, beg or steal links. How is that optimisation?
If you call someone’s article “crap”, you should at least have the manners to explain why. He at least puts something after a “because” in his argument’s structure.
I agree with Matt. Maybe there’s just some misunderstanding on some point but I love reading this post and I think it’s a good one. Generally, SEO will be here to stay, imo.
I think too many people think the only kind of seo is bad seo, but there is good seo and bad seo (imho). Google needs good seo to be able to deliver relevent results. It would like to kill bad seo (aka spam)… but bad seo just. won’t. die.
Something tells me we’ll see the same “seo is dead” story next year, and the year after that…
Long live (good) seo! :)
SEO will never die, like you said, it will evolve to something different and we might change its name but it will be there anyway and we will have to care about it to be on the first page in google or any other page people use to search for information… good post!
SEO is here to stay. that’s for sure. if not, search is dead.
Matt and Hazel: This post was originally meant to be called ‘SEO Bashing is Dead” then the “SEO is Dead” meme flared up again so I changed the headline.
The “SEO kills Google/the Web” thing is just almost the same meme with flip sides. SEO kills the rest of the Web like some huge kraken. The same crap. I won’t waste my time explaining that. I already have in the comments of the above mentioned crap post. Many others have as well.
Well said. It’s hard to imagine that we’ll cease to organize and prioritize the web.
Think this guy is trying the play the shock factor with such a boldly titled post? Or is he drinking his own kool aid?
Ted: It’s difficult to believe that somebody is as ignorant these days, I guess the real reason behind such posts is mostly linkbaiting. That’s why I won’t link them anymore, not even using nofollow.
@onreact: ha, I noticed! I had to Google the article to find & read it.
Maybe it was the ignorance of Steve Rubel, and his desire to cause controversy and blog posts like this. Even so this statement “SEO is Dead” can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, Google relies on SEO to generate results.
I thought the picture was poignant – it’s dead but still of significant value!
Ted: You are a truly heroic reader!
Victoria: That’a a very good point. In fact that’s why Google is always preaching great content. Without content they have nothing to find. SEO is Google’s best friend as it almost always implies adding content and making it more findable for Google.
Tim: Yeah, I wanted to show that the death seems to be quite lucrative.
SEO is dead….
Even skeleton is smiling.
Hmmmmm
The way of doing SEO is changing. One must update with each and every perspective and most importantly with some meaning values. Making a profile and so signature with forums and leave it a side is all rubbish. Isn’t it????One must involve and active with what you are doing and must having some descent input to maintain quality…
SEO is forever…
I agree as long as we have search engines we will always need to use SEO, it will not die
I really don’t think SEO will ever die. It’s just something too important to be ignored. Other things may be more important, such as quality content, but that’s another story.
It seems to me “SEO is dead or not” is not really the issue but that SEO is and shall continue to be a changing craft by virtue of Google and the next two search engines changing their ranking algorithms from time to time.
[…] SEO 2.0 | ‘SEO is Dead’ is Dead […]
SEO shall never die as long as search exists. The optimisation techniques will change as people change in their search habits, it is impossible for SEO to die.
I agree with you SEO is not dead. I’m sick of these social media marketers saying SEO and page rank is dead. Just as you said…ignorance! Pure ignorance.
Completely agree with charlie.