Diamond Skull by Damien Hirst.*
One fine day I checked my social media feeds and saw to my dismay another “SEO is dead” post.
This in fact happens every year at least a few times – ever since SEO exists and I practice it.
To be honest I even used the same hook myself. Yet I did not want to merely provoke back then.
In this post I want to show and explain how hatebait works – that is misleading “news” meant to provoke anger.
How does hatebait work? Through enragement!
This is just one of many examples of hatebait directed at the SEO industry.
So this time a post called “How SEO is breaking the web (and killing Google)” [sic!] has grabbed lots of attention.
Of course many of the shares were automated bots that push everything about SEO and Google
Yet I guess there still were people around ignorant enough to spread this recurring nonsense.
Others simply fall for what I call enragement (engagement based on rage) and “hatebait“.
So how does hatebait work? It’s simple. A vocal minority gets targeted with misleading news.
People get angry and publish angry responses.
They spread the word about the myth by their reaction already assigning importance to “news” that way.
How come people spread myths like that again and again?
Why aren’t more people 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 responding myself to get my followers to ridicule the clueless guy.
Yet then I decided to just comment on that post. I also started writing this article here.
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? Yes and 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 who 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.
Yet hatebait is also still working for some.
It just does in the short term though.
Who will believe Web celebs like Steve Rubel in the future?
Who will trust them when their misguided interpretations of Web reality get refuted within minutes after publication?
Stop killing in the name of attention!
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.
Even without websites content or ideas will spread.
Thus 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?
At least I still knew what the other influencers were doing who have declared SEO dead in the past.
Yet 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!
Don’t grab attention by being a jerk. It backfires.
Also do not fall for hatebait. The agent provocateurs trick you by making you angry.
Also take note that I wrote this post originally in 2008.
Even by then the “SEO is dead” meme was a running gag.
It’s 2025 already and still every “new” year the same myths gets spread.
For a few years I had a microsite called isseodead.info simply saying “no” in huge letters.
Yet I discontinued it after a while because I was bored by the phenomenon.
* (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons licensed mage by Aaron Weber.