SEO is NOT Dead

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Tom Gray
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Micah, who I had the pleasure to meet at Wordcamp Denver recently tweeted, “If you do SEO for a living, you will be out of business or irrelevant in 3 years.”

Naturally this got a lot of response.

To clarify and expand on his tweet he posted an article titled, “SEO is Dead” on his Learn to Duck blog where he contends that not only is SEO dead but that all of the SEO’ers have reinvented themselves as social media marketers and are now ruining social media. Micah, as you can tell, doesn’t have a problem being a lightening rod.

What he contends is that all we need is killer content and a WordPress blog. 

And, you know what, in general I agree. But why then, you ask, do you title your post, “SEO is NOT Dead” instead of, “I agree with Micah, SEO is Dead and I, for one am Happy!”

Because I also disagree with Micah. The point is that SEO, done correctly, will continue to be relevant for a long time because, to expand on his premise…

What the dog hearsThe need for killer content is a given but there’s an art to writing content that tells it’s story using the phrases and terms that resonate with your customers. Micah referenced writing for search engines when what good SEO is really all about is discovering the language of your audience and using their language, not yours, to convey your message.

WordPress as your site’s platform makes sense too, but why? Because WordPress has been developed to stay out of the way of your content. In other words it doesn’t obscure your content from the spidering eyes of search engines but reveals and spotlights instead, particularly with the assistance of plug-ins like the All in One SEO Pack.

But what if your site doesn’t easily lend itself to a WordPress overhaul. What if you don’t know the right way to populate the description fields of All In One SEO or how to select the right keywords or know how to emphasize them in your content. 

Micah’s a very smart guy and knows this stuff cold but what about the guy who knows how to make a great cup of coffee, customize a motorcycle, prepare taxes like nobody’s business? They do those things really well, why do they need to be SEO experts? Just because TurboTax is available should I abandon my CPA or H&R Block and spend the next 6 weeks digging through boxes of receipts?

I agree, SEO has been presented as some sort of magical, mystical dragon that can only be slain by SEO Knights, LLC. And, I’ve been one of those who’ve been abused by overcharging, underperforming BigSEO Incorporated. So yeah, I’m going to agree that a lot of SEO experts deserve all the anger they seem to be garnering these days but, in my view, the solution to SEO abuse is not to kill the industry but educate the consumer as to what good search engine optimization is really all about so they can make informed, intelligent decisions when selecting a specialist to assist them in gaining visibility and rankings in the major search engines.

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  • http://www.hiddentreasures.com Michael Benidt

    Hi Tom,

    Good discussion. Our issue with SEO might be rephrased as “If you’ll learn HTML, then you’ll have a good web site.” SEO is meaningless if the content is poor. And yet, just as an example – most technology classes and workshops are always about the technology. So, you need to learn HTML; you need to learn WordPress; you need to learn Twitter. Hogwash. You need to learn how to put that technology to use for your unique human skills. So, to take SEO and content for an example, here’s the world as we see it – and then the world for humans, who are not insecure about their technology knowledge.

    The world now is hugely oriented to technology solving your problems. Not enough traffic to your web site? You need SEO – in fact, you poor sap, you’ll be left behind without SEO. Again hogwash.

    There is one very easy test to apply to any SEO guru. Does that person drive lots of traffic to his site? If not – and it’s almost always not, then fire your SEO person because they are frauds. You can’t sell the idea of driving traffic if you can’t do it yourself.

    Here’s the world we’d like to see. SEO workshops would be replaced by writing workshops, which would help aspiring entrepreneurs far more than SEO. Twitter and Facebook workshops would be replaced by ethics and psychology classes – so that people would understand that things like Twitter “auto-responders” are repellent and antithetical to the very idea of social networking.

    The saddest of all things is that we still think that technology will somehow save us without our having to do anything (the essence of SEO). That’s so close to the diet flim-flammers who promise that you will lose pounds without any exercise.

    Good writing and personal investment in relationships are the exercise of the information age. All the rest is just SEO smoke and optimization mirrors.

  • http://www.gemsolv.com Tom Gray

    Thanks, Michael, for your insight. It is about the content but my contention is that good content, through proper preparation to take into account the mathematical constraints of search algorithms, is good SEO. Add to this the proper use of non-visible site elements – description, title, header, keyword & image tags – and you have a pretty good search optimization strategy in place.

    I really do agree with Micah’s earlier points, it’s just that I’m not ready to write off the industry. I think there’s a place for SEO on a mid-to-large scale. I believe that most smaller sites can be responsible for their own SEO but then they weren’t the ones paying big bucks to be bent over by the Optimizer as Merlin model.

  • http://www.goldencompass.com Sheryl Kay

    So here’s the main point Micah made in his post that I think says it all:

    “There is only one thing that breeds success, and that is passion. Hire people that are passionate about your product; that can talk about your product with passion. Remember, its not your call as to whether you are passionate or not. Its the people listening.”

    Especially that last sentence. “It’s the people listening. If you have nothing to offer people to be passionate about, they’re not going to listen — and even the best SEO ain’t gonna help that.

  • http://www.gemsolv.com Tom Gray

    In a perfect world everybody we hired would be as passionate about what we do as we are. Unfortunately, most times they aren’t and how many small to mid-sized businesses, these days, can afford to hire somebody whose main job is to be passionate about the biz? Besides, while I agree that passion is important so is execution, great design, value, utility. Not every product is the iPhone. In our town the Rocky Mountain News was filled to the brim with passionate people so why’d it tank? Oh yeah, not enough advertisers, not enough subscribers.

    To be honest, sometimes the best SEO (or similarly effective marketing approaches) is “gonna help that.”

  • http://www.gemsolv.com/ Tom Gray

    In a perfect world everybody we hired would be as passionate about what we do as we are. Unfortunately, most times they aren't and how many small to mid-sized businesses, these days, can afford to hire somebody whose main job is to be passionate about the biz? Besides, while I agree that passion is important so is execution, great design, value, utility. Not every product is the iPhone. In our town the Rocky Mountain News was filled to the brim with passionate people so why'd it tank? Oh yeah, not enough advertisers, not enough subscribers.

    To be honest, sometimes the best SEO (or similarly effective marketing approaches) is “gonna help that.”

  • ericafiller02

    We never expressed anything even remotely in support of “SEO is dead” or “SEO is not needed”. In fact, we said the opposite right in the …ok

  • ericafiller02

    SEO is far from dead; in fact it is still one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to a website. Normal people don't read technology …

  • ericafiller02

    SEO is far from dead; in fact it is still one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to a website. Normal people don't read technology …

  • http://www.directorysubmissionservices.net Nick

    As long as there are search engines, there will be SEO. Webmasters & companies will always be in competition to achieve those #1 rankings. As long as the search engines exist, it will be us SEO’s out there chasing our tails trying to figure it all out.

    Great article…love the artwork at the top!

  • Hire Web Developer

    Its a nice article about seo, My opinion is, seo has been never dead , because now a days all business having websites and also well competitions, so seo can manage the competition and increase the business . its a significance of search engine optimization.