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…

The 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.