SEO Isn’t Dead. It Just Got a Life.

With every algorithm update or new announcement from one of the major search engines, there will inevitably be a handful of doomsayer’s proclaiming that SEO is on its deathbed.  As always, this proclamation is unfounded, unnecessary, and quite frankly, unbelievable.

SEO isn’t dead. It hasn’t abandoned its role in helping websites achieve their goals of improving organic visibility to generate search traffic. It hasn’t stopped helping business owners engage with their audience on their terms and on their turf.  No, SEO isn’t dead.  It just decided to get a life.

Instead of focusing solely on the whims of search engine algorithms or manipulating the system for rankings, SEO has found new life by embracing the entire digital landscape. It’s embracing social media as another outlet to build relationships to impact organic goals.  It has learned that it if wants to grow its organic visibility it needs to speak to the end user, not simply to the search engine.

Winning Friends & Organically Influencing Others

To be clear, just because SEO has learned some new tricks doesn’t mean everything has changed. The best practices that made it so popular in the first place are still very much important. Selecting appropriate keywords, optimizing on-page content and meta tags, and building a site that can be easily crawled by search engines are still fundamental for organic success.

It’s off-page where SEO has changed. What SEO has taken out of its repertoire is low-level manual link building, keyword stuffing and duplicate or spun content. SEO has matured and learned how to identify these tactics as unnatural manipulation; these low quality strategies have been exposed as the spam that they are.

Getting “links” from off-topic directories or irrelevant forums to artificially inflate your rankings may let you sneak by but they won’t do much in the long run. Especially when the links come from less than reputable sources.

And the biggest lesson SEO has learned is to stop trying to keep up with that fickle algorithm. Chasing the algorithm is like Keeping up with the Kardashians. It’s pointless. It’s mind-numbing.  And this type of volatile approach to SEO will, at best, lead to minor short-term gains but most likely will lead to penalties and loss of business. 

Instead of optimizing for search engines, it’s time to optimize for users.

SEO has learned that in order to be relevant and effective, it has to be more social and outgoing. It has to reach out to engaged users and journals and media sources offering legitimate value in exchange for authentic endorsement.

SEO has also learned to embrace reciprocation: be a good friend and fill up your karma bank BEFORE you have something to promote. Build the relationship first and establish your authority in the space and with the audience so that when you have a legitimate asset to offer the community, it will be received and evaluated based on your reputation within that community. In short, today’s SEO has learned to focus on thought leadership, social outreach and human-centered engagement.

The Habits of Highly Effective SEO

SEO has always been a nuanced approach to marketing but over the past few years especially it has evolved considerably into a delicate balance between art and science. Successful SEO has embraced the popular game theory concept known as “expected value”. We challenge ourselves to consider the expected return on a particular decision over an infinite number of trials. It’s learned that some decisions may get the attention it wants today, but that brief success is more then exception than the rule. It has embraced the fact that the right decision will occasionally (and unfortunately) not yield the results you expect. But, in the long run, implementing legitimate marketing practices as opposed to “optimizing for search engines” will produce more true wins than losses.

Sure, for every door that Google slams shut with a new algorithm, there are a dozen more ways to squeak by with less than honorable tactics. Gaming the system will always be a part of the SEO game as long as it provides quick results and easy victories for those willing to risk it. But for those who decide to take the easy way, it will only create a longer and more treacherous road to success in the future.

Search Engines Just Aren’t That Into You

The biggest realization of this more mature, more socially aware and likeable SEO?

It’s not about them. It’s not about a website or a search engine or keeping up with the algorithms.

It’s about the user. The users who visit search engines with infinite questions looking for a single answer. True SEO (as with true marketing in general) is about appealing to them and their needs, wants and motivations.

It’s going beyond being technical, automated, or dictated solely by process.  SEO is not a one-size-fits-all solution that can be boiled down to a simple checklist.  SEO involves engagement, participation, and legitimate membership into the community. It involves intimately knowing your audience and catering your marketing, from the on-page to the off-page, to suit their needs.  Simply put, it involves being human.

So SEO has branched out to embrace content not for content’s sake, but content that the end user will find valuable and knowledgeable. It is talking to people and making authentic connections, earning quality links and endorsements, expanding its digital visibility in authentic and valuable ways. It has realized that by embracing people for who they are and what they want, and not trying to game the system, it has created a following that no new line of code can destroy.