This is a question that gets asked often, and it’s a very heated topic to boot. There are plenty of folks in the industry who say it's alive and well, and plenty of others who think it's on the way out. Long-time SEO Jill Whalen recently announced she’s ending her SEO career because “Google now works. The tricks to beat and spam Google no longer work as well… This means, my friends, that my work here is done.”
For more evidence of the changing times in the SEO industry, look at the SEO industry’s poster company, Moz, which recently changed its name from SEOMoz, by which it had been known since it was founded in 2004. Are we witnessing the beginning of an exodus from professional association with SEO?
I caught up with Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and a widely published expert in the SEO field, for an interview to assess the state of the SEO industry and answer the question: Is SEO dead?
Jayson Demers: So, as an SEO myself, I'm not sure there's ever been a more loaded question...but seriously, is SEO dead?
Sam McRoberts: Honestly, the answer really depends on how you define SEO. If, when you say SEO, what you really mean is manipulating search engines to place sites that don't really deserve to rank well at the top of the SERPs...then yes, I'd say that's dead (or dying at least, as some manipulative tactics still work quite well).
However, even though some SEOs work to game the system, I've never really felt like that was the correct definition of SEO.
Because we so often use the SEO acronym, we forget sometimes that it stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO, at its heart, is the process of making websites more accessible and understandable to search engines. It shouldn't be, and really doesn't need to be, manipulative.
Demers: So SEO isn't about manipulating rankings?
McRoberts: To be fair, SEOs have always been split into two (often overlapping) camps; those who work to actually make sites better, and those who work to game the system to get crappy sites (that don't deserve to rank better) ranking better.
And again, in all fairness, most SEOs do (or have done) a bit of both.
Demers: Would that be the difference between white hats and black hats?
McRoberts: White hats and gray hats really, since true black hats are exceedingly rare, the outliers of the SEO industry. I actually think that gray hats make up the bulk of active SEO practitioners, something that Google is fully aware of.
Demers: What do you mean by that?
McRoberts: Well, if you look at the major algorithm updates that Google has released over the last few years, there have been a number that were very clearly aimed at gray hat SEO tactics. Panda and Penguin, in particular, are the most stand out examples, though there have been others.
Panda was targeted at sites with thin or duplicate content, or sites with too many ads on-page. Penguin hit over-optimized anchor text in link profiles. There were also updates that hit keyword rich domain names. All of these represent tactics used heavily by gray hat SEOs.
Demers: Why now? Google has been around for 15 years, why are they just now going after SEOs in such an overt way?
McRoberts: I have a theory here. During Google's first decade of life, they had a really challenging time dialing up the sophistication of their algorithm. To really understand websites from a human perspective, and to match those websites with search queries and searcher intent in a way that made searchers happy, is one hell of a machine learning challenge.
The foundational areas that SEOs tend to focus on, on-site keyword usage, indexation issues, etc. have all helped Google to get a better grasp of what's out there and how it all fits together.
In a sense, SEOs helped Google to index and understand the web, and in the process to make their algorithm better, more human-esque. Google's most recent major algorithm change, Hummingbird, was specifically designed around an improved ability to understand natural language and searcher intent.
But at the same time, while SEOs have helped Google with one hand, they've been hurting it with the other.
Demers: Hurting it how?
McRoberts: SEOs were (and many still are) helping sites to rank better that don't really deserve to rank better. In many cases, SEOs bought or worked with keyword-rich domains, loaded them with poor-quality content and ads/affiliate links, and manipulated their link profiles.
While plenty of SEOs were helping legitimate sites to improve their presence, to the benefit of searchers, far too many were making Google's search results poorer in quality.
Google relies on having excellent search results so that people will continue to use them when they perform searches. SEOs were muddying up the search results with crappy sites, causing a degradation of overall search result quality.
Lower quality SERPs = a poor experience for searchers, so Google needed to make drastic changes to clean things up and restore/improve the quality of search results.
Demers: So Google made some changes.
McRoberts: Exactly, and continues to make those changes. And this is where all the "SEO is dead" talk stems from. Google has made so many changes that directly impact SEO tactics that the message is crystal clear: "SEOs: Stop messing with our search results".
When one of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet decides to aggressively go after a specific group of people, that changes the game.
In essence, Google has really polarized the SEO space. There are now white hats, and black hats...there are very few gray tactics that still work, and the ones that do aren't going to last much longer.
Demers: So, manipulative SEO is dead or dying, except for the really extreme players, the black hats. What does that mean for the SEO industry?
McRoberts: Honestly, it's a game changer. Engaging in SEO tactics that worked 5 years ago (even 2 years ago) now poses a big risk, not to mention rapidly diminishing returns.
SEOs will need to adapt or die. Luckily, SEOs are really good at adapting to change.
Demers: So you think SEO will survive? It's not dead or dying?
McRoberts: SEO, the art of making content more accessible and understandable to search engines, will exist and thrive for as long as search engines exist.
That said, SEO is no longer a silo. It has massive dependencies in other departments, from social and content to PR and advertising.
If anything, I'd say that the role of SEO has changed from specialist/technician to more of a project manager/strategist role. SEOs are exceptional at understanding how all the pieces of the online marketing puzzle fit together.
Demers: So what's next for SEO? With all that's changed, would you recommend the SEO field to anyone as a career?
McRoberts: Current SEOs, the smart ones, are already shifting into roles like creative director, marketing manager, digital marketing strategist, etc. They're escaping the SEO silo because they know full well that SEO is no longer an independent discipline.
For people looking to get into SEO, I'd probably recommend against it. I mean, learn SEO, by all means, but you'd better also learn PPC, CRO, design, social, copywriting, basic coding skills, and numerous other disciplines on top of that. The days of being a plain old SEO, a specialist, are pretty much done.
Demers: Thanks Sam, this has been really informative. Any parting advice?
McRoberts: I'd really encourage people to think of SEO differently. SEO is far from dead, but it's changed so drastically that people really need to learn to think of it as less of a marketing tactic, and more of a branding play. I wrote a blog post about a year ago that really summarizes my thoughts on this: Investing in SEO the Warren Buffett Way.
