SEO isn’t dead. It just smells funny!

Apologies to Frank Zappa, it’s just such an apt quote for this subject and coming from a man who was an astute observer of human interactions during the latter part of the 20th Century, I just couldn’t resist applying it to a 21st century tech issue, SEO.

Both maligned and praised by it’s practitioners, so much of SEO is guessed at and so much of it is misunderstood, it’s amazing that it’s ever instituted on a page or site at all. When you study and practice SEO you live simultaneously in two worlds; the “you’re nothing more than a snake oil salesman” to “I am trying to be a crusader to make the web a better place for all of us.”  For the former we wish it a speedy demise and for the latter we wish it nothing but long life, and I am here to say that it’s a little of both, way to make a bold statement Steve! Right? I know! “Le SEO est mort, vive le SEO!”

Both states of SEO are valid, but for an in-depth discussion to take place let’s level set and define what SEO is—quick to the Wikipedia cave! Wikipedia defines SEO thusly:

SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results.

Now, the reason I am writing this post is that I am part of a WordPress discussion group on LinkedIn, in that group a member asked about what was better to use, the SEO tool that came with a template or a plug-in that took care of it? Valid question. The discussion that ensued quickly veered off topic though and centered on the viability of SEO.  As Spock would say… “Fascinating.” Because of that I decided to do some research on my own and that took me down a path that straddled the line of life and death for SEO, hence my walking down the middle of the road as well.

In my research I came across predictions of SEO’s death that have been around since 1997 and every year numerous articles are published about its passing or its need to, I would say none of them are factual.  I also found a very salient article written by Kristine Schachinger from Search Engine Watch that dealt with this subject, in it she posited that there was a duality around SEO and she laid out the duality pretty well and she also explained why SEO would go on for a long time to come:

If search still exists and math is still the basis for returning your results then there will always be ways to help make sites appear higher in the results. If search engines ever become a totally subjective individual reviewer system, then I might give its death some consideration, but until then SEO will exist in one form or another.

As with all systems, there are always a few who figure out how to game it. SEO is no different, think “clickbait articles,” they work, they work well, and they work fast.  Their counterpart is the well-researched and informative article that works well but slowly and most businesses need results quickly, not over time. So the quick hit is attractive and lucrative, but like sugary cereal, 30 minutes later it leaves you hungry for more. So a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else who follow the rules and do their best to produce a balanced literary meal. What is an SEO practitioner to do?

Enter the search logarithm and its ever changing make-up, here’s where the SEO playing field gets leveled and it’s where honest devotes can take solace. This variable, or more specifically the changing aspects of the search logarithm, makes everyone play fair and be educated. Google changed their logarithm 70 times a month last year on average, those changes kept everyone honest since most of them are a result of Google finding holes that needed to be plugged.  Being aware of the changes and how it will affect you and your site requires being educated and that goes a long way to keeping everyone honest. It also helps to keep everyone working at trying to better understand and take advantage of what SEO has to offer.  I mean taking advantage in a good way, as in pushing the limits of technology to get the desired results, not cheating.

From my research and from where I sit, SEO is very much alive and will continue to do well for a long time to come, but like all teenagers it just needs to be introduced a can of deodorant.

I’ll end on this quote from another famous observer of human interaction “The reports of SEO’s death are greatly exaggerated.”

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