Is SEO Dead?

September 15th, 2006 · No Comments

I was speaking with an old friend of mine who works in the online marketing industry recently. I was describing what I do for my clients and used the phrase, “I do search engine optimization”. Josh’s response offended me at first when he said search engine optimization is dead. After a lengthy discussion I realized Josh meant the days of ‘tricking’ the search engines to rank your pages highly were pretty much over (I agree if you are looking for long term success). We both feel SEO deserves a new name like ‘Online Marketing’. SEO as a name just does not capture all the skills, talents, and know how that is needed to create a successful website on the internet.

In addition Josh feels like PPC is the ‘wave of the future’ by getting a high enough CTR (click through rate) to show up in the ‘blue’ ads at the top of Google is way better than a heavy organic presence. I cannot agree with Josh on this point. I think it is very important to rank well organically and the fact that you rank well organically in most cases means you have done so many other things correctly to get to that point. Some of these ‘things’ include getting links from trusted and relevant websites. This is important not only for search engine rankings, but direct traffic, online reputation building, and more

So in the end I think Josh and I agreed SEO is not dead, but probably deserves a better name!