For a long time, there has been all the comments about the demise of SEO, but I have still not seen that. Like many “Old School” SEOs who have been doing it for over 15 years, SEO is not going anywhere. The way I would put it, will be SEO is morphing and not necessarily going away. I will explain in a minute.
I remember the days of keyword stuffing ala Alta Vista and those early search engines, but then came Google and all that shenanigans stopped because Google came out with a better algorithm. That meant that the not-so knowledgeable SEOs started to back pedal and did not know what to do.
Over the years, other tactics like keyword density (I never liked this) and other ways to force keywords into the content or meta tags, went on for years, till Google caught on to that too.
After the Penguin and Panda updates, and the need for quality content and better links, SEOs realized that spamming sites with their links with overly-descriptive anchor texts won’t cut it any more since Google has now figured how to catch unnatural links. With that, the hunt was for new link building tactics.
Remember the hype over guest posts and infographics? Not saying they are not still good link building tactics, but these tactics were over played till people started to disregard them altogether. Also, do you remember the “500-word articles” that was so popular not too long ago? That is now considered not in-depth enough for any meaningful content, except your piece is truly relevant. That is what happens when you try to post “SEO content” and not content that your readers want and love to share. I won’t lie, I was guilty of it myself when that was the popular thing to do.
So, you are probably saying, so what’s next with SEO, since its demise is not necessarily near? According to SEMRush Ranking Factors 2.0, direct traffic had the most influence on the page rankings, which means you should be promoting your brand and not just worried about keywords and anchor texts.
What this means is that today’s SEOs have to be better marketers and not just practice the narrow art of SEO. In other words, you have to be well versed in inbound marketing and find ways to get your brand in the forefront of your audience and not only worry about which keywords you should rank for. The need of the pure SEOs may be declining, but SEO as a whole is still alive and well. The only thing is that it is wrapped up more with digital marketing and not just SEO.
To go from good to great in the SEO world, you must be a skilled digital marketer and that will broaden your skill set and you be indispensable in your work place or to your clients. So, stop worrying about how long your content should be and where you can force a link to your site and think like a skilled digital marketer and see why SEO is here to stay and your SEO skillset is still extremely valuable to many businesses, because at the end of the day, it is still all about “what have you done for me lately.”
