This morning I saw a tweet from the very smart Dean Shaw.
Why SEO will disappear in the next 10 years. What say you @1918 ? bit.ly/yk3xuI
— deanshaw (@deanshaw) March 12, 2012
Since it had been at least 3 days since I had read a “SEO is dead” article, I checked it out. It is written by the CEO of a social media company that says, shockingly, that SEO will lose out to social media!
My favorite line is, “What the searching user gets is now a good picture and quickly realizes that this first item on the search engine may not be the best. Often it is rejected because it shows up first, which makes many buyers suspicious.” Wait, what? I’ve never seen that data anywhere. In fact in the latest Pew Internet & The American Life Search Engine study, it says just the opposite, “91% of search engine users say they always or most of the time find the information they are seeking when they use search engines” and “73% of search engine users say that most or all the information they find as they use search engines is accurate and trustworthy.”
One of the reasons I follow Dean’s twitter stream is because he’s smart and demands proof from the data slingers on the web.
I do think that SEO is evolving, just as it always has. Social media is playing a bigger part in establishing personal authority as well as link sharing. Things are changing so fast that Google tweaked the main search algorithm over 500 times last year. Google is constantly trying to figure out just what you need when you type in the box.
So now I’m wondering, are you using search engines more or less lately? Do you think the first result in search is some kind of manipulated plant? Please let me know in the comments.
I think most SEOs agree that the moniker “SEO” is dead. It’s much more useful to think about it as online marketing, encompassing SEO, PPC, Social Media and more. Personally, I’m too busy performing the “tasks formerly known as SEO” to discuss its nomenclature. 😉
I honestly think that the author of the “SEO is dead” article is so deep in social media that it’s all he sees now. We’ve all been there. There are days when all I see is SEO, or bad web design or terrible landing pages.
I’m still using search engines but notice that I’m increasingly using twitter to look for a more organic, word of mouth based suggestion. I don’t yet see the first results as a manipulated result, although as a marketer I’m well aware that many of them have been “SEO’ed”. I do pay much more attention to the meta descriptions and bold lettering in the SERPs to choose my clicks. If anything I think search engines will continue to serve those who are looking for official results, shopping and of course the many search channels will gain more ground (image/video/news search).
I think there are a lot of marketers behaving just like you. Twitter is a gold mine of WOMM and instant sentiment analysis.
I agree with “The artist formerly known as an SEO”, Jenny above. The landscape is blending fast and the usual suspects are fighting to determine value and control of social signals. If these signals through social media are dictating ‘traditional’ SEO and defining authority then aren’t they one and the same? This topic will be contested forever, I still use search engines more than social media though getting a quick pulse is useful to spot trends. Great blog by the way, I used Google search looking for background on a Joe Jackson story, and arrived here. I can see that serp result was justified, and I found another interesting ballpark to stop by.