The death of SEO: do you believe it?

Recent articles written by Aaron Harris, co-founder of the website Tutorspree, and mobile expert at BGR, Dan Graziano, have caused Tim Anderson, a writer at the Guardian to announce, with apparent glee, that ‘SEO is dead.’ But who believes them?

SEO non-believers are arguing that SEO optimisation is now ‘cost-ineffective for many businesses’, pointing to statistics that reveal that Google search may display only 13% organic results, with the remainder being ‘ads and junk.’

As we all know, an empty gulf must be filled, and many are now arguing that social media optimisation is a more relevant way of drawing in traffic in this day and age, and is quickly replacing SEO as the most beneficial way of ensuring your site garners traffic.

Pointing to a 2012 Forrester report that revealed social media brought in 32% of discoveries versus 54% for search, up from 25% in 2011, many believe that social media PR and real quality content will soon outstrip SEO in terms of website optimisation.

However, other experts are quick to disagree with the notion that SEO is no longer relevant for digital marketers. In a recent article for Forbes entitled ‘SEO is not dead and will never die’, Joshua Steimle makes one clear point that is hard to argue with, which is that SEO will die only when search engines themselves die. Which, considering the ever-increasing rise of Google and Yahoo!, probably isn’t any time soon.

SEO may have evolved enormously in the last 10 or so years, meaning a lot of what was done in 2000 cannot be applied after 2010, but as long as search engines exist, search engine optimisation will always be there. Companies and SEO experts will continue to be useful as guides to ensuring sites rise up the search ranks and remain aimed at most relevant and appropriate audience. As such, killing off SEO policies in your company and sacking your SEO expert are probably not smart moves to make just yet… watch this space!