This is a question that gets asked often, and it’s a very heated topic to
boot. There are plenty of folks in the industry who say it’s alive and well,
and plenty of others who think it’s on the way out. Long-time SEO Jill Whalen
recently announced
she’s ending her SEO career because “Google now works. The tricks to beat
and spam Google no longer work as well… This means, my friends, that my work
here is done.”
For more evidence of the changing times in the SEO industry, look at the
SEO industry’s poster company, Moz, which
recently changed its name from SEOMoz, by which it had been known since it
was founded in 2004. Are we witnessing the beginning of an exodus from
professional association with SEO?
I caught up with Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and a widely
published expert in the SEO field, for an interview to assess the state of
the SEO industry and answer the question: Is SEO dead?
Jayson Demers: So, as an SEO myself, I’m not sure there’s
ever been a more loaded question…but seriously, is SEO dead?
Sam McRoberts: Honestly, the answer really depends on how
you define SEO. If, when you say SEO, what you really mean is manipulating
search engines to place sites that don’t really deserve to rank well at the
top of the SERPs…then yes, I’d say that’s dead (or dying at least, as some
manipulative tactics still work quite well).
However, even though some SEOs work to game the system, I’ve never really
felt like that was the correct definition of SEO.
Because we so often use the SEO acronym, we forget sometimes that it
stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO, at its heart, is the process of
making websites more accessible and understandable to search engines. It
shouldn’t be, and really doesn’t need to be, manipulative.
Demers: So SEO isn’t about manipulating rankings?
McRoberts: To be fair, SEOs have always been split into
two (often overlapping) camps; those who work to actually make sites better,
and those who work to game the system to get crappy sites (that don’t deserve
to rank better) ranking better.
And again, in all fairness, most SEOs do (or have done) a bit of both.
Demers: Would that be the difference between white hats
and black hats?
McRoberts: White hats and gray hats really, since true
black hats are exceedingly rare, the outliers of the SEO industry. I actually
think that gray hats make up the bulk of active SEO practitioners, something
that Google is fully aware of.
Demers: What do you mean by that?
McRoberts: Well, if you look at the
major algorithm updates that Google has released over the last few
years, there have been a number that were very clearly aimed at gray hat
SEO tactics. Panda and Penguin, in particular, are the most stand out
examples, though there have been others.
Panda was targeted at sites with thin or duplicate content, or sites
with too many ads on-page. Penguin hit over-optimized anchor text in
link profiles. There were also updates that hit keyword rich domain
names. All of these represent tactics used heavily by gray hat SEOs.
Demers: Why now? Google has been around for 15 years, why are they just now going after SEOs in such an overt way?
McRoberts: I have a theory here.
During Google’s first decade of life, they had a really challenging time
dialing up the sophistication of their algorithm. To really understand
websites from a human perspective, and to match those websites with
search queries and searcher intent in a way that made searchers happy,
is one hell of a machine learning challenge.
The foundational areas that SEOs tend to focus on, on-site keyword
usage, indexation issues, etc. have all helped Google to get a better
grasp of what’s out there and how it all fits together.
In a sense, SEOs helped Google to index and understand the web, and
in the process to make their algorithm better, more human-esque.
Google’s most recent major algorithm change, Hummingbird, was
specifically designed around an improved ability to understand natural
language and searcher intent.
But at the same time, while SEOs have helped Google with one hand, they’ve been hurting it with the other.
Demers: Hurting it how?
McRoberts: SEOs were (and many
still are) helping sites to rank better that don’t really deserve to
rank better. In many cases, SEOs bought or worked with keyword-rich
domains, loaded them with poor-quality content and ads/affiliate links,
and manipulated their link profiles.
While plenty of SEOs were helping legitimate sites to improve their
presence, to the benefit of searchers, far too many were making Google’s
search results poorer in quality.
Google relies on having excellent search results so that people will
continue to use them when they perform searches. SEOs were muddying up
the search results with crappy sites, causing a degradation of overall
search result quality.
Lower quality SERPs = a poor experience for searchers, so Google
needed to make drastic changes to clean things up and restore/improve
the quality of search results.
Demers: So Google made some changes.
McRoberts: Exactly, and continues
to make those changes. And this is where all the “SEO is dead” talk
stems from. Google has made so many changes that directly impact SEO
tactics that the message is crystal clear: “SEOs: Stop messing with our
search results”.
When one of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet
decides to aggressively go after a specific group of people, that
changes the game.
In essence, Google has really polarized the SEO space. There are now
white hats, and black hats…there are very few gray tactics that still
work, and the ones that do aren’t going to last much longer.
Demers: So, manipulative SEO is
dead or dying, except for the really extreme players, the black hats.
What does that mean for the SEO industry?
McRoberts: Honestly, it’s a game
changer. Engaging in SEO tactics that worked 5 years ago (even 2 years
ago) now poses a big risk, not to mention rapidly diminishing returns.
SEOs will need to adapt or die. Luckily, SEOs are really good at adapting to change.
Demers: So you think SEO will survive? It’s not dead or dying?
McRoberts: SEO, the art of making
content more accessible and understandable to search engines, will exist
and thrive for as long as search engines exist.
That said, SEO is no longer a silo. It has massive dependencies in
other departments, from social and content to PR and advertising.
If anything, I’d say that the role of SEO has changed from
specialist/technician to more of a project manager/strategist role. SEOs
are exceptional at understanding how all the pieces of the online
marketing puzzle fit together.
Demers: So what’s next for SEO? With all that’s changed, would you recommend the SEO field to anyone as a career?
McRoberts: Current SEOs, the smart
ones, are already shifting into roles like creative director, marketing
manager, digital marketing strategist, etc. They’re escaping the SEO
silo because they know full well that SEO is no longer an independent
discipline.
For people looking to get into SEO, I’d probably recommend against
it. I mean, learn SEO, by all means, but you’d better also learn PPC,
CRO, design, social, copywriting, basic coding skills, and numerous
other disciplines on top of that. The days of being a plain old SEO, a
specialist, are pretty much done.
Demers: Thanks Sam, this has been really informative. Any parting advice?
McRoberts: I’d really encourage
people to think of SEO differently. SEO is far from dead, but it’s
changed so drastically that people really need to learn to think of it
as less of a marketing tactic, and more of a branding play.
SEO TOOLS: