The Death of SEO [Infographic]

Over the weekend Google did an update which continues their trend of diminishing the value of domain names in an SEO strategy as they "pump up the brand."

In light of that, we thought it would be a good time to get out in front of the tired "Death of SEO" meme that is sure to appear once again in the coming weeks. ;)

The font size is somewhat small in the below image, but if you click through to the archived page you can see it in it's full glorious size.

The Death of SEO.

Want to syndicate this infographic? Embed code is here. We also created a PDF version.

Published: October 1, 2012 by Aaron Wall in seo tips

Comments

vinautomatic@fu...
October 1, 2012 - 3:28pm

wite=White
Typo

But otherwise awesome graphic and well thought out :)

lildrummerboy
October 1, 2012 - 5:17pm

Good info and very true.

Web designers are getting much whinier these days.

But I still love them.

Pump Up the Jam?

Is it wrong that I watched it all the way through and sang along as well?

Make my day.

SEO SURGEON
October 2, 2012 - 7:51pm

So TRUE , this is years of experience on image.

hillz
October 2, 2012 - 8:57pm

Interesting infographic...got to say you're one of smartest marketers in the SEO game, period. Looking at what you built at SEOBook, it's clear you know your sh#t. Just hope more of us smaller players wake up and try to build a real business like you did here.

SEO obviously isn't dead....but Google has done a job of making it seem less reliable. Either way, i think it's a useful short term tool to have in your marketing arsenal...if you can use it to build something solid like SEOBook. I could be wrong, but im thinking if G ever smacked your rankings accross the board...SEOBook would be just fine. Thats what i really love about what you've built....straight genius man :)

AndrewL
October 4, 2012 - 11:13am

SEO might not be dead, but it's on cut 917 out of its death by a 1000 cuts. The risk of wasting your time and energy on SEO has never been greater than it is right now - and it's just getting riskier. SEO entices you in with its results and measurability - then Google turn the tables on you, and you're left with nothing again.

To me, the way forward is really just Business 101 - building real businesses that focus on winning repeat customers through exceptional service / products that aren't commodities, a "word of mouth"reptuation, a healthy "pulse" OUTSIDE of the SERPs. This is advice that works no matter what Google do or don't do. It's challenging to do this, it takes time and effort, but your time and effort is better spent. And best of all, you can laugh at Google when they ignore your business that people love, recommend and re-use.

benjarriola
October 17, 2012 - 7:29pm

I am not sure if my SEO History knowledge serves me well, but didn't David Pasternack say something about SEO is dead in some way or form back in hmmm maybe 2006? If yes, maybe his name should be under Adwords Guru?

Singman76
March 28, 2016 - 11:03pm

If you start a website, then you will see quick results. Later on, after building lots of quality links and following he guidelines of search engines you will experience no results or negative results.

Search engines will survive, but you will find only crap in them.

April 1, 2016 - 9:17pm

Following the guidelines is a minimum sort of table stakes just to play, but doing so does not guarantee top rankings, search traffic, or profitable business results.

Marc Soffer
February 1, 2018 - 5:53am

We have some special softwares that will track your targeted keyword positions and we will send you out a monthly report showing the difference in the results from the previous month. There are many factors that we can track and send out reports on.

October 19, 2018 - 2:17am

1.) clearly you did not read the above post

2.) rank reporting is not doing SEO. it can be done to show the efficacy of SEO, but in isolation is not doing SEO. it is sort of like claiming you exercised hard because you read a book about an Olympic race.

3.) our site has offered a free rank checking extension for Firefox for about a decade & there are other great + free + open-source rank checking tools like Serposcope that people can use.

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