SEO Is Not Dead


TL;DR: SEO is not dead, and never will be.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of creating a greater visibility for websites in search engines. SEO is about helping to make websites successful by generating relevant traffic from search engines.

SEO has been proclaimed deceased many times over the years, but each and every time SEO has proven to be very much alive and more thriving than ever.

SEO is not a static discipline - it continually changes and adapts. Whenever Google updates its functionality, whenever Bing releases a new enhancement, SEOs around the world learn all they can about it and modify their strategies accordingly.

  Search Engine Facts

On average the first 5 organic results on the Google search results page receive 67.60% of all clicks for a search query on desktop. The first organic result gets the highest amount of clicks with 31.24% of all clicks. The results ranked on positions 6-10 receive only 3.73% of the clicks. 71.33% of clicks for a search query go to page one.

According to the Internet World Stats there are now over 5.25 billion people online. Internet Live Stats reports that Google now handles more than 1.2 trillion searches a year - and is still growing. This translates to more than 40,000 searches every second.

  What do the experts say?

Those who predict the end of SEO are invariably ill-informed about what SEO really is and what it does. So let's hear it from the experts then, those people actually doing SEO and reporting on the search engine industry. Do they think SEO is dead? Hell no:

 The Historical SEO alive archive

People who predicted SEO wasn't dead a long time ago.


"I don't think SEO is dying. I do think SEO has changed and will continue to change as search itself changes."
- Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land.

"SEO is clearly alive and well and as long as peeps use search engines to find things it shall live on."
- David Harry, founder of the SEO Training Dojo.

"SEO is not dead, it's alive and kicking. SEO is moving from being a kid into puberty into becoming an adult: it changes with the world around it."
- Bas van den Beld, founder and editor of State of Digital.

"As long as there are Search Engines SEO will be alive and well because we are the keepers of visibility. The more complicated indexing becomes the more SEO's are required."
- Terry Van Horne, founder of SEOPros.com.

  What do the search engines say?

If you don't just want to believe the SEO experts, what about the people actually working at major search engines?

Both Google and Bing offer SEO advice to webmasters, Google via their SEO Starters Guide, and Bing via their Webmaster Blog. Not only that, senior employees at both search engines speak out regularly about SEO:

Matt also wrote a thoughtful blog post about Google Instant in which he states: "that doesn't mean that SEO will die. I've said it before, but SEO is in many ways about change. The best SEOs recognize, adapt, and even flourish when changes happen."

And finally some words from Rajesh Srivastava, Principal Group Program Manager at Bing, talking about SEO when Bing was first launched: "All of the legitimate, time-tested, SEO skills and knowledge that webmasters have invested in previously apply fully today with Bing. Moreover, investments in solid, reputable SEO work made for Bing will bring similar improvements in your website's page rank in other search engines as well."

  It's alive! Alive!

It should be blatantly obvious by now that anyone who says that SEO is dead is clearly ill-informed and/or just wants to get some attention. The next time you hear someone proclaiming the demise of SEO, send them to this site. And for goodness sake, don't believe a word they say.