Ever hear anyone say “SEO is dead?”

Just Google the phrase and all sorts of articles come up:

Of course, even thinking of this causes alarm for you. After all, if SEO dies, that spells disaster for SMBs like yours.

But, don’t listen to a single thing the nay-sayers try to tell you. Likely, they say what they do to get attention so you read their article.

SEO Will Never Die

For now, there’s strong, clear, convincing, and undeniable evidence that SEO will never die.

Borrell Associates attempts to study spending on digital marketing. In total, they estimate businesses will pay $613 billion for “digital marketing services.” The SEO slice of that for this year is $65 billion. And for 2020, they think that number will hit $80 billion.
Does That Sound Like SEO’s Dead?

So, with those numbers in hand, do you think SEO’s going to die?

In a sense though, SEO does die. It’s changed dramatically over the years. When we were first founded in 2002, you could have asked what your “content plan” should have been.

And we’d have said,”What? What are you talking about?”

Because back in 2002, you didn’t need any significant amount of content to rank. In fact, you could just spam the living daylights out of keywords on a web page and you would rank in search.

If only we knew then what we know now…

So over the years, SEO’s changed a lot. And in a sense, much of it dies.

SEO Can’t Possibly Die…Here’s Why

Make sure you ignore anyone who says SEO’s going to die. First of all, remember you live in a capitalist society.

That means you create products or services your market wants. If your market doesn’t want or need them, you go out of business or sell different products and services they do want. If they don’t want it, it goes out of existence.

Can you go to the store and get bell-bottoms? Point demonstrated.

This stat at AdWeek shows 81% of consumers do their research online before buying. Google says business-to-business buyers complete 57% of the sales process online before buying.

In other words…the market right now prefers to do online research before buying. And from a business standpoint, you have to be present where you can find your market.

So until people change their behavior, they’re going to continue searching mostly online before buying.

And there must be some rhyme or reason as to why one company’s web page shows up instead of another’s, doesn’t there?

The process to make that happen is called “SEO.” Although today, SEO needs more help from content, aka “content marketing,” so your site ranks.

SEO is infinitely more difficult and expensive than it was when we first started business in 2002.

But, it’s absolutely, positively, 100% guaranteed to stay effective now and for the foreseeable future.

Ignore anyone who tells you anything otherwise.