Is SEO Dead in 2022

Is SEO Dead in 2022? No - It is Not

Question: Is SEO Dead In 2022?

Short Answer - No It isn't.

Long Answer – Are you kidding? How Can SEO be Dead in 2022? SEO isn’t going to die – ever. 

People perform over five BILLION searches a day on Google. How is SEO Dead?

A friend sent me an article from Entrepreneur Magazine recently that said SEO is dead because of Googles future plans for Advertising (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/353000).

This happens to me from time to time…friends who know I am “in the industry” e-mail me “click bait” articles foretelling the arrival of yet another digital marketing doomsday. 

Things I ALWAYS notice about these articles are: 

#1: They are all based on whatever the most recent Google Update is, and the impact the update is having. 

#2: They are almost always an “opinion” based article from someone who “has been in the industry for a hundred thousand years” but has no real time data. 

If you would like to read an article about SEO that contains some DATA instead of opinions, here is a good one from Neil Patel: https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-dead/

SEO is not Dead - But Here Are Some Things Are Slowly Dying

SEO isn’t dead, but there are some SEO related marketing habits that are dying a slow painful death – and they do need to die:

#1: The ability to be lazy and rank well on search engines. 

#2: The ability to game the system using “tricks” and get the top spot on search engines. 

#3: The ability to rank your content well on search engines by writing “puff piece” 250 word articles that:

  • Are not entertaining
  • Are not actionable
  • Add no knowledge or value

People never stop whining about how Google is making it harder to get that top spot. But why shouldn’t they? Google has NEVER made a secret about what they expect of us on our side as content producers. They expect us to add value and offer expert information. Period. The end.

And not only do tell us what they want…they will train you for free precisely how to do it. All you have to do is stop being lazy, and start doing what they tell you, and keep current. You think Google doesn’t know how valuable that top organic search spot is?

Why shouldn’t they make it a difficult (and therefore worthy) goal to achieve? Why should it be so easy to get on top of a pile of results that is guaranteed to make your business money if you get there?

The Harder SEO Becomes, The Better SEO Companies Will Have to Be, and A Truly Professional SEO Expert Will Emerge

The harder SEO becomes, the more likely it is that companies who do not truly know what they are doing will begin to disappear. 

This is how things evolve. The harder things become to achieve, the more intense the competition becomes, and then you start to see a big gap open up between amateurs and the professionals. As things continue to evolve, the better the true professionals become. Eventually things reach a state where the difference between someone who is “really good” and the professional is so wide, that they aren’t even in the same league. You see this in the difference between a top college baseball player, versus an amateur league baseball player, versus the pros. At each successive level, the skill required to participate is MUCH greater than the level below it. 

This is happening now among companies who offer SEO services. Being “pretty good” isn’t going to cut it any more. 

And this needs to happen.

Why?

Because it guarantees that the people who work hard work are rewarded and the people who try to game the SEO system can’t win.

It ensures that if a company like Brendon Burchard’s (https://brendon.com/) spend a big pile of money to execute a research project, and then publishe articles about it, that they get rewarded for their effort, rather than getting beat out by people who make little to know effort and just crank out crap and stick it to the top of their blog to “cream” search results.

Neil Patel (https://neilpatel.com/) is at the top of organic search if you search Google for: Digital Marketing.

Do you know how he does that?

He cranks out content all day every day. 

And that content is: 

  1. Free
  2. Data driven
  3. Useful
  4. Accurate
  5. And Actionable

All day long Neil Patel tells people what to do for your SEO, how to do it, and how to main it. And he is on top of Google among the very people who are all claim to be “SEO experts.” He is the the best among the best. 

If you are interested in learning how to write for SEO, please check out our article: 

SEO Writing – A Complete Guide

 

Is SEO Worth it?

Is SEO Worth It? 

Instead of wondering “is SEO Dead in 2022,” we think a better question is – Is SEO still worth it in 2022?

Short Answer: For most companies, the answer is Yes; It is still worth it.

Long Answer:

We think the best way to think about SEO as a business decision is to start calculating the the ROI on SEO like you would any other marketing vehicle.  Of course having that top spot has value. You can’t argue that. How much value is what needs to be calculated. As a business, you should start measuring how much it costs you to put out sufficient content to rank well on search engines, versus the amount of sales that effort generates; just like any other marketing you pay for. 

I am not sure why businesses “look” at SEO differently than Google Ads. Each is a potential opportunity. Each has costs associated with it. Each has outcomes your business would like to have. But why do companies budget for, and measure their ROI on ad spend, but when it comes to content production for SEO, they just assign that to a marketing intern, and never measure it? 

In a recent Youtube Video, Neil Patel (the SEO king) said that if you are not in the top six search results on Google that you will only receive around 4% of the clicks from people searching for things you sell. So being on top of Search Engines matters to your business. It matters a lot. 

People are out there every hour of every day searching on the internet for things (and services) your company sells. They are literally looking for what you sell, and finding someone else when you fail at SEO. 

Can you say the same about direct mail, or television, or radio, or billboards, or social media ads? You can’t. You have no idea if someone is interested in what you sell at the moment their eyeballs connect with any of your ads on those other platforms. But on search engines, you know at that moment, people are looking for YOUR stuff. Why wouldn’t you do everything you could to make sure they find you first. 

CMO’s need to start taking SEO seriously, budgeting for the content production required, and stop delegating SEO to interns, outsourcing it to people who don’t know your business, or dumping it on the newest team member. SEO is serious, and it has serious potential financial gains. No Chief Marketing Officer would ever allow an intern to do their Google Ads Management – but think nothing of delegating blog writing to an intern. 

Until marketing executives start taking SEO more seriously, and discovering what it takes now to rank well on search engines, and realize what it will take to rank well in the future, they can’t expect to reap the rewards SEO has to offer. 

 

CMO's Need to Add Content Production Capabilities and Budget for It

One thing CMO’s need to begin doing is adding content production to their teams. They should also install a Chief of Content Production. 

Today, SEO is primarily about content production. And that content must be: 

  1. Consistent
  2. Relevant to Your Industry
  3. Helpful
  4. Actionable
  5. Free
  6. Better Content Than Your Competitors
It isn’t good enough to be putting out one blog post per month (or week for that matter) that some outsourced freelance writer put together. 
CMO’s need to start preparing to produce content that is thorough, in-depth, engaging, fresh, and better than everyone else’s content. 
 
Chief Marketing Officers should begin preparing their team to commission, produce, and put out their own original research. There is so much “copied content” out there on the web that it starts to become useless. And search engines are getting better at spotting this kind of content.
 
Not only that, but Google is overwhelmed. It isn’t uncommon now to write a blog post, and NEVER have it indexed by Google. Why? Because better articles with better content exist, and Google can see it. Rather than just ranking your content lower – they don’t rank it at all. They never even put it in their index. 
 
If you want to stay in the SEO game, you had better start learning how to prepare, produce, and publish content that is new, yours, and frankly, better than everyone else’s.  
 

Backlink Strategy

Backlinks? You want backlinks to your website?
 
Then you should prepare yourself now to commission and put out original research that is fresh, full of data, and provides actionable information to whomever reads it. This is the new requirement to get people to backlink to your website. 
 
All of those old backlink strategies (and I don’t mean paid…those are dead already) where you write some five hundred word “puff piece” that says nothing, adds zero value, and is basically copied – and then email it to everyone you can find asking them to link to you – those days are gone. 
 
That strategy has been done to death! 
 
Webmasters now how important backlinks are. They aren’t going to just “give” you a backlink because you asked. 
 
If you want backlinks today, you need to put something out there that people want to read, inspires them to expound upon, and cite your work as the original source. 
 
What might this be? 
 
And industry wide research report would be a great place to start. Write and publish a true “state of the industry” report. What do I mean by a true report? I mean a document that is at least 200 pages long that is packed with information.  
 
What I don’t mean is – a white paper. 
 
Nobody wants to read your white paper, and certainly nobody is going to backlink to it. Again, those days are long gone. 
 
If you want someone to link to your content, that content must be really important, fix a problem (now), and worthy of citation. 
 
Pro-tip: If your content is not FULL of numbers (percentages, Etc.), then it better be entertaining and fun to read. Blog posts and article with data (numbers) get much more boost on Google. Plus – remember, a backlink today is normally going to be given by a person who is writing their own article, who is pulling data from various sources, and citing those sources using hyperlinks – so just remember – more numbers = more citations, which equals more backlinks. 
 
Conclusion - Is SEO Dead in 2022?

So is SEO Dead in 2022? No – it isn’t.

Is SEO Still Worth it in 2022? Yes, it is.

People love to say that things are dead. Imagine how many people told the CEO of Zappos that the shoe industry was dead.

They probably told him that it was too late to get into the “shoe game” fifty years ago, and it’s just plain dumb to do it now. I bet those same people wish they had gotten in on it when it was barely an idea.

Google is making SEO harder every day.

There is no doubt about it; and I for one am glad.

Digital Marketing has been the wild west for quite some time now.

It has been too easy to get on top of Google for too long.

Not any more. Soon enough you are going to see what happens to the people who don’t have drive, talent, discipline, and skill… they will disappear from the digital marketing game all together.

Why? Because they won’t be able to achieve what their clients need…top SEO ranking.

And on their way out the door, they will write articles about SEO being dead.

The truth is, the game isn’t over. Not even close.

What we are going to see is shake out that is going to reveal who the real pros of the digital marketing game are, and the amateurs who are great at “selling” digital marketing, but are only amateurs when it comes to pulling it getting their clients results.

So don’t worry that all of your hard SEO work has gone by the wayside.

SEO is not dead in 2022, and it isn’t ever going to be as long as Google owns 95% of all internet searches in the world.

If You Would Like To Read More About SEO: Click Here

If You Need Help With SEO Please E-mail us Directly: tim@staywilddigital.com

Tim VanDerKamp is Co-Owner of Stay Wild Digital Marketing. We offer affordable SEO for small businesses. We are located at 2641 Stringham Ave S C105, Salt Lake City UT, 84109

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