There is a lot of speculation going around at the moment about whether or not SEO will still be around in the next 5 years. With books such as “SEO is Dead” and the recent remarks from Matt Cutts, a lot of people will surely believe this idea. Despite Matt Cutts recent remarks, he has mentioned before that he believes SEO will still exist in 5 years. He goes on to mention that by using SEO, you are trying to put your websites best foot forward and that not all SEO companies use blackhat or illegal methods to achieve this. Make sure you do your research beforehand when choosing which company you would like to market your website.
With regards to the book titled “SEO is Dead“, which I believe to be a pretty good marketing campaign and has caused plenty of controversy, this book essentially highlights the fact (amongst others) that social media has become one of the most important methods of advertising online.
But I wouldn’t worry too much about SEO being extinct in 5 years. As long as there are search engines, and people who dont have a clue about how to market their business online, there will always be room for SEO’s and SEO marketing.
Popularity: 21% [?]
I don’t think SEO will be dead in 5 years. I would rather say conventional SEO will be dead. Look back 10 years. SEO has changed quite it’s face over the last couple of years with more competition entering the arena and the constant search engine algorithm updates.
To be honest, it is all ready changing…Web 2.0. To take an example: blog posts are indexed most of the times faster than normal static pages (also depends on the methods used). A blog is all about sharing information. Almost every search query starts with a question. So if your blog posts gets indexed faster, you are giving the user real time information to what they are looking for.
I think SEO will become more essential over the next few months as Google does their update. Justin is very dramatic and thinks that everything is about to die but this is part of his marketing plan (scare tactic) and it works for him. As long as we keep up-to-date with the way the industry is moving then all will be fine.
@Bryan, did you read the report from Justin?