SEO is still alive and well. Today it is as relevant as it has ever been. In any case, it may be even more important. Today, 53% of all website traffic comes from organic searches.
Imagine for a moment that you had an application on your phone for every piece of data or every functionality you might need from the Internet. At that time, would you ever return to traditional websites or search engines? The possibilities are slim. Apps are slowly ending the “traditional online experience”, including search engines, although there are still opportunities for searches to survive in the context of those applications (or in the process of finding them for download). A well-thought-out SEO strategy remains one of the most scalable and profitable investments for any online marketing budget.
If you're not in the business of doing SEO every day at a high level, then it probably seems logical to say that these results mean that SEO is dead and that there is no more point in trying to drive online conversions through the SEO medium, since the largest companies with the largest budgets buy time from anyway. More recently, SEO Book shared an infographic with several marketers who claim that SEO is dead for one reason or another and why they are wrong. Whether it's because it was too difficult, changed too much, or they just couldn't move up Google's rankings, they no longer believe that SEO is a profitable marketing channel. Rather than being seen as competition and money taken from your PPC and marketing spend, SEO should represent a complementary voice in every digital marketing budget.
As much as it pains me to say it, there are a lot of marketers who truly believe that SEO is dead. A look at Google Trends for queries such as SEO Agency and SEO Consultant shows a notable upward trend. The SEO orientation includes the endless search for technical improvements, the effort to create new pages or obtain new links through digital public relations.