Is SEO Dead? Or Just Not In-Charge Anymore?

[This has been edited for length and clarity] 

Jacob: 

Hi Jeff. Welcome to another episode of the Human Friend Digital Podcast.

Jeff: 

Hey, Jacob. Today the topic is SEO and is it dead? Like as a concept?

Jacob: 

Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a little bit and that’s why I wanted to do this episode because I have asked people about what about AIO—artificial intelligence optimization—but also SEO is being over-saturated with AI telemarketers basically, or spammers just flooding the zone with garbage.

Jeff: 

When we were talking earlier today, you said something along the lines of like, in, you know, 5 or 10 years or whatever, the term SEO will be as loved as the term “telemarketer,” which I thought was really funny.

And also kind of captures this idea. And we—we don’t know if it’s gonna be true, but do you want to talk about like why, or how it’s gotten to this point and why people sort of are starting to think of it as just like gimmicky or, you know, not valuable?

Jacob: 

Well, I think it’s because a lot of people do it badly. Not to be throwing shade on the other SEOs in the world, but a lot of—

Jeff: 

We do it well.

Jacob: 

We do it well and I do it. I think I have to give a lot of credit to my first agency where I was at, where they were like—they—this was back in the day when people used the word “white hat” and “black hat” SEO all the time. And the agency I first worked at, which still is in existence, called Upright Communications; 

So, we should link to them. They’re really nice.

Jeff:

Shout out.

Jacob:

The owner, Greg Fry at the company, was very much into white hat SEO. And that is what he wanted everyone to follow: these best practices.

Jeff:

And what is “White Hat” versus Black Hat?” We’ve talked about it on an episode, I think in our first season, but, you know, rehash it for us.

Jacob:

Yeah, no, it’s a reference to the cowboy days. If you wore a white hat, you did the right things, and if you wore a black hat, you did the bad things. You were the bad guy team. But in SEO, what it really means is: are you here to game the system or do you want to earn your place playing by the rules?

Jeff:

So what is an example of something that would be black hat?

Jacob:

So, link farms is the most common one, or paid links, which—you—this is another thing that people will probably get a lot of spam emails about. To be like, “here, you could pay $50 a month to get these links to your website every single month, blah blah blah.” That is a good example of black hat SEO, where you are not earning those links naturally because you have done really good content or you have done—

Jeff:

You’re paying… Yeah, you’re paying a company in Bangladesh or wherever. I mean, wherever labor is cheap. I’m not picking on Bangladesh.

Jacob:

Vietnam is a pretty common one now.

Jeff:

Is it?

Jacob:

Yeah. Vietnam, South American countries a lot now. Central American countries as well. It goes all over the world.

Jeff:
So I know that Google has done a pretty good job of cracking down on sort of separating out, are these real links or are these fake links, correct?

Jacob:
Yeah, they’ve done—yeah, they try to detect if it’s spam or paid, or part of a link farm practice. A link farm would be where you basically generate a ton of mediocre to crappy websites that all link to each other falsely.

Jeff:
And they’re like fake websites?

Jacob:
Yes. And sometimes they’re not. I’ve heard some people say that even in the sports world—where you see like SB Nation and all their little subsites—they’re basically doing that with a white hat on top of their head.

It feels like they have a black hat with a white hat on top.

Jeff:
On top of it.

Jacob:
Yeah.

Jeff:
They’re gray hat.

Jacob:
Yeah, they’re definitely in the gray hat land—where they make a ton of little sites and they’re all linked to each other. One person in the industry has nicknamed them “incestuous.”

Jeff:
Yes. So, okay. The way that would look—for people who might not know—is, like, I know what you’re talking about because we’ve done SEO work on this exact same topic: But basically, you have, say, 50 little tiny websites for very niche parts of the sports world that all link to each other and talk to each other under the same umbrella.

Jacob:
Owned by the same company.

Jeff:
Right. Yeah. And so it’s not like they’re getting outside sources, which is what you would really want to have.

Jacob:
Yes.

Jeff:
But in the SEO calculation, they still rank high for link…

Jacob:
Yes

.

Jeff:
Interlinked-ness—but it’s just interlinked to each other.

Jacob:
Yeah. They do earn—this is where they get gray. They do make good content, and people do link to them.

Jeff:
Oh yeah.

Jacob:
I would say the base on which they are built is a little gray.

Jeff:
The SEO base, anyway.

Jacob:
The SEO base of that is a little in the gray zone. But a lot of websites do it.

That is an example of black hat stuff that people see a lot, and that’s been around since the beginning.

Google has done a ton to address it—like, there used to be things called keyword stuffing, but no one does that anymore. That was an old thing.

Jeff:
I remember.

Jacob:
Yeah, there are all these things. But the first company I was at was very much against all of those practices, and was trying its best to be an honorable entity in this space—which served them really well.

And it served me well because it gave me a lot of chops to do it right.

I have to say that the results I got for clients then—and I get for clients now—surprise me from time to time. Just by doing the simple grind of following the rules, you can get a lot of good wins and benefits.

Maybe it’s not as fast—it’s not a fast game at all.

Jeff:
I was just gonna say, if you like black hat’s if you want a quick response that probably won’t last.

Jacob:
Yeah. Well, all it takes is an update.

Jeff:
Yeah. White hat’s more of—you know—taking the long road, but it actually gets you somewhere worthwhile.

Jacob:
Exactly. And I think that’s the underlying history that leads up to the question of “Is SEO as a title dead?”

I think people have become enormously impatient when it comes to the success of any marketing tool or effort. They don’t want to see the long view in this.

Where, you know, SEO—I think as a title—is a little bit dead. Because the only way an SEO person can really do their best job with a company is if: A) the company is actually a good company for real—not just they have a website and they do. You need to be a good company that’s actually doing things in the world. You’re going to trade shows, you’re participating in your community. You’re a real organization. You’re not just set up here to make a little quick money with a bunch of AI content. And you want to have a person that you want to have a relationship with for the next two to five years.

Jeff:
Because that’s the arc for these things.

Jacob:
It is. It is. And things change over time as well. And they build on top of themselves. So the content that you’re building today could benefit you in a year from now. You try to sell that to somebody—boy, that sounds like a lot of money for not a lot of return on investment today. That is why it really only works—SEO really only works—in a larger arc. A larger picture has to be at play with the organization. So I’m even downplaying selling me as an SEO person because it’s really hard to sell that.

Jeff:
Yeah. That vision of, “Hey, I can make your business outcomes positive in two to five years.”

Jacob:
Yes. No one wants to spend the money on that. They want it today. They want it in three to six months. They want some stellar results to say, “I’ve done it.” That is why I’ve leaned more into being a web design and development company that has long-term SEO values at play. I think that’s the position that I think a lot of SEO people will go to—you should be part of a greater offering.

Jeff:
Right. SEO is a part of your offering, but it isn’t what you’re offering. What you’re offering is website development.

Jacob:
Yeah. A really good website that you’re gonna want for your business, regardless of the SEO value.

That’s the value: that you have a website that works really well, presents your product really well, presents your company really well. However, all of those things lend themselves really well to SEO. But if I tell you we’re doing it for SEO? The disconnect is there. 

And I’m telling you—people just get flooded with emails. I mean, every client that we work with gets probably somewhere between 5 and 20 emails a month from some junk person who says, “Your SEO score is bad.” “We should get you more links.” “We’re guest blog posters.” “We’re going to put you on these 18 blog websites. We have connections to get you on this website and Wired,” and blah blah blah.

And they just flood the zone with junk. So nobody knows if anyone can actually do anything meaningful, because everyone that can’t do anything meaningful sounds exactly the same as the people that are doing meaningful work.

Jeff:
Because like, if you could actually get your company linked to Wired, that would be amazing.

Jacob:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That would be amazing.

Jeff:
But what you’re saying is, everyone’s selling the same bag of goods, and very few can actually deliver.

Jacob:
You should say “bag of tricks” because that’s what it sounds like. Be like, “Hey, I got this magic eight ball here, and if you rub it just the right way, I’m gonna give you—”

Jeff:
Yeah, but I mean, getting linked to Wired would be legitimately good for your business. Because Wired gets a tremendous amount of traffic.

Jacob:
Yeah. But you know how you get there by doing a white hat approach? It’s really being a good, excellent PR company for your client. You would do that through making sure your company had solid content and a PR strategy where it’s doing things, doing press releases—well, press releases are another thing that has become oversaturated because of the digital age—but you’re doing things that get your name out there. You’re participating in your communities.

So again, you can have an SEO benefit by doing a greater marketing effort. But never—so long as you don’t lose SEO as an underlying form or function to your marketing efforts—that’s where it needs to go. Because the term SEO now—AIO—is just… talk about beating a dead horse. No one can sell it well because everyone else says they can do everything.

Jeff:
And they can’t.

Let me just try to synthesize this real quick. So, what you want to do is have a holistic view of your website design and a holistic view of your public relations and marketing strategies—but always keep SEO in mind while you’re doing it. Not focusing just on SEO and expecting that alone to grow your visibility.

Jacob:
Exactly. That’s a perfect summation. Because I will say, in the early days—maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago—if you were really good at SEO and white hat SEO…

Jeff:
You would rank high.

Jacob:
Saw some amazing results for clients. It was a silver bullet in marketing for a good five years.

Jeff:
And now it’s attenuated down, down, down, down…

Jacob:
Yeah, even eight years ago, I remember turning around one website, and within six months, they went from having about maybe 10 to 30 form fills a month—which was already really good—up—

Jeff:
And that’s the CRO part. I just want to point out: SEO is always coupled with CRO. Because the point of SEO is not just getting visibility, but then turning that visibility into a conversion. Like a form fill, like a contact—something that you can actually make money off of. Because I mean, I guess unless you’re like a news organization or something where you have a bunch of ads on your website, just getting a view isn’t gonna make you money. For most companies, I would say.

Jacob:
No, you’re good. Look at you. I should just give you my job. Here’s my hat. You can have my white hat now.

Jeff:
Hey, we’ve been doing this for a year, Jacob. I have learned things.

Jacob:
No, you’re walking the walk, you’re talking the talk now. But my point was that it used to be really good at getting that. By doing a really good SEO campaign, I would say within six to eight months, I got this company going up to a hundred form fills—

Jeff:
So like 10 times.

Jacob:
They went from having like 13 to 1,400 people a month—maybe somewhere around there. And then within six to eight months, they’d doubled that. And within a year and a half—and this is just doing really good web development and SEO work focused mostly on SEO at the time—they got up to like 3,000–5,000. And for a B2B business, to get 3,000 to 5,000 visitors a month, depending on the season… Getting over a hundred-plus form fills in a month was kind of like, we’re actually too busy now. This is—we gotta figure out how to deal with this. We have to get people that are just dealing with sales constantly now.

Jeff:
Oh no.

Jacob:
Yeah. No, really.

Jeff:
I feel so bad for you.

Jacob:
I had some of those moments, and it was really awesome. But at the same time, I just don’t see that. It’s so much harder to get that engine to turn on now because it’s so saturated. Every single keyword space is saturated. We’ve been around long enough that everyone knows generally how to do this. And certain website companies—like Squarespace—have done an excellent job making sure most people can make a website without doing anything. And Squarespace sites rank. They actually do. They get you out of the way. If you can make the content and you can make the links, you can get anything. So the gates to entry have been lessened, and then we’re just in a saturated land.

Jeff:
I think that makes a lot of sense. So, Jacob, these SEO people—since you know that title is dying, maybe not dead yet, but losing a lot of value—what do people turn to? What name should they ascribe to themselves?

Jacob:
Yeah, I think if you’re someone that is really focused on SEO, you should start adopting more skills to your set. So either lean more into all digital marketing—so you’re a digital marketing person that focuses on generating content, maybe pay-per-click. You’re just part of a greater mix of skills. Or get into copywriting with AI and becoming an AI person that focuses on that—for now. But again, I think the AI craze will probably end up like the SEO thing.

Jeff:
I literally guarantee that it will. And I think it’ll happen way faster than it did with SEO.

Jacob:
Yeah, I think so. Because it will compound on itself the faster they get. 

So my biggest thing—if you’re an SEO person and you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to deal with this”—which I didn’t really want to deal with either in the last couple years—But I do think you need to pick another skill that works with SEO and say that you’re that thing now. Web design and development is where I—and digital marketing consulting—is really where Human Friend Digital now sits as its service offering. It’s really like: we’ll build you a good website, we’ll make sure it’s SEO-optimized, we’ll be a part of your digital marketing mix that you’re working on. But it’s not a “lead with SEO” conversation anymore. What are your other skill sets—that now need to take the forefront. 

Some of them—like pay-per-click—still very valuable. Some of them—like content generation, brand management, PR—still very valuable. And your SEO skills that you’ve acquired directly benefit the outcomes for all of those things. If you make a website with good SEO in practice, and you make really good content, and it’s an engaging website—great. You’re gonna get more sales for your client because you designed and built it that way. 

Also, it becomes AIO-friendly, because artificial intelligence bots crawl the internet, crawl websites, in a very similar way as Google does. It’s using the same exact kind of philosophy. And in some cases, they use search engines themselves to go out there and get answers. So if you show up in search well, you’ll show up in artificial intelligence searches well. 

But again—SEO is the add-on, not the lead-in anymore. That’s it. What’s your next—what’s your other skill? What’s your other thing that you’re bringing to the table? That’s what you are now. And you have this kind of—I would say white hat SEO is kind of like this secret sauce that makes the structure and all of it work better, 

Jeff:

But it’s no longer the captain. It’s the navigator maybe.

Jacob:
Maybe. Or it’s the guy swabbing the poop deck. Probably the wrong way to say it. But I would say—you know what it really is?

Jeff:
You’re relegating it to a really low position, Jacob.

Jacob:
No, this is what it is. It’s not the captain. It’s not the first mate. It’s not the navigator. It’s that one old guy that’s been on the seas for a really long time and will grab the young guy and be like, “No, this is how you tie the knot.” That is where SEO is going. If you don’t listen to the old guy with the wisdom—

Jeff:
“Based on these skies, I know there’s gonna be a gale upon us before morning.” I don’t know what voice that was.

Jacob:
I don’t know. It sounded well enough like an old pirate. It sounded good. But I think that is where SEO needs to be. It is just the old wisdom of truth in the background. It is not the forefront. It is not the captain of any ship anymore. It had its moment.

Jeff:
It had its moment in the sun.

Jacob:
But I think it’s dead. 

Jeff:

May we all age just as well as SEO—at some point. 

Jacob:

Yeah. Yeah. So… it was good.

Jeff:
Okay. So—any final thoughts?

Jacob:
No. I think if you are a business owner and you’re happening to listen to this podcast—you can hire me.

But secondly—

Jeff:
We will shamelessly plug ourselves every episode.

Jacob:
For clients listening to this: SEO should be a part of another service that they do already. So, you want an expert in PR that happens to have SEO. You want a web developer that has good SEO fundamentals. You want a pay-per-click marketing person that has good SEO fundamentals as a part of their knowledge base and their mix. 

And how do you test that? That’s a good question. Maybe that should be another podcast—about how do you test people for good SEO? The short of it is: if they have a customer and they show that they’ve done good SEO work for them… do they have lengthy content on their client’s websites? Do they have page titles that look good? Do they have meta descriptions that look good? If you Google them, do they show up in search for a random term that you can clearly see from their website? So if their website does construction services in the Portland, Oregon area—do they show up there?

If you do that quick check, and they’re getting clients to show up at number one, but their main service is web development—they can do both. Wow. You got a good person there. Or if you’ve got a pay-per-click person that’s showing up at the top of the pay-per-click ads—because their SEO is good—because they play together… That’s how the ranking works inside of those pay-per-click placements as well. There you go. You just gotta test it a little bit with the people. Ask them for some case studies. But I would never go out looking for an SEO person. Because now, by and large, they just look very scammy. And it’s too hard to sort through it to figure out who’s actually doing good work and who—

Jeff:
Who’s legit and who’s just trying to make a buck off of you.

But yeah, thanks Jacob. I think that wraps it up.

Jacob:
Thanks for listening. And I’ll see you in the next episode.

Jeff:
Yeah. Hopefully we’ll stick to our every-two-weeks schedule, even though we’re still not doing that consistently. We said we’d do better, and we haven’t, but—

Jacob:
You know…

Jeff:
Hopefully we’ll see you in two weeks.

Jacob:
Cobbler’s children tend to not have shoes. That’s how this goes.

Jeff:
I’ve never heard that saying. What does that mean?

Jacob:
It means that the cobbler—he doesn’t have enough time to make shoes for his own children, even though he’s making them for rich people.

Jeff:
Oh, and this is… the podcast is our child.

Jacob:
The podcast is our shoeless child.

Jeff:
Yes. All right. Well, we’re doing our best.

Jacob:
All right.

Jeff:
We’ll see you guys next time. Adios.