That is the question many digital marketing industry publications have recently been declaring in their headlines. So first and foremost, let me define SEO to you. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is "a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results" as quoted from Moz, an SEO consulting company. SEO includes both technical and creative elements to drive traffic and increase awareness in search engines. (Fishkin, 2015) It is evident for a business website to use SEO as majority of web traffic is driven by major search engines like Google or Yahoo. Search engines provide people with information they are looking for. (Sen, 2005)

I believe SEO is not dead and search engines are definitely still thriving. We still do our search on google to get information. How can it be that SEO is dead? But i believe there are reason why articles are publishing articles on whether SEO is dead.  I believe the reasons that led to those beliefs are because of rapid changes in social media. There are 3 reasons that im going to point out:


Organic reach is the total number of unique views of people who are shown to your post through unpaid distribution. Google has always been the go to search engine but over the years, consumers has become more aware of the difference between sponsored and organic listings and have search for information elsewhere.

Which brings me to my next point on,

Typing searches into google has decreased as people are putting more trust in other places. For example, looking up on cafes has shifted to places like Instagram. Comments and reviews typed in by other people on the photo has been a way for people to know more about the cafe. People want to see opinions of other people. Consumers are more likely to care about what are the popular cafes that their friends go to than to find out about it through a google search

3. Mobile apps are increasing their stake in the market

As i mentioned earlier about Instagram, many other mobile apps are increasingly used by many consumers. This affects SEO in a way that the trend is splitting up and it is no longer a traditional search engine that could help us get information but now more apps are able to give us heaps of information. For example, if you are searching for fashion inspiration, would you still head to google? People may still use google to search for articles on fashion or news but people are more likely to search for outfit inspirations on websites like Pinterest or Tumblr.

SEO can only die when search engine dies. It cannot be denied that we still use search engines and it cannot be denied that as long as there are search engines, people will definitely find out how search engines work in order to get business. It includes activities designed to get business from organic search result in a search engine. Minimal changes like changing the title tag to appear high in a search engine is also an example of SEO. ( you can read more here, x ) I have highlighted as why SEO is presumed to be dying. The rapid changes of social media has brought about new ways for people to search for items apart from Google. It is evident that there is a shift in SEO but SEO are definitely not dead.

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