I've seen others' predictions that with the direction search engines are taking, search engine optimzation is going to become obsolete in 5 or more years.

That's not too risky of a prediction, since 5 years is literally the half-life of the entire search engine optimization industry. Five years is a lifetime in internet time.

Do I think SEO will die a slow death? I think a slowdown in the impact of SEO is a more accurate assessment. The need to optimize content to be relevant and fixing all the bass ackward web designs and HTML that continues to be pushed out to the web will never really discontinue. Links are always good for traffic, so link building isn't going away either.

Rather than SEO becoming obsolte, I think it would be more accurate to say that other tactics like traffic building through social media will simply become more effective. At least until those channels get replaced by something else.

As long as there are web pages and links and search engine spidering, there will be a need for optimization. The impact might be a lot less than other tactics, but the need will always be there.

As more and more online marketers are discovering, Google is not the only way to drive traffic and sales via the web.

Tag: Search Engine Optimization