Where are 2023 SEO trends headed - dead or alive?

[Whitey]

I just had a chat with a business friend and he said “SEO is dead”, “Don’t pursue it as a central investment pillar”

It made me think. If content is going to be searched on with Ai integrated into search, then the content layers which advertising sits over, will remove the need for SEO organic slots.

Keyword searches will be for the birds.

And then there’s the AI automation of SEO tasks and processes, if anything’s left.

So what’s the evolving trend of thought out there with regards to 2023 amongst SEO’s and business’ I wonder.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

SEO isn't dead, far from. Google isn't reading your pages, they are looking for signals, and you best have them in the right places. Some of the signals that boost any given page are not on that page at all, and I don't mean backlinks.

Know what you're good at and what you're not good at, and hire the right people. SEO is like an umbrella term for a lot of different things that all need attention by a different expert. I have over 20 years under my belt and will be the first to tell you that I'm not the right guy for some aspects of SEO. Link building for example, I didn't enjoy it and didn't build the connections and tools for it. I hired someone who did for things like getting citations.

It's funny, but that person asked me to take care of other things for their site, which they weren't great at. SEO is not dead, my friend. The game keeps changing, but AI isn't going to kill it unless search engines stop sending traffic at all... and I don't see that happening in 2023.

[aristotle]

To me, SEO seems much harder now than when I started in about 2005. Since then google has taken many measures to combat SEO. Some methods that were successful in 2005 could backfire if used now. So up-to-date knowledge can still be useful, especially in avoiding mistakes..

[Brett_Tabke]

Content Marketing is the new SEO. Building and audience that is self sustaining is the only path ahead.
Gosh, where have I heard this before? [webmasterworld.com...]

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

If you worry about AI, keep this in mind.

- What are YOU using AI for RIGHT NOW?
- Google is going to try to dominate that too, and they have no intention of deprecating themselves. Search isn't going anywhere.

Regardless, you should always be trying to lower your dependence on others, including Google, always!