Is GOOGLE Really Trying to Kill SEO?

We all know that Google keep updating its Search Engine Algorithms for showing better results in its SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Last month, it started using a new algorithm named “Hummingbird” which affected the traffic of most of the websites to a large extent. Now, Google give more importance to user’s engagement like sharing of blog posts, liking, Google Plus ones (+1) etc rather than giving importance to SEO factors like backlinks and PageRank. Due to this, a major topic of discussion has emerged among SEO Experts “Is Google Trying to Kill SEO?“. Are you shocked? If yes, I have lots of explanation behind this claim.

A Little Information about SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. We divided SEO in two parts i.e Internal (On-Page) SEO and External (Off-Page) SEO. Internal or On-Page SEO makes only 18% of the process as it mainly comes into play while designing the website. Good designers follows best practices to get higher ranking on Google.
External or Off-Page SEO is much more important because it comprises of writing quality content, comments, using keywords, press releases etc. Now, SEO experts also include SMO as a part of Off-Page SEO.
Two kinds of SEO strategies which are popular among users are “White Hat SEO” and “Black Hat SEO“. As the name suggests, Black Hat SEO is a technique of gaming the system for getting better rankings in short span of time. It can give you best result in shortest possible time but it is extremely harmful. On the other hand, “White Hat SEO” is a genuine SEO technique.

What Google and Users Want?

Google or other users always want to see relevant and best results in search result pages. If Google fails to show you relevant content when you search, they aren’t doing their job properly.
When you say Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it alternatively means you are gaming Google to get your content ranked higher than what it would be without SEO.
Black Hat SEO techniques hurts Google as well because Poor or useless content get higher rankings as well. However,with the release of Penguin update, Google started giving more importance to Social Media Activities like Shares, tweets, likes, reddits, +1s etc rather than “backlinks” which was one of the main cause behind the success of Black Hat SEO technique.

Why Google Started Giving More importance to User’s Engagement?

According to Google, if you are promoting the content of other website/blogs, it has valuable content. In other words, Promoting the content with social Media is an indicator of High Quality content. Users can’t fake Google in this as well.
Be it Black Hat or White Hat SEO, users mainly create content and promote it all over the internet. If No one other than you is sharing your content, Google will consider it as a fake attempt.

What does it mean?

As I mentioned earlier many times, Google is now giving more importance to the quality of content rather than Search Engine Optimization. This is probably the reason why it considers factors User’s engagement and participation while ranking a website. So many bloggers are there who don’t know much about SEO but still managed to get best results in Google SERPs. Due to this, users think that “Google is trying to kill SEO”.

Why SEO Will Never Die?

According to me, SEO will never Die due to below given reasons:

• SEO will exist as long as search engines are available- Search Engines follows some kind of algorithms for showing relevant content. SEO experts will figure out these algorithms and will definitely change the SEO methods which means, it will not die.
• Search Engines can protect themselves in case of failures- If a particular search engine is not showing relevant results, they can cast blame on SEO methods used by different websites. After the death of SEO, they won’t be able to give any kind of explanation. As a result, they will lose user’s faith.
• SEO industry has Money – At present, SEO industry has lots of money. That’s probably the reason why so many SEO experts are able to make money for giving their services. Any occupation which has money will definitely exist for long time. If Google will change their tactics, SEO experts will find new SEO tactics to overcome this.
• Traffic Acquisition – As you all know, More traffic means more earnings. Search Engine optimization is a technique of attracting more targeted traffic to your blog. To accomplish this task, the website must be easy and simple for search engines to find and translate because they can’t understand web pages in the same manner that humans do. That’s is why SEO is necessary and it can’t die.
• Search Engines can’t play with Publishers- Search engine companies also earns a lot of money from their publishers. The content inside Robots.txt file is mostly responsible for showing relevant Ads on any website. End of SEO means poor settings of Robots.txt file. It alternatively means, visitor will see useless or irrelevant Ads. It will decrease the earning chances of Publishers. Google also want to maximize the earning of Publisher from their side because they get handsome commission from publisher’s earning as well so they can’t destroy the SEO.

From the Editor’s Desk

SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization is really very important for any website or blog. This is probably the reason why, people are investing lots of money on it. Whenever Google launch new Algorithms, people starts discussing on topics like “Death of SEO”, ”End of SEO” etc. However, I don’t think SEO will ever die. What do you say? Share your views in comment section.