Are you tired of hearing digital marketers say that SEO is dead? Well, good news! We’re here to tell you that SEO is still alive and will remain kicking in 2025 and beyond.
If it’s alive and well, why are so many people asking if it’s dead?
Is SEO dead?
There’s no other way to say it: SEO remains a crucial piece of digital marketing. For real. According to a recent Statista report, 35 percent of shoppers use search engines to choose their next purchase, which is more than those who use either social media or retailers’ websites.
In other words, people are still searching the internet for websites with information about things they want to buy. Because SEO still grabs these folks’ attention, it’s far from dead.
But it’s easy to understand why some would say SEO is dead — or at least in the ER.
Why do some digital marketers say SEO is dead?
Digital marketers often say SEO is dead because they feel the industry is changing too quickly. They’re unable to keep up with the new strategies and tactics. Others have been struggling to keep up with the competition.
Investing in public relations campaigns or social media has gained steam
Some marketers want to take an out-with-the-old-in-with-the-older approach by shifting their attention to PR and socials as they seek opportunities. Some may feel that investing in public relations and social media marketing is more effective than SEO for a few different reasons:
- Brand Awareness: Public relations and social media marketing can effectively build brand awareness. They enable brands to engage with their target audience on a personal level.
- Relationship building: Brands can establish long-term relationships that translate into positive word-of-mouth referrals and increased customer loyalty.
- Cost-effectiveness: Some marketers think public relations and social media marketing are more cost-effective than SEO.
Paid search results are taking up space
Paid results have had a significant impact on what searchers see on Google. For instance, paid results appear at the top of the search page, often before the organic (non-paid) results. In many cases, the first few results you see are sponsored, and you won’t see organically generated links until you scroll or swipe down. This means that searchers are more likely to see and click on paid results, especially if the ad is relevant to their search query.
Google has also introduced paid local results, which appear in a SERP section showing local businesses related to the search query.
For example, if you type in “best classes to learn how to cook in Boston,” you get a full page of Boston-specific cooking class info, none of which would be considered traditional, organic results. Scrolling down, you will see four sponsored results, and the first organic result is apparently from Tripadvisor.
This could be somewhat disheartening for a small business or a digital marketer working for one, especially if they’re still trying to use traditional content creation methods to rise above the first fold.
But, in reality, this is all good news for SEO. A dive into another feature, Google’s Search Generative Experience, helps explain why.
Google’s SGE
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) uses AI, specifically Gemini, to provide complete answers to search questions at the top of the results.
For example, suppose you were to ask, “What kind of car should I buy if I’m moving to Vermont?” At the top of the results page, SGE will give you a complete answer to your question, including details about the kinds of vehicles you should consider and reasons why they would do well in Vermont.
For instance, you may see info about vehicles that do well in the snow, can handle Vermont’s mud season, or have enough storage space for skis and snowboards. It may also show you other considerations you should consider as you kick tires and peek under hoods. For example, it may discuss the value of good highway gas mileage due to the distances between Vermont’s towns.
For example, if you were to search “how to fix a leaking pipe,” you may get a list of answers and related content, all of which you can access without going to a webpage. This is great for consumers looking for a quick answer but not so much for marketers who want to take a traditional, keyword-focused approach to SEO.
Make no mistake: Google’s SGE is an SEO game changer. But while it may seem like a nail in the coffin, it’s not. In fact, as we’ll discuss in the next section, it could breathe new life into SEO, especially for businesses.
Organic SEO’s Outlook for 2025
Naysayers aside, organic SEO is still a critical part of any digital marketing strategy and is expected to remain so through 2025 — and beyond. In fact, producing high-quality content, especially if you hire a writer, researcher, academic, or journalist, is one of the best ways to get to the first page of results. By leveraging the following, you can ensure a positive outlook for your SEO program in 2025:
- Google’s SGE: You can use subheadings that directly answer user queries to have your site be one of the sources for SGE’s answers. On top of that, customers still get search results underneath the SGE answer. Your site may be featured in the SGE snippet or traditional search results. This additional opportunity could give many businesses a significant SEO boost.
- Be careful with AI-generated content: Google prioritizes the creator’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) when evaluating content. It can detect AI-generated content and may penalize the page it’s on if any of the following is the case:
- You use AI to create content without clearly declaring it on the page.
- You mention you used AI, but you don’t explain why. The reason should support the quality of the content, not merely because using AI “was faster,” for example.
- You use AI, but don’t explain how. For instance, it may be helpful to declare, “AI was used to improve the grammar on this page.”
- User Experience (UX): Google has significantly emphasized user experience in recent years and will be a key factor in SEO in 2025. This includes mobile-friendliness, page speed, ease of navigation, and overall design. Businesses that prioritize UX are more likely to rank well in search results.
- E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) are ever-important factors in SEO, particularly for businesses in the technical, health, and finance industries. Google is placing a greater emphasis on E-E-A-T to ensure that searchers are provided with accurate and trustworthy information.
SEO Challenges Digital Marketers Face in 2025
SEO is an essential part of digital marketing, as it helps ensure a website’s visibility in search engine results. As such, digital marketers need to stay up-to-date on the latest SEO trends and challenges.
Changes to Google’s Knowledge Graph
One of the biggest challenges for digital marketers in 2025 is adjustments to Google’s Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph is a database of information that Google uses to deliver more accurate results to searchers. It consists of information about people, places, and things. If a digital marketer were to write content that disagreed with what’s in Google’s Knowledge Graph, this could negatively impact the ranking of the content’s page. Therefore, it’s important to double-check your facts and explanations of concepts to make sure they’re accurate.
There’s another lesson to be learned from checking out Google’s adjustments to its Knowledge Graph. It added many more person entities to the database. In other words, content created by people with high levels of credibility, such as writers with published, bylined work, academics, researchers, and journalists, may rank higher than those perceived as having less authority.
For marketers, hiring established, experienced writers and other creators may boost your content’s search engine results. It also means that it may help your ranking to cite only credible references published by established experts while crafting content.
The key is to focus on what Google says it wants, which, as mentioned above, is E-E-A-T. Your site’s content must demonstrate expertise and authority while engenders trust from searchers and other sites. The longer searchers spend time on your pages, the more trust Google may have in them. Similarly, whenever someone finds something on your site valuable enough to link to, you get a bump in your search engine rankings.
Content saturation
Content saturation arises out of the abundance of content on the internet, making it challenging to create material that will differentiate you from the pack. A key factor in creating standout content is to focus on quality over quantity. While it may be tempting to produce as much content as possible to increase your online presence, the reality is that high-quality content will truly capture your audience’s attention and keep them coming back for more.
Prioritizing a mobile-first strategy
Finally, digital marketers need to strategize for mobile-first, simply because users often favor searching on their personal devices instead of their computers. At the end of 2022, for example, 59 percent of all website traffic was generated by mobile devices.
As more and more people access the internet through their mobile devices, digital marketers need to ensure that their websites are optimized for mobile. This includes ensuring that their sites are responsive and have a mobile-friendly design.
The Future of SEO
The future of SEO will involve:
- Optimizing your site for Google’s SGE and other AI-assisted search engines. This will involve providing clear answers to search queries written by experts and supported by high-quality sources. If you include detailed author bios and links to their other published work, your published articles and blogs may rank higher.
- Google Shopping emerging as an SEO opportunity. Google Shopping provides products to searchers, including information regarding where to buy items. By creating a Google Merchant Center account and optimizing your product feed, you can increase the chances of appearing as a purchasing option for shoppers.
- An even heavier reliance on E-E-A-T. Google doubled down on E-E-A-T when it increased the number of person entities in its database. Content written by real people and citing material crafted by real people may boost rankings.
In short, the future of SEO is more customer-focused. It’ll be less about creating a site that reflects well on your brand and more about making content that caters to what users want or expect.
Defibrillate Your SEO with ClearVoice
It’s clear that the SEO industry is in a transformative phase. Just as a defibrillator can shock a heart back to life, your SEO may need a similar jolt to keep up with the times. The right strategy and approach can breathe new life into a stagnant SEO campaign, boosting its performance and driving better results.
To zap your SEO strategy back to life, you can rely on ClearVoice. You get your own team of SEO experts ready to use their years of knowledge and experience to reinvigorate your marketing. For help with your content strategy, connect with a content specialist today!
