Is Traditional SEO Dead? How Content Marketing Has Changed the Industry

Things have changed a lot over the past 25 – 30 years. In 1992, there were approximately one million machines online. Now, more than 23.1 billion devices are connected to the Internet. By 2025, the number of devices that are connected to the Internet is expected to swell to more than 75 billion.

Just like the number of machines that are online has increased, so has the amount of content available on the Internet. While ranking well in search engine results pages has been a goal for many websites for decades, the tactics used to secure a top ranking in SERPs have evolved over the years.

SEO: Still Among the Living

That is, these tactics have only “evolved” if you believe they have. Some people can make a strong case that these tactics have most certainly evolved while others will argue that some tried and true techniques are dead. When it comes to SEO, plenty of people have declared search engine optimization dead every year since the 1990s.

For something that many have presumed to be dead for nearly 30 years, SEO still has a pretty strong presence among the living. People still research and use keywords, for example. They still pay attention to keyword density, too, although they may not prioritize this as much as they used to.

Of course, SEO is much more than keywords. It’s an approach. And it’s not an approach that has been replaced or killed off by content marketing.

The Influence of Content Marketing on SEO

Even though content marketing hasn’t knocked off SEO, it has influenced search engine optimization profoundly and, quite possibly, irreversibly. While technical processes used to govern SEO for ranking purposes, they’ve been widely replaced with an approach that’s now more reader-focused, so to speak, thanks to content marketing.

The effect of content shock is clear. SERPs provide links to content on just about any subject you can think of. SERPs don’t just provide links to some content. Instead, they often provide thousands or even millions of sources that have information about whatever it is you’re looking for.

The overwhelming amount of information that’s available on the Internet is why people erroneously think SEO is dead. With so much information out there, neither SEO nor any other tactic will be enough to make your content stand out so SEO must be deceased, right?

Wrong. SEO is alive, well and thriving thanks to its proven ability to adapt to changes in the marketplace. Instead of being the technical approach it once was, SEO now focuses on getting a fundamental understanding of your audience and producing the type of content your audience’s members want to consume.

Google and other search engines are constantly getting better at evaluating content for quality and relevance. So, it’s no longer enough to have competitive keywords and phrases and backlinks in a mediocre webpage. Now, SEO requires well prepared content that’s actually meaningful to viewers. And we have content marketing to thank for these changes.

Contact GoingClear

If you’re ready to incorporate today’s SEO on your website, we’re ready to help. Our SEO services include content writing. When you hire us to prepare content for your website, you can rest assured that it will be relevant and meaningful to the audience you want to attract. Contact GoingClear to learn more about our SEO services now.