Is SEO Dead?

As marketing professionals, the MoR Marketing team has started a blog dedicated to educating people on the large amount of misinformed and misguided information surrounding Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a term that has been built up into a catch-all, over hyped, marketing buzzword. Industry professionals have batted this acronym around so much — it’s virtually unrecognizable and ultimately, undefinable.

So what is SEO? It’s the acronym of Search Engine Optimization. The idea being the practice of optimizing your website text/content to be formatted in such a way that search engines would be able to identify and index it easier. This effort would then lead to increased online visibility for your website, and of course … more hits. The end-result of SEO is supposed to be more business generated online.

– But are we calling this practice by the right name?

We’re told that Optimization — is to perfect the function of something; to make it perform optimally. In the case of SEO, the words Search Engine precede Optimization. Doesn’t that mean we’re trying to optimize a search engine? In reality, we don’t control the search engine at all. So what are we really trying to do? Are we trying to optimize Google? Or are we searching for the best possible method to have what we post online to be found and indexed by search engines? Shouldn’t there be a more clear and concise term / acronym to describe exactly what we’re trying to do?

Today, you can’t step into the marketplace without tripping over someone’s SEO pitch that’s “guaranteed to improve your business in every way imaginable!” If it sounds too good to be true, you’re right. How can anyone claim to be able to do anything if everyone has a different idea about what it is their doing?

This blog is designed to peel away the many layers of SEO and follow it’s continued evolution – from visionary marketing practice, to buzzword — bound for obscurity. The fact is — SEO is on it’s way out. And MoR Marketing is going to keep you posted with thoughtful commentary and the anecdote to explain how this good idea has been beaten to the ground by people who don’t understand it.