The end of SEO as we know it!

I was at about 8 conferences and networking events in the past 30 days and I heard this comment more than one time from people in the online marketing business. There is a general consensus that Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”), the free way you get found on Google may be seeing it’s final days.

What do I mean by SEO’s final days?

Well, first off, Google has always been in a conundrum in their business. That’s because it behooves them to “Do No Evil”, their actual first corporate mission and tagline by simply not giving away search engine (SERP) space for free. Because Google both controls the Pay -Per-Click (ads links) at the top of Google searches and also controls the FREE search typically below ads, rich snippet stuff (like questions and answers, events, videos, and other extras), they have always have the ironic position of controlling whether they make more and more and more money by reducing the FREE aspect of Internet searches. So, it is bad business to make FREE better and therefor PPC gets worse.

In fact, it is such the case that PPC may be given so much more sway and intelligence than normal search, that Google just does not give a damn about free search stuff at all. The comment from Google would be something, “Yeah, we like free. Yeah, we work on it sometimes.”

That is what a monopoly like Google can do. They can sit there and say they care, when in fact they really don’t care. In fact, why should they care.