It seems like every couple months (weeks?) there’s a new post predicting the end of SEO:
But rather than proclaiming that SEO is already dead (it’s not), let’s look at 3 ways in which the SEO industry might eventually die and ways in which SEOs can prepare themselves.
1. New ads
Google is constantly experimenting with new ad formats that actually provide a better user experience than organic results. The better the ads, the less traffic that will be captured by organic listings. What are some examples of when PPC ads provide a better UX than organic results?
Finding service providers in select cities:
Google has rolled out home service ads to a few markets as a way of making it easier to find various contractors. Even sites with incredible local SEO will have a hard time competing with the convenience of these ads, not to mention the extremely valuable endorsement by Google.
More info: Google Home Services Ads Launch In AdWords Express
Researching cars:
This is a relatively simple example of Google providing a bunch of relevant information directly in the SERPs with a simple interface that will, inevitably, come at the expense of people clicking through to organic listings about car reviews, details, dealerships, etc. I suspect that Google will continue rolling out these rich, informational interfaces to high-value verticals such as credit cards, mortgages, legal services, and so on.
More info: Google launches its giant mobile search ads for automakers in the US
Finding flights:
It’s hard to imagine such a prominent, compelling interface not sucking up a decent amount of organic clicks. Google Flights has also likely contributed to the fact that Google earns twice as much travel-related revenue as Expedia.
App discovery
This is one of the most ambitious ad interfaces that Google offers — you can literally play apps directly within Google! No need to download the app or click through to a site. It’s incredible.
SEO hasn’t traditionally been a huge driver of app discovery, so app streaming for games specifically might not be that disruptive to SEOs, but you can imagine this functionality being rolled out for all sorts of purposes. For example, instead of building functionality similar to Google Flights, maybe Google could simply send you to the Kayak app interface within search results and piggyback off the improved user experience of apps dedicated to one specific purpose.
More info: Google Adds NEW Interactive Ad Format Targeting Gamers
Searching for products
As interesting as the previous examples were, the most dangerous Google ad products for most SEOs would likely be the different ones related to product discovery.
Product Listing Ads (PLAs), for example, offer a fairly basic interface relative to the previously mentioned examples, but this simplicity makes them very dangerous because it makes them so easy to scale. Google doesn’t need to build a bespoke solution for different verticals or sets of queries.
It’s not hard to imagine a future where product queries on Google simply return a large set of product cards with the option to buy directly within the Google interface. The pieces are already there with PLAs and the limited rollout of the ability to buy directly on Google through select websites. All it would take is Google expanding the number of product cards and the number of sites that offer direct checkout through Google. The implications of a shift like this are hard to overestimate.
These product-related ad interfaces include:
- Product Listing Ads (PLAs):
- Showcase shopping ads:
More info: Google rolling out major change to PLAs for broad product queries, among other Shopping updates
- Buying directly on Google:
More info: Winning the shopping micro-moments
There are other examples of rich ad interfaces (please share some below, as it’s always interesting to see more!) and Google has many reasons to continue rolling them out as far and wide as possible:
- To attract more clicks: The more compelling the ad, the more people will click on it, the more money Google will make
- As a response to ad blockers: Entice users to whitelist Google because their ads are actually a better user experience than organic results
- Simply a better UX: Finding a handyman through the new format is easier than navigating the organic results, which makes people happy, which makes Google happy
What can SEOs do about it?
- Stay aware of these new ad formats to make sure you’re experimenting with those that are relevant to your business
- Avoid competing on SERPs that are overtaken by interactive ads
- Find ways to differentiate your on-site experience from what Google is offering
Best-case scenario:
Ad-blocking continues to grow and these rich ads remain on a small percentage of overall queries because they’re difficult to scale.
2. New search interfaces
What happens when people no longer find what they’re looking for by typing in a Google search and clicking through to a result? Some of these alternative interfaces include:
Voice search
It’s difficult to rank for a search query that is heavily personalized and has only one result:
Non-Google "search engines"
There are a lot of sites that arguably offer a better search experience for a specific type of query:
- Wikipedia – Informational queries
- Yelp – Local business queries
- Amazon – Transactional queries
Will people shift more and more of their searches to sites that offer a search experience tailor-made to one specific type of query?
"Pre-search," such as Google Now
Google Now effectively tries to give you information you’re interested in before ever having to type in a query:
You can imagine quite a few verticals that could be disrupted by improvements to pre-search:
- Flights: We know you tend to fly home for the holidays. Instead of searching for "flights to Vancouver," we’ll surface some holiday flight deals for you in November.
- Entertainment: You don’t need to search for a specific movie or play. We’ll surface tickets to events we predict you’ll be interested in before you ever type in a query.
- Food: We know you’re walking around at dinnertime and there happens to be an Indian food restaurant nearby which we predict you’d like — let’s send you a notification about it.
- Products: We know you tend to buy Jordan shoes. Let’s show you the latest Jordan release before you ever need to look for it.
Using chatbots
Perhaps conversational commerce will actually take off and people will start finding products/information by using chatbots:
More examples here: 11 Examples of Conversational Commerce and Chatbots in 2016
Shrinking SERPs
This has been well-covered, but Google continues to aggressively enrich organic results such that the mythical “ten blue links” SERP only makes up about 3% of searches:
The expansion of ads above the fold for some queries hasn’t helped, either. It’s hard to capture organic clicks on a SERP that looks like this (cut off):
These changes are especially impactful on mobile devices which already have limited screen real estate as is.
What can SEOs do about it?
- Optimize for whatever “search engine” your users are on. You’ll need to understand where your audience is searching for information that might be relevant to your business and then optimize for the platform they’re on.
- Use structured data. The easier your site is to understand, the more future-proof it’ll be.
- Avoid competing on SERPs that are overrun by rich interfaces.
Best-case scenario:
These new interfaces consume a relatively small percentage of overall searches. They might continue to cover more and more informational queries (“when is Mother's day 2017?”), and personal ones (“set an alarm for 7am”), but transactional queries (“new Jordan shoes”) remain on conventional screens because ultimately, finding products through voice search or a chatbot might not be the most enjoyable experience:
1/ Conversational commerce is unproven, even in Asia. If texting takes more time than clicking a button on a webview, why is it better?
— Connie Chan (@conniechan) April 1, 2016
3. New Google?
Google could potentially become so good at understanding websites that you don't need to worry about SEO. Good user experience could become 100% indistinguishable from good SEO. Want to use asynchronous JavaScript to render your global nav? Go for it! Want to hide content behind a sign-in wall? No problem! Want to launch your site internationally without hreflang tags? Who cares! Google doesn’t really want to reward a site because it knows what rel=canonical is; it wants to reward it because it satisfied a user's intent. Therefore, Google is inherently working to make SEOs obsolete; maybe one day they’ll succeed.
What can SEOs do about it?
Broaden your skillset and make sure you’re providing value beyond simply optimizing a website for Google.
Best-case scenario:
Google will always need the help of SEOs to understand the Internet.
Despite these threats, I think it’s very unlikely that SEO disappears as a discipline anytime soon. I have yet to run into a site that doesn't have large SEO opportunities to capture, given the right projects. I also believe the best-case scenario for each threat is actually the most likely scenario. That being said, it can still be helpful to think through future threats to the SEO industry. Can you think of any others?
Dude, you just scared me for a moment, seriously because I am an "SEO". Then I took a long breath and thought, lol I know many things than just SEO, so I can stay in the market. Guys, now just don't be dependable only on SEO, be a digital marketer as per the demand of Search engines and companies as well.
The smartness google is showing by providing an answer box, ads, list of things searched by a person, shows what could be the future of SERP (Even very well described in this article by Daniel). Remember one thing, Google is just doing business, to make more profit, they can make any changes that would help their costumers, not for SEO's. So, let's focus on every thing that belongs to Digital marketing and keep running as Google won't stop a proper digital marketing process. That's for sure.
Bottom Line - Everywhere, only all rounders required, if SEO's won't learn rest things (PPC, Email, Affiliate, Social Media, Content marketing, etc) then there will be no place for just a of "SEO".
Well written and an important topic for all SEO's to think upon, thank you Daniel :)
Thanks Daniel for collecting these 3 ways for SEOs. I loved the post.
Searching is never enough and with the time it became the habit. Knowing about searcher is not enough, it’s about understanding the searcher's intent. Whenever marketers fail to understand this intent, they start feeling SEO is dead. This is the right time to put all efforts toward understanding the searcher and search engines intent.
Great article Dan! You bring up many helpful points that anyone in the SEO industry would do well to remember. I disagree though with your comment about "Avoid competing on SERPs that are overrun by rich interfaces." I think that the challenge here is for SEO's to think of more creative ways to compete. One great way is optimizing for Answer Boxes. This content will regularly appear at the top of the search results, and will also be read on IOT devices. Answer Boxes will continue to be helpful for people looking for an answer to a question, and should be structured to get a user to click-through to the actual website.
Good point Ian. I'd definitely recommend trying to rank in these rich interfaces whenever possible while simultaneously taking a critical look at your important SERPs to make sure you aren't throwing a bunch of resources at a keyword that has very little organic visibility.
Definitely! Without know what the average search volume is each month for that phrase, it could be a big resources loss. Like many aspects of SEO, you have to follow the data.
Thanks for the great post—some very sobering things in here. But we joined the industry knowing that it's constantly changing—which is scary but also EXCITING.
Something that's really scares (but intrigues!) me is voice search. At SMX East 2016, they shared these stats:
It's crazy to think that voice search is becoming so prominent, but it's also very believable. With today's reliance on smart phones and the introduction of the Amazon Echo and Google Home, I expect more and more people to rely on voice search—so finding a way to capitalize on this is important.
Thanks again for continuing to challenge us and make us think outside the "SEO" box.
Hi Daniel,
Since I'm reading Moz's blog it's the first time I got scared through this post. It's an alert for all SEOs and time to think what to do now?
As far as I concern, for those who are experts in the SEO field can easily analyse all 3 facts have explained in this post and create their work strategy accordingly but for those who are new and desired to set their career in SEO, this post is just like someone has changed the question paper before the examination and they have only two option either they can leave it or can give the examination again with full preparation.
Well, thanks a lot to bring this in light.
A few sobering and accurate thoughts. Thanks. Voice search will certainly be an adjustment. I am also cognitive of the possibilities of having to apply SEO for webbots / chatbots, rather humans sometime soon ;)
No. 3 scares me day and night.
Good stuff, organic SEO will not drive more traffic than ads. Now ads are reducing the space for organic results so that you would need to more work on this. User experience is an important key to optimizing your ads. Your ads will beat our competitor's ads if your ads are more optimized. Site speed and other technical issues need to be fixed. Structural data helps bots to understand about your website.
But I don't want to put every egg in one basket so apart from this there would be an another aspect that works for forever that is Viral Marketing that will Save SEO industry. SEO experts should know how they can work on it and proceed something different that attracts to users.
Google Maps also offers a space where you can check hotel reviews or compare prices. Something similar to what tripadvisor, hotels (.) com or booking have been doing for years. In fact they appear in the organic results after the google hotel map.
It seems it is mainly based in reviews, a good opportunity for SEOs working the tourism industry or even a new way to deal with clients. Asking for interesting reviews must be part of the online and offline marketing strategy.
Involving seo and customer care, we have to provide great value to both users, visitors and customers and google will know it sooner or later.
Interesting article, some great points and useful tips. Looking at the 'Winning Micro Moments' link, just wondering if there are any examples of direct app purchases from within the UK, or is this something Google are still rolling out?
All very worrying, but I wouldn't hang up my coat just yet... SEO is more than just Google. And even on Google, there will always be a need to optimise for search. It's just search itself may change in its format.
Totally agree though that SEO specialists should be expanding their skills beyond traditional SEO.
I think for a long time now the ground has been a little greyed anyway. More than expanding their skills beyond SEO, I think a better understanding of how SEO works with other parts or marketing is required, both from the specialists point of view and the wider marketing teams.
Yes, I am completely agree with you Rhys... We need to enhance on our SEO skill rather than just stuck with old type SEO.
Thanks!
I’ll be jobless if SEO dies! :-) Anyways, it seems unlikely that sponsored ranking will completely replace organic one at any time in future. Cyberspace is littered with spam and the only way businesses can better their rank is to invest in SEO strategies (think quality content, strong backlinks, etc). Secondly, for all the merits of PPC, it’s still costly for startups. But still, we really need to think about optimizing content for rich snippets.
If Ranking on Search Engines is akin to a marathon (which I believe is an accurate analogy), what chance does a new business have if the race started 10 years ago. what about 20 years ago? A wise investor once told me his secret to investing. If you had a billion dollars to start a company in an industry and even with that billion dollars you couldn't take at least 8% of that market share. invest in those companies within that industry because they will be around for years. Those companies are protected by the sheer cost of entry.
The same goes for high ranking sites in competitive industries. New businesses in those industries have almost NO Chance to compete for top ranks against companies that have been around for 15-20 years (on the web) because of links, referring domains, domain name age and very likely they have top user experience with excellent programming. In other words, the cost of profitable ranking will keep new businesses on the 2nd and 3rd page for too long to justify the cost of aggressive and quality SEO.
A new business site in a competitive industry or a competitive geographical location has almost no chance of competing on Google. The cost is too high. The only chance they have is traditional advertising.and slowly building their SEO with no expectation of profitability for years; just like someone who starts a marathon today competing with even slow runners that began in 1997.
A search engine that targets newer businesses or a choice within Google to target newer sites is possible. SEOs will always exist within the top companies for international, national businesses that sell products online, but only agencies will exist for smaller companies. No small business ($1,000,000 to $10,000,000) can afford a $100,000 budget for a decent SEO, software subscriptions, content writers /social media experts and the like.
Regarding Google Home and the whole rich snippet / rich data stuff: The way Google takes gets clearer every year: They don't want to give you a selection of multiple results. Google wants to deliver one result, the best result.
So I guess SEO is going to die - but only for positions 2-100. The challenge for the SEOs will be: Be the best.
Thanks Dan, It is a great article. I am a novice and am still trying to figure out how SEO works and how to get higher rankings for my site that I am developing. Any advice and suggestions towards getting better rankings on google, Alexa and Moz would be highly appreciated.
Thank you Daniel for this great article!
Some of the best and accurate advice, easily explained. I have been working with many businesses, small and large, for many years in an effort to help them grow their business in an honest and powerful way but I still have learned something new from this post. I look forward to more great and insightful posts like this in the future.
Cheers,
Cody Oelker
If we get to a point where Google is mainly ads and companies with the biggest paid search budgets dominate the results pages then surely that'll equate to a poor user experience? Google needs quality organic results to attract users to click on the ads. Make it too ad heavy, users go elsewhere. I suspect Google is anticipating that saturation point.
Appreciate the heads up on these trends. More voice and more ads will be definitely be on the horizon.
I think that the correct way of our activities when we work in our website should be naturally. That is the perfect way to improve our SEO job.
For some markets it's quite difficult to stay out of this ad Google World. If we have a look at tourims or hotels booking so many times the SERP show some adwords ads on the top, local results below (with Google Maps), google's hotel booking tool below, for some countries even the carousel on the very top. So in some cases even if your content is the best you are kind of forced by google to choose your bet and be on the top paying. Is not that what Google wants you to end up doing??
A crucial piece analysis no matter how well conceived is a peripheral representation on its reality. Your blog is great. Great job
This is such a great piece, and highlights with some excellent tips. One thing that is really important is the impact that voice search will have.
Nice post Daniel,
I agree with the tips, specially with the first one, the last months I'm noticing this new ads from Google, I think they are going to keep going for preventing the lowest-each-Q classics ads numbers, what do you think?
Hi Sergio, I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly but I definitely think Google will continue rolling out new ad formats as often as possible for a bunch of reasons:
-entice users to whitelist Google in their adblocker
-differentiate Google from other search engines
-provide a better UX
-attract more advertising clicks
How about social media being the fourth factor to maybe "kill" SEO? I agree with Google being one of the threats itself to SEO, but what about Facebook etc.?
Good point, social networks and other tools to help people discover content can also chip away at the number of Google searches, although I would expect a lot of the impact from our current social networks on Google to have been felt by now.
28 years ago I was told by my Business Study Teacher that accountancy was dead, and there was no point my going to University as there wouldn't be any jobs when I finally graduated.
Thankfully I figured I'd test it out for myself, and accountancy is still alive and kicking and it gave me a fantastic grounding in running a business and understanding budgets. Moving into marketing has just increased my knowledge about running a business. I use my accountancy skills every day while doing SEO and other forms of marketing. Thankfully when SEO is finally DEAD, I can go back to Accountancy, or management accounts or doing all the figure work for marketing departments - all those possibilities keep me going.
All jobs evolve, you just have to make sure you evolve with them and you take on new skills.
Marketing is marketing, it changes but still stays the same.
Great post... old style SEO is getting to its end. Very interesting to look for these new methods... your article is great and full of graphic examples. Congrats.... and thanks.