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Amazon Selling Expert & Internet Marketing Thought Leader

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Latest evidence of the extinction of SEO: The SEO pro’s are abandoning ship!

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Consider this email I got recently:

“Jim, in the past, I did not agree with your SEO opinion. I would consider myself to be an SEO specialist because I have studied and tested SEO for 12 years, and made a good living online. But, times have changed. I now think you are correct…even the best SEO people I know may end up failing…”

cont…

 

That’s the start of an email I got from an SEO pro recently…and it’s the tip of the iceberg. He just got back from a gathering of SEO experts and they were nearly all in a panic.

Let’s talk about three things:
1. I told you so (I gotta say it)
2. The rest of the letter  (Continued from above)
3. What are you going to do about it? (My advice)

First-
For nearly 4 years I’ve been predicting the pending demise of ‘Search Engine Optimization’ or “SEO” as a widely accepted and mainstream way to get noticed online. I’ve been saying that there is a coming frustration and panic that would set in on those who rely on SEO for their livelihoods. I’ve even predicted that the very term would be mocked and considered “ancient insanity” in the not so distant future.

I stand by my premise now stronger than ever…and the latest evidence is rolling in. (Meanwhile, those paying attention to my stuff – such as my $5 ebook at SilentSalesMachine.com book are prospering now more than ever.)

Allow me to vent further…

My SEO articles draw a LOT of criticism (still to this day most “SEO lovers” doubt me). Even some of the most popular AND WELL RECEIVED reviews on Amazon about my 101FreeMarketing.com book basically call me an “SEO goofball” b/c I state clearly in the book my unpopular (but trending increasingly popular) positions on SEO.

My basic SEO advice is easily defined in about 100 words, and those 100 words will save you thousands of dollars of wasted time, energy and effort. It will also put you WAY ahead of the game if you get started using my freely available advice NOW instead of waiting until it’s too late. This year old article is all the SEO advice you will ever need – in about 100 words. Read the other articles on my blog in the SEO department for more clarity on the matter.

Now for the rest of the scary letter from an SEO pro:

“I recently paid a significant investment to travel cross country & attend 4 days of mastermind meetings with the top Internet marketing people from all over the world. I was surprised how many absolutely brilliant people were there, from London, Australia, Canada, U.S. etc.

I met several millionaires there, lots of smart people, including marketers, programmers, developers, business owners all sharing info on what is working and what’s not and what to do now (re: SEO).

Every conversation revolved around complex code, rankings, and strategies.

Some of the people there have been in direct contact with google and microsoft staff. Probably everyone there was hurt by google recently. We also discussed what is likely to happen in the future to make sure our clients are safe from any future penalties. SEO is now an extremely complex game. Gone are the days when you could do on-page SEO and some link building…”

So, what’s the plan?

The demise of SEO makes my three basic proven business strategies look pretty attractive. If I’m right (and I’m betting the farm that I am), then there’s no better online businesses to be in than one of the three biz concepts that I lay out in my book The Silent Sales Machine.

It’s also time to take my alternate “100 word approach to SEO”  very seriously.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment. I want to hear from you on this one…

Comments

  1. Hi Jim,

    I’ve always been an advocate of being a helper, which doesn’t require a top search engine listing. Thankfully, I get my following from people spreading the word about something I shared.

    I agree… unique content is where it’s at. It’s always been this way. SEO or not… share your best pieces of information (FREELY) and you don’t need to rely on Google to get your name out there.

    Your followers will do it for you.

    – Bonnie

    • I do have good info on my site, and it’s been up for quite awhile, but haven’t done SEO (key words) except for on the home page. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I’m going to put them in on all the pages and see what happens. Will let you know if it seems to make a difference for me. I know it definitely makes a difference in traffic on Etsy when you put in keywords there; but Etsy has its own search and data, separate from the rest of the internet.

  2. I just can’t get into SEO’s if so many run those programs the big gurus are selling how can everyone be on page one… Google has only 10 slots on page one and there are millions of websites and blogs out there so its fussy math to me… Why waste monet, put good content and nice interesting stuff and Google will rank you higher…
    Reg B.

  3. It’s actually a relief for me to know that SEO is no longer a “required” method for gaining traffic to my content. I was dreading having to spend hours banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how I can get more “eyeballs” to my website/page/blog, etc. with keywords, back links…the list goes on.

    Thanks again.
    Brandon

  4. Thanks for keeping it real Jim. From what I’ve learned about SEO the past few years, I’m more and more convinced it’s a form of insanity, at least for the little guy.

  5. Rocky:

    You’ve got me very intrigued by your comments. Can you provide more details on what you’re doing or provide a way I can get in touch with you?

    Thanks,

    Travis Van Slooten

  6. Really? This scares me. Anyway, I would love to browse your page to understand better. As of now, SEO has done great things. But as we all know, everything, even the best thing in this world, has its negative side of it.

  8. SEO has always been the acronym for Successful Engagement Opportunity as far as I’m concerned.

  9. Jim, I am a big fan. Took your advice concentrate 95% of my time on existing customers using email to drive business to my bricks and mortar business. For the doubters that say “their business is different”, my niche is network and fiber optic cabling. Email works in every vertical or niche.

    • I’m glad you’ve discovered the power of email marketing! It’s the most incredibly predictable form of marketing I’ve ever encountered and its ability to be customized and done with excellence so cheaply makes it a no-brainer.

  10. Jim, according to the 100 word approach to SEO, It sounds like you are not so anti-SEO. You are just explaining correct SEO. Good SEO says that content is king. Thats what google has been telling us all along. People look at all the seo tricks as defining SEO, but many of those are or were just loopholes in googles evolving algo that WILL inevitably get closed. In the 100 word approach to SEO, you are explaining a huge part of successful (future-proof) seo. There is more to it than just content, but content is the biggest foundation for organic search result success/ social media growth. Like google tells people: make your sites / content for users, not search engines. Is SEO on a path of extinction? It all depends on what your definition of SEO is. I believe the SEO tricks/ Loopholes are on the path of extinction (yet there will always be some loopholes – its a cat and mouse game). But true SEO is still alive and always will be, and it is centered around the user experience… Great post Jim!

    • I’ve heard that explanation before, and I don’t want to parse words here (too much), but I refuse to label what I do as SEO.

      Let me put it this way…if Google randomly starts HATING the content I create and seeks to punish me somehow my reaction will be this:

      I’ll keep creating the exact same kind of content that I want to produce and that my audience wants…and I’ll keep putting it on my websites the exact same way I do now (without header tags, keyword counts, linking strategies etc.). How can my efforts possibly be considered SEO if that’s my approach and always has been?

      I hear what you are saying, but if google page rank enters into your thought process at all as you are creating quality content then you are focusing on SEO and ultimately wasting your time or worse.

      • I see what you are saying too. But… look at it this way. Say someone is naturally a great artist, they design a beautiful looking website. They didn’t study what makes good design, nor did they think about what goes into their design is, say they used the golden ratio in their design but didn’t know what the golden ratio was. It doesn’t mean they didn’t implement good design though. You are implementing efforts that google likes: Great content that helps people. Yet you are not doing it for the purpose of ranking, you are doing it to help people, which is great. I think people are saying that SEO is dead because it is at a major leap in its evolution. Many old tactics don’t work (as much), making it much harder to game. What google wants, their algo, is in a big shift towards social signals as opposed to the previous “seo techniques.” I just don’t think SEO or the SEO industry is completely dead or ever will be, I believe it is drastically evolving though. BUT I agree with you that one can be majorly successful without focusing or intentionally implementing SEO by producing a lot of value. In the end it goes back to what your definition of SEO is. Because of the fact that it is based on google’s algorithmIn, there is always room for someone to optimize it to match that algo. The difference today and in the future is that the algo is much more like a human than a computer. Its evolved to actually filter out good relevant content from the keyword stuffed garbage. In end I may very well be wrong though, only time will tell.

  11. I guess, I happen to lean towards your side of ideas too re SEO. It may be because SEO is still a mystery to me – “smoke & mirrors” may be? So, I adopted two key strategies to build my online business:

    1) email strategy and
    2) build my subscriber base to ensure recurring revenues.

    These two approaches have allowed me to jack my job, so I now work full-time on my online business. The journey started when I picked up this book (SilentSalesMachine) when it became more obvious to me that if I viewed ebay as one of the best marketing tools out there I could attract more customers to my online shops (not just my ebay shop). The model seems to work great,and without having to get involved in SEO.

    I build my list automatically through AWeber and PayPal – it’s been a blessing.

    Here’s a video to show how to set this up. It has proven to be invaluable for my business. Hope it helps:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkorXX2jyQo

    Gareth

  12. This should be welcome news to internet marketers. Personally, focusing on content, monetization and the audience is much more aligned with where I want to go. I don’t want to stuff around with keyword density, relabel & ‘optimise’ every picture I use, get an exact match domain etc.

    Hopefully all 3 major search engines will be more aggressive towards spam/short-sighted sites. No tolerance for people who try to manipulate Google and use terms like ‘white hat seo’ and then get upset when their site is de-indexed. Bring on more algorithm updates!