Just A Minute!

SEO is Dead, Say Hello to GEO!

Hi Reader,

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Mark Twain

By now, I'm sure you've heard: "SEO is dead. It's all about AI now."

I've heard it so many times it's making my head spin. But today, I saw something that really takes the cake: not only is this a topic of conversation around the office water cooler, but even major publications are getting in on it. From New York Magazine:

I saw this and thought, "Just a minute!" There are so many things wrong here, I won't correct them, but I will mention two things:

• First, the main premise is wrong. Demonstrably so. (If you actually read the article, you'll see how.)
• Second, using the phrase "trying to trick AI chatbots" means this author doesn't understand how or what SEO (or "GEO") is.

"Trying to trick" search engines like Google or chatbots like ChatGPT is not, and never would be, the goal of digital marketers.

Tricking is what "black hat" spammers do. This ends up giving your website a poor reputation and even getting blacklisted. That's not what I do. That's not what Lieder Digital does. That's not what anybody I know in the industry does.

But more to the point, what is true is that people really like shouting "SEO is Dead" with glee from the rooftops. This has always been annoying to me, for three reasons:

#1: It's a threat to my livelihood. There, I said it. I'm not afraid to admit that it makes me nervous each time people say it, because SEO is partly how I make money (aside from designing and developing websites). However, I'm not really afraid. Why? Because...

#2: People have been saying "SEO is dead" forever. Marketers have literally stopped counting the number of times people have said it because it happens so often. There was even a website that tracked it: "To date, SEO has died 22 times." But this announcement was written five years ago, in 2020, when the guy who kept the list got tired of updating it. (Funny: The first "SEO is dead!" announcement was made in 1997, the year before Google was even founded!)

#3: It just isn't true. Since ChatGPT was publicly released in November 2022, I've watched with extreme caution as doomsday prophets have predicted that AI will result in everything from job losses (probably true, depending on the industry) to total societal collapse (probably not true) — the one thing almost all of them agree on is that AI will "kill" SEO.

But it simply won't. It can't. It will change it, but not kill it. That's why I still sleep well at night.

How do I know? Because the very nature of the internet (and, by extension, digital marketing) is that it changes constantly. I'm always bemused by people who claim certain things will be a "game changer" for internet technology, given that the internet changes almost every day already. Most people just don't know it, because they "have people" for that. People like me.

That's what I do. My clients rely on me to keep them abreast of the regular changes to the internet, to search engines, and a lot more. Here's some simple proof of what goes on behind the scenes: did you know that search engines update their algorithms on a regular basis? You probably did know that.

But did you know that SEO folks keep tabs on a "daily forecast" of changes, and that Google updates its algorithm thousands of times each year? Seriously: see 25 years of historical updates here for yourself. I remember how the "Search + Your World" update on January 10, 2012, shocked the SEO world when it came out by providing "personalized" results for every searcher, meaning "ranking #1" for a specific keyword was no longer a valid measure anymore.

And guess what? I'm still here, doing what I do, thirteen years later. Most people don't even know or remember the "SPYW Quake of 2012."

I'll have a lot more to say over the months and years about SEO and how AI will affect it—so much so that I launched a whole new division of my company (Lieder AI) to help clients navigate this new, uncertain world.

But here are four major predictions I feel extremely confident in making today:

1. SEO isn’t going away. It’s evolving. AI will "reshape" it, but not replace it.
2. AI is the biggest shift the internet’s ever seen. Just not in the apocalyptic way most people think.
3. AEO / GEO / LLMO are just shiny new acronyms for the same basic thing: helping the right people find you online.
4. The old guards are the new guides. The people best suited for helping clients traverse the scary new world of AI are the same folks who’ve been working in search for decades.

So, like a zombie, people keep trying to kill SEO, but it just won't die. Why?

Because humans keep searching for things. As long as that "searching" is being done via the internet, there will always be a need for companies to take advantage of it and maximize their exposure so their clientele can find them and buy their products or services. That's what I'm here for.

I hope you found this helpful.

Got a question you’d like answered in a future email? Just hit reply. Yes, it’s really me, and yes, I read every response.

Ron Stauffer

Lieder Digital

​Visit My Website / Connect on LinkedIn​

P.S. Remember that Mark Twain quote I opened with? He never actually said that. It’s a hoax that’s been repeated so many times it’s practically folklore... kind of like “SEO is dead.” Here’s what Twain did say: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” If SEO could talk, I’m pretty sure it would say the exact same thing.