What is SEO? (and why it's still not dead)
What is SEO? (and why it's still not dead)
So. You've just Googled "What is SEO?" and landed here, either because:
You're pretending you don't know what it is (hello, marketing managers),
You're genuinely confused (hi, small business owners),
Or you're hate-reading to see if I say something wrong (sup, LinkedIn SEOs).
Whatever brought you here, let me say this upfront: SEO is not dead. Despite what TikTok, your uncle's crypto bro podcast, or that one "Facebook ads guy" told you - it's not going anywhere. It's just become harder, messier, more competitive, and way more annoying to learn properly.
Let's Translate the Acronym First
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. If that sounds boring, that's because it is - on the surface. But peel it back and you've got one of the most powerful levers in modern business. We're talking "unlimited inbound leads while you sleep" type power. Or in realistic terms: a way to stop pouring your entire budget into ads and still get seen.
SEO is the game of convincing a cold, calculating robot (Google) that your content deserves to be seen by actual humans.
Why Should You Care?
Because when people want something, they Google it. They don't go to TikTok, they don't email your business, and they definitely don't scroll back to your post from six weeks ago. They go to a search engine, type in whatever is rattling around in their brain, and hit enter. And in that moment, you either show up… or you don't exist.
Let that sink in.
You could have the best product in the world, the most insightful article, or the most aesthetic indie brand packaging since 2016 - but if your site shows up on page 2? You. Don't. Exist. Page 2 is the graveyard. Page 3? Never even indexed. Page 4? Probably haunted.
So What Is SEO Really?
SEO is:
Making your content findable
Making your site crawlable
Convincing search engines you're not trash
It's part content strategy, part tech setup, part link-building hustle, and part psychological warfare against both your competitors and Google's constantly shifting algorithm.
It's not just about keywords anymore. If your SEO strategy starts and ends with "we added keywords," I have bad news: You're still in 2007. Come join us in the present. It's worse here.
The Myth of SEO Being "Dead"
Let's talk about the elephant in the room - "SEO is dead." This myth gets trotted out every 18 months like a zombie at a marketing conference.
Here's how that goes:
A new platform shows up (hello, Threads). - Some 24-year-old influencer yells "No one Googles anymore!" - Everyone panics and says SEO is irrelevant now. - Google casually handles 8.5 billion searches per day while sipping a matcha. - SEO continues to quietly drive 10x more conversions than your boosted Instagram post ever will.
SEO isn't dead. It's just not flashy. You don't get dopamine from it. You don't "go viral." It's not sexy. It's infrastructure. It's reputation. It's playing the long game while everyone else burns cash chasing reels and TikToks that nobody remembers in 48 hours.
What Actually Goes Into SEO?
Alright, now let's crack this open like a bad XML sitemap.
Strategy: Who Do You Want to Show Up For?
If you don't know who your audience is or what they're Googling, you're basically firing arrows in a dark room while blindfolded. Keyword research is not optional. It's not just "find a term and stuff it in." It's understanding what your customer actually types when they're desperate and half-asleep at 2am.
Technical SEO: Making Sure Google Doesn't Vomit When It Crawls You
You can have the best content in the world, but if your site is a spaghetti pile of broken links, duplicate pages, and 12-second load times? You're toast. Enter: sitemaps, robots.txt, canonical tags, JSON-LD, crawl budget, mobile-first indexing, and other buzzwords that sound made up - but aren't.
Content: Give Them What They're Looking For (Not What You Want to Say)
No, that 300-word "About Us" page isn't going to rank. Your weekly blog titled "Monday Motivation: Be Your Best Self!" is doing exactly nothing for you. Your content needs to be useful, structured, and actually solve a problem. It also needs headings, schema, clean HTML, alt text, a good title, a meta description, internal links, and probably a priest to bless it.
Links: The Internet's Version of Street Cred
The more legit sites that link to you, the more Google thinks you're legit. Think of backlinks as the digital version of "who you know." But just like in real life - not all references are created equal. One link from a respected site > 100 spammy forum posts from 2009.
SEO Is a Long Game - But It's the Game That Matters
It won't get you traffic overnight. You can't throw up one blog post and expect leads to flood in. SEO is compound interest. You invest now, you optimise, you refine, and eventually, your competitors are paying $8 a click for what you're getting for free.
Most businesses don't lose because they had bad products - they lose because no one could find them.
Final Thoughts (Before You Get Distracted by Something Shiny)
SEO is not trendy. It's foundational.
It's not dead. It's just not idiot-proof.
The rules change, but the goal is the same: show up when people search.
If you're not doing SEO, someone else is - and they're eating your traffic.
The only thing that's really dead? Your organic reach if you keep ignoring this.
So now that you know what SEO actually is… let's start fixing the mess.