Search engine optimisation (SEO) has been declared dead more times than I can count. Yet here I am, 25 years into the game, and SEO not only still exists—it’s thriving.
With every major platform now acting as a search engine, from Google to TikTok, LinkedIn to Amazon, the rules keep shifting. But the core principle remains the same: help people find the information they want, fast.
At its core, SEO is about making content easier to discover. That starts with understanding how people search. What questions are they asking? What words do they use? What answers are they expecting?
To me, SEO means:
SEO is what makes an invisible business visible online. It’s what connects future customers with the answers, services, or products they’re actively searching for.
In 1998, it was all about stuffing keywords. In 2005, it was backlinks. In 2015, it was mobile-friendly design. Today? It’s all that and more—from voice search to user experience to how fast your site loads.
SEO has never been static. And it never will be.
This question pops up every year: is SEO dead?
Short answer? No.
Long answer? It’s evolving. Every time Google changes its algorithm, SEO changes too. But that doesn’t mean it stops working. It just means you need to adapt.
I’ve seen the rise of AI-generated content, smarter search bots, and platforms like TikTok becoming places where people search for products, reviews, and ideas.
YouTube is now the second-largest search engine in the world.
Amazon SEO matters more than ever for ecommerce.
Even Instagram is experimenting with keyword search, not just hashtags.
If you’re only doing SEO on your website, you’re missing half the picture. Today, SEO means showing up wherever your audience is searching. That includes:
Each one has its own algorithm. Your strategy needs to meet users where they are.
The rise of generative AI has added fuel to the “SEO is dead” debate. But here’s the truth: AI doesn’t kill SEO—it sharpens it.
Search engines now use AI to better understand intent, context, and user behaviour. That means your content has to be clearer, more relevant, and more helpful than ever.
“SEO AI” tools like Surfer, Frase, and MarketMuse can help me:
But they don’t replace human strategy. They enhance it.
At Wicked Spider, I use AI to support our work—not replace it. Whether that’s admin work, content writing or technical summaries AI used ethically is a great tool. I also don’t believe that AI is artifical at all – in fact its just sophicated natural language processing that goes back decades….it isn’t AI like many of us might have encountered in old sci-fi films and series….there’s nothing artificial about it. I am not saying that it doesn’t have its problems but that’s for another article.
I also go beyond content. My SEO audits include:
Back when I started in SEO Google didn’t exist. It was the likes of AltaVista, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo!, and Excite.
Here’s what that means for your business:
Every platform is now a search engine. That means your SEO strategy has to work across them all.
The good news? The fundamentals still apply: understand your audience, answer their questions, and make your content easy to find using sound and efficient techincal setups.
And that’s what I do every day at Wicked Spider—tailoring SEO strategies to the most relevant and potent platforms available to each client.
SEO isn’t dead. It’s just evolving like it always has. It’s gone beyond your website and become a multi-platform strategy.
After 25 years in the game, I can tell you with confidence: SEO never dies. It just keeps getting smarter.
Want to see what that looks like for your business? Let’s talk.
