Let me just say, I’m a huge admirer of Larry Kim. He’s been a big influence on digital marketing for years, especially in paid media circles. However, I need to respond to a claim he made on LinkedIn about the unfortunate demise of SEO. 

On January 24th 2025 he posted this:

“RIP SEO: 2008–2024

HubSpot’s blog, with a staggering 6.4 million backlinks from 220.5k linking domains, has seen its traffic nosedive by 85.7% in the past 24 months.

The culprit? Google’s relentless push for “AI Snippets” has decimated informational search traffic. For the first time in over a decade, I’ve stopped investing in SEO as a channel entirely.”

So, in 2025, Larry Kim has declared that SEO is dead. 

I can’t think of any other industry that has been declared dead so many times. What is it about SEO that makes people so quick to announce its death?

SEO is just the process of optimising for search. To declare SEO dead is to declare search dead. Are people going to stop searching for things?

I started to research every time the death of SEO was announced, and was so overwhelmed I gave up. But, I will give you this:

A quote from an article in 2014:

“Apparently, the “SEO is dead” card has been played for a long time. Even before the age of Google, Richard Hoy of Tenagra said that “search engines are a dead-end technology.” Then Google came on the scene, and with every search algorithm update it made, the same “SEO is dead” outcry was sounded.”

The author, Halina Zakowicz, then goes on to list the many deaths of SEO, which I’ve expanded just for the fun of it. If you want to skip this part, feel free to click here.

2003, Florida. This update countered keyword stuffing and caused many sites to lose top ranking. It led to many business websites virtually disappearing overnight. Webmasters figured SEO was over.

2004, Austin. Invisible keyword-stuffed sites were penalised and disappeared from the SERP. Again, another major outcry against Google erupted and the end of SEO was declared.

2005, Jagger. Spam linking was derailed, resulting in many link-heavy sites losing position. Entire websites were now dead, as far as their SEO was concerned.

2007, Universal Search. Rich media was integrated into the SERPs, causing some position #1 sites to move to position #2 while larger rich media files populated the results pages. Images and videos, not content, had won the SEO battle, apparently.

2010, May Day. Changes were made to long-tail keyword ranks, effectively lowering the positions of niche websites that stuffed longer search terms. Many affiliate marketers considered their SEO efforts to have been in vain.

2010, Social Triggers. Social media activity was added to the ranking algorithm, leading to many pundits denouncing the need for SEO. 

2011, Panda. This update took a swipe at content farms and lowered their rank. Again, SEO, viewed solely as the practice of keyword-stuffing, was noted as being dead.

2012, Penguin. Google’s numerous Penguin updates penalised link farms, paid links and over-advertised websites. Linking for SEO was declared dead, as was pretty much any SEO effort.

2013: The Guardian announces “SEO is dead, long live social media optimisation”. 

2014: On LinkedIn, Nick Atkinson tries to replace SEO with CEO, because of course it’s 2014 and SEO is dead. 

2015: The Huff Post is in on the act, asking whether SEO is dead, and claiming that CRO is the new kid in town.

2016: On LinkedIn, David Philips states 5 of the main reasons why SEO is dead in 2016. 

2017: SEO is most definitely dead this time, states Laurent Bourrelly on LinkedIn. He wishes he didn’t have to say it, but sadly it’s true.

2018: An article on Forbes saying SEO isn’t completely dead, but it’s on life support. Apparently a since removed article on Entreprenur.com stated “The Top 4 Reasons SEO Is Dead”, which got the rest of the Internet chattering. 

2019: More talk of SEO is dead, and some compelling reasons why. According to Rand Fishkin, 2019 was the first time the majority of searches resulted in ‘zero clicks‘. So, of course, this means SEO is dead right?

2020: “SEO is dead” is doing the rounds again, and again. Someone even did an SEO is Dead roundup. I’m beginning to wonder if discussing whether SEO is dead or not is just an annual excuse for content filler. 

2021: This was a relatively quiet year, but still a Google search throws up results asking, IS SEO dead in 2021? This was the aftermath of Covid lockdowns, so maybe there is a bit of sensitivity around the issue.

2022: Things are actually looking a bit positive. People are still asking whether SEO is dead, but there seem to be more claims that it could actually be alive.

2023: This was the year of ChatGPT, and some big Google algorithm updates, so of course, it was a ripe time for discussion on whether SEO is dead or not. There are still more No’s than Yes’s, but the big Google updates didn’t happen until near the end of the year.

2024: The discussion continues, ironically, Black Hat SEO seems to still be alive and well in 2024. There seems to be more talk around SEO evolving rather than dying, so maybe people are starting to realise that SEO can’t die. It’s only taken 24 years.

2025: Oh dear. After it seemed we were finally making progress, in 2025 our friend Larry Kim has categorically stated that SEO is indeed, finally, dead. 

Note: I’m sure I will have to come back to this article every year, because SEO is going to be dead in 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029….

Anyway, for prosperity and for the record, I’m going to lay my claim as to why SEO isn’t dead, it’s never been dead, and it never will be ‘dead’.

Let’s take a look at what is required of an SEO in 2025.

By the way, SEO isn’t just for websites, it can be for social media pages, Amazon products, songs on Spotify and in fact anything that has a search engine. But, I will come back to that later.

For now, let’s just look at Google, because they still own 90% of the search market in 2025.

First, for SEO on Google you need an SEO friendly website. The best SEOs will know how to build a website and what makes it SEO friendly. This means it needs to be easily crawlable, fast loading, mobile friendly and technically sound. 

Websites are generally built by web developers, but in my experience they don’t pay much thought to SEO. I’ve seen high-end web development agencies build stunning websites that are disasters for SEO. Developers focus on functionality, not discoverability. A good SEO ensures a website isn’t just great to look at, but also structured correctly for search engines.

Next, an SEO needs to be able to analyse competitor websites. This means assessing their technical quality, content, backlinks and everything else. I can’t think of any other industry or job that carries out this kind of analysis?

After this, a website needs content. To gain visibility this needs to contain keywords in all the right places for search engines to discover and rank. SEOs know about on-page SEO, keyword density and everything else that’s required for search engines to consider a page highly relevant to a user’s search. 

On top of this, according to Google’s Helpful Content Update, the content needs to be helpful. This means it needs to be audience targeted and provide genuine value. 

A good SEO knows how to conduct audience research and analysis. This allows us to discover the wants, needs, desires and pain points of an audience, so we can deliver content that is ‘helpful’. This is an area of traditional marketing which has cost clients a fortune over the years and is normally out of reach for the average SME. 

With the rise of AI efficiency and an understanding of what makes content helpful, audience research and analysis is now a part of the SEO arsenal. 

Next, we have the E-E-A-T algorithm. An expert in SEO knows that brand signals play an important role in ranking websites. We know that a brand needs to stand out, so we are conducting brand analysis and differentiation. These are all areas of traditional marketing that are now key components of a good SEO foundation. 

Then comes the content itself. We know what makes good content. We know how long or in-depth it should be. We know it should be split into easily digestible segments for readability. How it needs to be highly engaging to attract comments and shares. A good SEO knows that engagement metrics are important for ranking on Google. 

Google doesn’t admit that things like CTR, bounce rate, scroll depth, time on page, average page visits etc. influence ranking positions, but there is evidence to the contrary. 

In the Google leak in 2024 we saw that engagement metrics do indeed play a role. If you think about it, why it wouldn’t? Google’s job is to provide the most relevant and useful results for users. Why would they have a result on page one that no one clicks, or if they do click, they quickly leave and return to the results?

Bing admits it uses this data when determining ranking positions, so I can’t see any reason why Google wouldn’t.

A good SEO knows this, so they’ve made a point of understanding UX and user behaviour. They’ve learned how to keep users on a website for as long as possible. How to ensure they click through to other pages. These are tactics used by social media giants such as Facebook, and mammoths like Netflix. They know that people are the commodity and their job is to keep users on their platform for as long as humanly possible. A good SEO knows this too. 

So, an expert in SEO needs experience in web development, competitor analysis, UX, user behaviour, traditional marketing, copywriting and content creation. 

But, it doesn’t end there. We still have social signals. Google claims that social signals don’t play a role in their ranking algorithm, but a good SEO knows this isn’t the case. 

I’ve seen websites rank for highly competitive terms and all they have are social signals. I also appear to have evidence for it here. Bing admits it uses social signals when determining ranking positions, and it makes sense that Google does too. 

I’ve seen Instagram pages and other social pages ranking on page one for competitive terms. This is because an influential social media presence fulfils a lot of the E-E-A-T criteria. 

Next, we have link building. A good SEO knows that links have to be earned. These are gained through PR, outreach and networking. We understand about liaising with journalists to get coverage for events or new product launches, and how to gain the most out of it for SEO. We know about creating content that can go viral and attract attention. We know how to assess content that has already gone viral, and how to look at trends to predict what may come next.

So, let’s round this up.

A good SEO needs experience in:

• Web development
• UX strategy
• Content marketing
• Traditional marketing
• Digital PR
• Social media

Name me another industry that requires so much knowledge and skills across so many industries? 

No other discipline requires such a broad skillset. Programmers don’t know branding. Paid media specialists don’t understand organic growth. Marketers don’t understand technical SEO. SEO brings everything together.

The key to a good SEO is adaptability because we’ve been dealing with major algorithm changes for years. 

Larry Kim has gone into a panic about Hubspot losing traffic. Good SEOs saw this coming in 2022 when ChatGPT exploded onto the market. 

Why are people going to use a search engine, which means typing in words, crawling results, clicking on and off websites trying to find an answer, when all they need to do is ask AI?

An AI can give them a direct answer that’s probably better than anything they could find themselves. It was obvious this was going to take traffic away from websites that rely on informational search.

But here’s the thing. Yes, Hubspot has seen its traffic nosedive by 85.7% in the past 24 months. But do they have any less clients for their CRM? I would guess not. 

According to Statista, digital marketing is growing, and that means demand for CRMs is growing too. 

People may be using AI for information, but guess what AI is suggesting when they ask about CRMs? It recommends Hubspot, along with others, the same as a Google search.  

AI draws its information from the Web. A good SEO has enough experience understanding algorithms to know where an AI gets its information from, how it processes it and how it delivers it to end users. 

LLMs work on a probability score. So, they provide the most likely answer based on their dataset and training. This means for an LLM to recommend a product, it needs to be available in its dataset. Where does it get this from? The Web. 

So a good SEO will know that a product needs to be mentioned far and wide in as many places as possible. He or she will know that reviews are an essential part of it, as these are all factors of E-E-A-T.

Optimising for AI is an easy adjustment for an SEO, because we’ve been link building and gaining mentions across the web for years. 

For LLMs that search the web, such as Gemini, Copilot etc, they just crawl the search results. So, in this case, SEO still applies. If we have our websites ranking highly, then they will be delivered by AI search. 

Larry Kim is complaining about lost traffic, but most AI will provide citations. So, Hubspot may not be getting the click throughs they used to get, but they are still gaining brand awareness.

The organic visibility they’ve gained through SEO means that AI will frequently mention Hubspot in relevant conversations, and recommend them to businesses and marketers.

To “stop investing in SEO as a channel entirely” as Larry Kim suggested, is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

A good SEO can apply their knowledge of algorithms to any platform. For example, we know that Amazon’s algorithm is based on reviews. We know that Instagram’s algorithms are based on engagement. An SEO expert will already have the knowledge and tools to gain reviews and build engagement, so applying this to other platforms isn’t a big shift. 

A good SEO is worth their weight in gold because no one, in any other industry has the knowledge we have.

Do you think programmers or web developers know this stuff? Marketers? Paid media specialists, advertisers? 

No, SEO is a skill set that traverses the entire spectrum of digital marketing and online behaviour. 

The AI revolution isn’t killing SEO. It’s proving why the best SEOs are more valuable than ever. 

If businesses, or marketers like Larry Kim decide they don’t need an SEO expert in their corner, then it won’t be RIP SEO, it will be RIP them.

(Sorry Larry!)