Is SEO Dead

Oh dear, all you SEO agencies get ready to change your industry because search engine optimisation is officially dead in 2025. Please adapt as soon as possible so me and all my mates in this niche can profit from lower competition haha.

Obviously SEO is not dead; this is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. If Google decided to completely take backlinks out of their algorithm (which they can never do) would SEO be dead then? Absolutely not. So why is this?

More to SEO than Content and Backlinks

Well let’s break down what SEO actually stands for – search engine optimisation. If backlinks become less important in years to come which actually I think Google would like to do (even though their core algorithm needs this data to rank) then does that mean websites no longer need SEO? No, that is certainly not the case. If you are interested in being an SEO then read this article for more information.

All it will mean is you need to optimise your websites slightly differently to rank. This might mean adding more content, better CTAs, better metrics on your site like bounce rate, and optimising your sites to what Google wants to see. So can everyone stop asking the question? As long as there is a search engine then you will always need to be optimising your website.

What is the Future?

Now this is a much better question because I do believe SEO is evolving and becoming more difficult for sure. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing and blasting your sites with millions of backlinks – which is a shame because I made a lot of money from this. They were the glory days and within 3 months making 5-10k per month with very little work.

Guys let’s get straight to the point. Stop obsessing over individual keyword rankings. The more you are trying to optimise your websites for individual key phrases the more you will come across Google penalties in my opinion. The digital world is only going to grow further so move with the times and develop your skills to keep one step ahead of the game.

That is because you will probably be over optimising your focus keywords and pretty much keyword stuffing without knowing. The more you will be hitting links with exact match for this, the more you are screaming to Google ‘look at my site, I want to rank for this keyword’ which you will over optimise and therefore tank.

The strategy we have adapted within my team is effective frequency which you can read more on here. Traffic is traffic at the end of the day you generate this from SEO, PPC, Facebook or wherever else. This needs to be your main goal when setting up a strategy. It is the traffic that leads to more orders and the more orders which leads to you being paid more. It is NOT the rankings which pays you more!

Diversify Your Strategy

So let’s start on a list below and answer honestly whether you are leveraging traffic from all these sources. Or are you being narrow minded and trying to rank your website for those 10 keywords in your rank tracker?

  1. Ranking your pages in the SERPs – Not just Google but Bing and Yahoo as well
  2. Rank your images in Google Images – This can drive you a lot of traffic and get you backlinks. Bloggers may decide they want to use your photo and credit the source.
  3. Ranking videos in YouTube – Do not just upload and embed onto your website. Optimise this video properly and try to rank the video in YouTube, Vimeo and Google search. If you are not the best at creating nice videos then hire some VAs and delegate this out to the people who specialise in this.
  4. Hash Tags on Social Media – Are you getting your statuses seen by your target audience and making the most of the hash tags?
  5. Retargeting on Facebook – Setting up a pixel to your site to retarget on Facebook is massive. These are people who have been on your site and are a red hot potential lead
  6. Paid Ads – Does your CPA or profit allow you to drive traffic from PPC or online ads? You need to drive as much traffic as possible from all angles.
  7. Traditional Marketing – Billboards, TV ads, radio ads all still work well. If your budgets allow for it then it gets your brand out there.
  8. Telephone Marketing – Get a database of clients and hire a cold call centre to blast through this with calls.
  9. SMS Marketing – From the database blasting a text message campaign of a special offer. If you are not sure how to do this delegate the works to specialists who carry this out day to day as they will get maximum return your investments.
  10. Email Marketing – Hitting their inboxes with updates, helpful information or last bonuses still works well.

Not saying your budgets could stretch to using all these methods above but effective frequency certainly works. It is still true where folk buy from trusted brands and many still do the 3 prong attack in traditional marketing. This is where they believe until they have seen or heard about this offer 3 times they will not purchase.

Hence the reason they do TV, radio, billboards in a mixture. Why not adapt this online and try to make sure people see your brand on social media, web search, image search and places like this. It takes hard work and a lot of taking action but this is what will grow your online empire.

Hit me with a huge core algorithm update and this will only tank part of my traffic sources. Don’t throw your eggs all into one basket. By doing this you are actually spreading your optimisation online which will naturally attract links (check me out being a complete white hat goddess lol).

No but folk crediting the source for your images, embedding your videos or linking to your amazing blog posts all will offer IP diversity in backlinks. This is really the holy grail of ranking anyway. Start looking at various ways to get your #trafficboner today.

What is a Traffic Boner?

A traffic boner is a slang term which refers to a sudden rise in traffic to your websites. On social media many people post #TrafficBoner showing results on this rise. Obviously the term comes from traffic being the amount of visitors coming to your website. Then the wording boner stands for erection and basically sudden rise. So when you check your Google analytics for traffic levels and you see a spike in traffic and growth then this is known as a Traffic Boner.

If any of you guys see any current growths in traffic please share this on social media. Use the hashtag #TrafficBoner because is a bit of a fun way to share your growth. Plus SEOs will pick this up and will help with your networking with likeminded marketing specialists which is a huge part you should be concentrating on in growing your network. As your network is your net worth and growing your network is crucial in growth within the digital industry.

White Hat Vs Black Hat SEO

Ok so now I have mentioned the white hat SEO approach which I have said is the future of online marketing then how can we adapt black hat or grey hat SEO into the mix? Do black hat techniques still have a part in developing an online strategy beyond 2025? Short answer to this is yes absolutely if utilised in the correct way.

So let’s talk dirty and talk how to utilise black hat tactics for your brand without getting into any trouble with Google. I would recommend the following:

  1. Use Automatic Social Bots – Get a following on your social media and you can easily do this by tools which follow and unfollow accounts in your niche.
  2. Buy Cheap Links to Social – For reputation management you want to rank all your social profiles also. As these have high domain authority they can easily take a good link blast to improve their rankings for target keywords and brand name.
  3. Strengthen Your Links – Google only has the patent to go two links deep. So maybe link build a bit more loosely to your links that link to your links.
  4. Tools for Outreach – There are many black hat tools to scrape emails and auto send to reporters. These can ask for mentions on topic related articles which might be sponsored. But check the metrics and negotiate best rates with them first.
  5. Rent PBN Links or 301 quality dropping domains to send power. If any of these get hit then disavow or easily remove the backlinks.
  6. IFTTT to Syndicate Content – Not really a black hat trick but this tool can syndicate your new blog post to 40 web 2.0 branded profiles automatically
  7. Injected Links – It depends how far you want to go with the black hat. You could buy SAPE links which inject links into hacked sites or buy a WordPress theme. Then inject a link into the code and update the theme. Anyone who updates this using it on their site will have your link injected into their websites without knowing.

For myself I don’t do the last one but certainly use tools like IFTTT to syndicate content throughout the profiles. There are also tools like Follow Liker to build followers, likes, shares on social media. Why not try to leverage any traffic there is in niche relevant Facebook groups, Tumblr feeds, QUORA questions and answer sites, subreddits. It can be anywhere that is talking about the products or services that you offer.

This will future-proof your strategy with driving traffic which is what our end goal needs to be. Stop focusing just on SEO and think of the bigger picture on why you are doing this. Businesses pay for this to generate more sales and they need more sales by you driving them more traffic. The more places you can get your clients brand the more chances of attracting traffic and backlinks also. So I challenge you to stop calling your business an SEO Agency. Start calling yourself:

  1. Visibility Optimisation
  2. Traffic Source Optimisation
  3. Lead Generation Specialists
  4. Growth Hacking Guru
  5. Online Growth Networker
  6. Or even #TrafficBoner Specialist

These are more important than having a narrow mind in ranking 10 keywords and worrying when the core algorithm updates. If you’re serious about building your business, I suggest you be one step ahead of the game. Always here to SYNERGISE and network guys because I love to travel and meet new folk in this niche. There is easily enough work for us all to profit and I would much prefer to be a happy millionaire with loads of mates around me doing awesome in business than a lonely billionaire who works all hours god sends, does not network or help others.

Money does not drive myself one bit and for myself it is all about the Journey. A rising tide lifts all ships and if I can help all my friends be successful, then for me I would get so much more satisfaction from that. I have met so many great friends from travelling the world being a digital nomad and if anyone wants to know more information on myself read these articles below: 

This blog gives a brief Intro to James Dooley to understand who I am and my mindset.

This article How I became digital nomad explains the process of me becoming a digital marketer where I could travel while working.

I love this blog the most Digital Nomad Lesson as I update this regularly with my life lessons I develop throughout my life.

All SEO Related Posts

Check out the in-depth list of SEO posts.

The full list shows the various SEO strategies to help your online marketing knowledge grow fast in May 2025.

About FatRank

Our aim to explain and educate from a basic level to an advanced on SEO and Social Media Marketing.

Recent Posts