We are half-way through the first quarter of 2025 and still providing industry leading SEO services in Salt Lake City and beyond. Webtek will continue pushing the boundaries of SEO because we understand just how important it is. We do not believe those who say SEO is dead. We know it is very much alive, and so we keep pressing on in the best interests of our clients.
If you look over the past 10-12 years, you will see that history shows no shortage of experts claiming that SEO was on its way out. They cited things like black hat practices and Google’s Panda update as justifiable reasons that SEO couldn’t survive. But they were proved wrong, as we all know. Those who are declaring the death of SEO in 2025 will be proved wrong as well.
People Still Have to Search
The most successful in our industry do not deny that SEO is changing. They acknowledge that the industry has been in a constant state of flux since its inception. That much is undeniable. But a changing environment does not mean the death of SEO. It only serves to illustrate just how important SEO is. It boils down to this: people still need to search.
What we call the worldwide web has long since outgrown the web paradigm. At last count, the web was populated by more than 1.5 billion websites. How many trillions of pages are incorporated into those sites?
The internet is a vast universe of data that only continues to expand. Your average internet user would not be able to make any practical use of it without the ability to search. People still search because they have no other choice. Search engines exist to provide that function. And as long as there are search engines, there will be a heavy demand for SEO services in Salt Lake City and around the world.
The Google Factor
As for SEO in 2025, it is impossible to speculate without including the Google factor. Google dominates search. It’s as simple as that. So what happens at Google impacts SEO. Here are some interesting things to consider, complements of Yoast contributor Edwin Toonen:
1. Potential Breakup
Google was deemed a monopoly by the federal government in August 2024. The court is now tasked with determining appropriate corrective action. What will that action look like? No one knows for sure, but a potential breakup looms on the horizon.
It could be that Google will be forced to sell Chrome. It may have to divest itself of some of its most popular properties, including YouTube. No matter how it shakes out, any action taken against Google to end its monopoly will have ramifications on other search providers. SEO agencies need to be nimble enough to respond at a moment’s notice.
2. The End of Parasite SEO
Google took a bold stand against black hat SEO when they banned parasite SEO last year. If you are not familiar with the practice, parasite SEO is the practice of partnering with third parties to take advantage of the trust and authority of a highly ranked site in order to improve traffic and competitive keyword ranking. Google’s goal is to improve search quality. But for those sites punished by the ban, the end of parasite SEO is not good.
3. Google’s Core Updates
Last year was a banner year for Google core updates. As Toonen explained in his piece, many SEO providers were kept up at night wondering how the latest changes would impact client rankings. Nothing will change in 2025. As long as Google keeps tweaking its algorithms, SEO providers will have plenty of work to do.
AI Is Changing How We Search
There are other things to consider above and beyond the Google factor. At the top of the list is artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on traditional search. All the big providers, including Google and Bing, have introduced AI to their search capabilities. We are beginning to see it with AI-generated summaries of organic searches.
There are other players in the search space that have chosen to completely redefine the search paradigm with AI. Perplexity is probably the most well-known among them. Perplexity users never see traditional search results similar to what Google and Bing produce. Instead, they see AI-generated summaries that provide direct answers to user inquiries.
The summation to all of this is simple: AI is changing how we search. Even so, organizations still need to compete for rankings. It is up to SEO providers to figure out how AI is being utilized so as to adjust what they do accordingly.
Voice Search Isn’t Going Away
While AI-powered searches are comparatively new, voice search has been a thing for a while now. But it’s not a fad. Those who said it would fade away now realize that voice search isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it is only becoming more popular. Here are some 2024 voice search statistics worth noting:
- 24% of consumers own TVs or remotes with voice search capabilities.
- 23% have voice search capabilities in their cars.
- 21% have voice search capabilities on their computers.
- 62% of American adults use voice search on any device.
That last statistic is the most important of all. The majority of American adults utilize voice search on a regular basis. Whether that means talking to a smart speaker, running a search on their phones, or talking to their cars while they are driving makes little difference in practical terms. What matters is that SEO accounts for the natural language people utilize when running voice searches.
More Important Than Ever
Consumers will need to search as long as they use the internet as a source of information. More importantly, search providers will continue to update their algorithms in hopes of providing better results. What does it all mean for SEO? It means that SEO is more important than ever. Do not believe the naysayers who insist that SEO is dead. It is very much alive and constantly changing.
