SEO is dead... 'ish.

It's impressive how "border" the so called "digital gurus" can be, crafting some sort of "exodus mottos" which falsely pretend to transform themselves into the new digital version of Nostradamus.

I must accept I've done predictions, from the upcoming stage for the digital market (a strange R.S.V.P. / I-may-not-accept-you time lapse) to the boosted digital stress that users will suffer in the next 5 years, when everything will toughly pause when it comes to digital innovation (not talking about mobile here, of course).

But I ask myself, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that an expert in the digital world can state SEO is dead?
I mean, let's be honest... ironically, as in real life, nothing never truly dies, it just evolves, so does happens with digital, SEO can't be dead... it's actually not even close to it, it just became faster and wiser. So how everyone's shouting about it's days of glory and death after Google Instant came out last week?

Rather than compromising SEO integrity, Google Instant it's just YAGE (Yet Another Google Enhancement), based on search time optimization, and of course taking advantage of the new Caffeine search index also officially launched late this month.

Let us be realistic, it's NOT Google Instant what's changing SEO (and not killing it, as many would think), the user asks for less time spent on searches, less hassle to find appropriate/accurate results... isn't that what SEO stands for? Well, then Google Instant it's a new way to achieve SEO better, so why everybody's making a big deal about it? it means that finally there's a better way to offer clients and companies what the pay for, efforts have been compiled and simplified.

Google's updates in 2010 have sent us a message, it's not just about "keywords" or "tags", things can't be just systemized, there's always something that matters the most, and thats the user's habits. Even when we have several different analytic tools to retrieve and learn from those, we always found it a 24 hour job to do so, and then apply it, things couldn't be express (fractions of seconds), technology wasn't strong enough, but today is a different matter. GMail's Priority Inbox is another good example, where habits and actions from the user defines key invisible filters, customizing their experience with the service faster and better.

So what about the classic SEO strategy?... Still there, but now it will be just a part of the whole thing, as I said earlier in my GMail's Priority Inbox post, the time to listen users directly has come, to understand them in matter of fractions of seconds, is the new goal for any SEO person,  which means... PageRank still works as it should, AdSense and AdWords too... thats for classic SEO and it will work just as usual (among trillions of other tools), but to make the user go to your site as a detectable habit will depend on the CONTENT of it, seems that finally we reached one of my predictions earlier this year... it's time for QUALITY through channels... and if we think about it, it's the common cycle within the digital world...

We will never forget how SPAM mail became successful in the early years of internet... until users get fed of it, and asked for... quality... then SPAM filters appeared, or how so many knew about Nettalk (old PC Telephony company), they launched a nice piece of software late 90's, they didn't make it through... until a couple of guys decided to craft something with REAL user needs attended, Skype.
We could even talk about not so old examples, like Hi5 vs Facebook, or MySpace and its declined success... it's just part of the cycle.

So whoever stands for the murder of SEO... is wrong, and probably is one of those so many million "gurus" that learnt about SEO during the last couple of years, took a diploma or workshop about it, and just understand the logic behind it... not its nature, so then again, as I've said before, technology beats digital wannabe's, cause to understand and use these things goes way beyond reading a document or taking a workshop, it asks for prior experience, actual expertise based on reading the user, not defining pure keywords. So... Welcome then Google Instant, even though I turned it off ! (I use normal search time to think about million things, I don't need to loose those time glimpses, ha ha!).

Anyone isn't sure about what kind of impact Google Instant will have, and it's normal, but please, stop listening to the guys that need 2 months to assure that their job is not obsolete anymore because of a new technology appears, they will probably keep on doing the same until someone explains how evolution works, and how they need to do their job now. Instant Impact will be positive, that's for sure, it's time to move on!