Key to SEO is 'to adapt to changing environment'

14:00 27th January 2010

There is no chance of search engine optimisation (SEO) dying, but it will need to adapt to stay relevant to universal and local search.

That is the opinion of Eric Enge, president of US-based SEO specialist Stone Temple Consulting, who said in an article for Search Engine Watch that a misunderstanding of exactly what search engine optimisation is was fuelling the hype that SEO is dying.

He said: "A common belief among this segment is that SEO is the process of tricking search engines to rank a site for search queries for which it is not one of the better matches."

By thinking like that, it is easy to see why someone might conclude that search engine optimisation is dying, he said.

Mr Enge added that search engine optimisation would always be needed as long as publishers were attracting people to their websites through search engines.

He said: "That need isn't going away anytime soon."

David Snyder said in an article for Search Engine Journal that search engine optimisation would continue to be an important strategy for digital marketing professionals, despite the world of online marketing naturally evolving all the time.

He said search engine optimisation could only work as part of an online marketing strategy, along with social media marketing and other tactics.