WebMarketing War conducted an “Is SEO Dead” Opinion Poll asking various industry experts, analysts and bloggers to delve deep into the impact of current changes within the seo industry. These changes are hitting the publishers and the marketers alike and will have long term implications on how a website should be promoted on the web.  A total of 113 seo professionals participated. The common conclusion which we arrived at from the reactions of those who participated or reacted was - SEO isn't dead and would remain relevant ,however it will evolves over time.

1. Opinion Poll
Is SEO Dead?
Conducted by

2. Is SEO Dead?
Executive Summary
We at WebMarketing War conducted an “Is SEO Dead” Opinion Poll
asking various industry experts, analysts and bloggers to delve deep
into the impact of current changes within the seo industry. These
changes are hitting the publishers and the marketers alike and will
have long term implications on how a website should be promoted
on the web. A total of 113 seo professionals participated . Most of
the respondents were affected by Google's penguin’s update. Out of
all the participants, 75% of the respondents were from the age group
25- 40. As far the geographic participation is concerned, these
respondents were mainly from Asia (56 %), followed by Europe (21%)
and America (21%). 71 % claimed their expertise was of the expert
level followed by veteran (15%) and beginners (14%).
The common conclusion which we arrived at from the reactions of
those who participated or reacted was - SEO isn't dead and would
remain relevant ,however it will evolves over time. One of the
participant summed it up quite nicely - “as long as people search for
stuff and other people want to get stuff found, there will always be
some aspect of SEO involved .”

3. Is SEO Dead?
The key findings
1.Post penguin update seo professionals are relying more on social media.
2.SEO Professional are still not using guest posts heavily for link building.
3.Majority believed that social signals have become a an important ranking signal for the search
engines
4.Surprisingly, despite of penguin's onslaught against low quality link building techniques,
majority were still sticking with the same. this was one area of research
5.Majority of the respondents agreed that Google is making it tough for small publishers to
appear in top 10 results.
6.Respondents were a divided lot in when asked if they observed any increase in their ppc
spend. this clearly indicated that the immediate impact of penguin has made seo professional
shift their focus on social media instead of ppc.
Below is the detailed analysis of the questions asked in the poll, along with reactions of those
who participated.

4. Is SEO Dead?
Analysis
52% of the respondents were affected
(either completely or somewhat) by
Google’s penguin update. 42% said they
were yet to see any effect of such change
in Google's algorithm . 6% were unsure
if their website experienced any change
at all.
Reactions
SEO or search engine optimization being dead would essentially mean that there wasn't a
need to optimize results on search engines. Since search engines are still functional, the need
to obtain best result for a particular search query will always be there. Hence, a better way of
putting it would be "SEO is changing everyday“. The recent changes and updates in the
algorithms of popular search engines had made search results more social. Hence,
using social media as a marketing tool is the most effective way to do SEO for a business
today ! We'll have to wait and see what's in store for the future.
- Amanda

5. Is SEO Dead?
Analysis
57% of the respondents said in the
post penguin scenario, they have
been using more of social media
(either completely or somewhat). 35%
did not agree to it whereas 8% were
unsure about it. Marketers have been
observing a rise in the social media
activities of the traditional search
engine optimizers. Analysts also
confirm that they see a more serious
Reactions approach in terms of creation of
Traditional SEO is dead. With the new social media strategies which are now
updates to their algorithm Google has Put full moving towards content based
emphasis on relevance and has put marketing.
spammers at a stand still. It is all about
information that pertains to what we are
looking for. It is no longer SEO, it's
KEO(knowledge engine optimization).
Michael Hence

6. Is SEO Dead?
Reactions
SEO will never die until the day that search
engines die. The industry has evolved,
though.SEO now plays "second fiddle" to
conversion optimization. Actually, I would
order it as follows:
1. Usability Optimization -- making sure that
visitors can easily navigate your site and do
what you want them to do.
2. Conversion Optimization -- making sure that
Analysis
your product pages sell and removing any
12% admitted that their usage of guest
barriers that may prevent that.
posts as a link building technique has
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO - we
increased. Whereas 52 % were of the
already know that that is *smile*)
opinion that they somewhat rely on it or if
their dependence is same as before. 36 %
A better answer (atleast IMHO) to seek is
categorically stated , they don't use guest
"how has SEO evolved from where it was 5
post at all. Guest Posts have always been
years go" or something like that...
one of the most effective way off link
Elise Connors
building however not many are resorting
to it in the post penguin scenario.

7. Is SEO Dead?
Analysis
A huge 56% emphatically said
that social signals like,
facebook likes, retweets,
shares are slowly becoming an
important ranking signal
whereas 34% were not that
confident. 10% replied in
negative. Google along with
Bing has time and again
Reactions
emphasized that over a period
SEO will never be dead it is the heart of all business online
of time social signals will carry
and offline business, if you noticed more and more
more or less equal weight age
companies will also include their advertisement on tv,
as compared to back links.
radio, magazines and other medium to like them and find
The same sentiment was
them at facebook, because they want traffic and audience
reflected in our poll.
too. Internet users are growing and growing young and
adult and this would be a big opportunity for marketers,
what are benefits of online marketing is you can monitor
the status of your business through using different tools,
such Google analytics, and many more.
Giovanni-Carlo Bagayas

8. Is SEO Dead?
Analysis
Surprisingly an overwhelming
54% said they still use traditional
seo techniques like directory
submission, article submission
and so on. 32 % said, they have
reduce their usage of such
techniques whereas only 15 %
said they no longer use them.
This result does open
possibilities of further research.
Reaction
Just think of SEO as quality content that is always what it says on the box, do nothing obnoxious
and be engagingly relevant for your target market and you are 75% of the way there. Natural
backlinks still count, SMM is a much bigger factor now, but quality content trumps all, especially
when information is architected to be semantically meaningful everywhere and always. Outline
your site by title, use meaningful URLs, write good descriptions using keywords that are relevant,
outline your pages using subheadings, use named anchors in-copy, call out important keywords
in copy and cross link to relevant internal content and if possible quality related external content,
don't overengineer or do black hat stuff or things that alienate users and watch the magic
happen :)
Eric Lerner

9. Is SEO Dead?
Analysis
Majority of the respondents
(61%)agreed with this. Only 29% did
not agree with it whereas 10% were
unsure about it. On further analysis, it
was observed that, there is a greater
sense of Google being more of big
brand centric and leaving small
publishers at the mercy of PPC. One
could get a feeling of unfair play, but
nothing much can be done about it.
Reactions
Google is counting down those organic results though. 10 to 7 to rumored 4. That doesn't tell
anybody anything in this industry? Are we just covering our eyes?AdWords is even doing full
blown 4-6 sitelinks now for your ad. They are starting to look like organic results. Are we still
covering our eyes?I'm even starting to see that Local 7 pop up for extremely competitive
keywords which is pushing out the non-locals for that area and keyword. The FTC is even not
doing anything.
Ben Guest

10. Is SEO Dead?
Analysis
This was a divided lot. 38% said that ,
they did observe an increase in their
PPC spend whereas and equal number
of respondent's disagreed stating that
their PC budget allocation is same as
before. 24 % of the respondents were
unsure about it. This clearly shows that
the effect of Google algorithm update
is pushing the SEOs more towards
social media rather than PPC
Reaction
Google is surely encouraging the paid ads that's where they get more revenue but I believe they
will not kill SEO to promote paid ads. All these changes to the UX of their SERP resulted in around
30 to 50% more CTR through paid ads but still there is at least another 40% CTR for organic
listings. If they don't return quality websites through organic listings, I think slowly people will
search for another search engine rather than staying with the one who throws results of those
who pay money to them.
Venkata Gavaskar Dontha

11. Is SEO Dead?
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