Is SEO dead? Not at all—it’s just misunderstood. One of the most useful applications for SEO is to validate the quality of your product or service. Validation, not lead generation, is why you need SEO.

If you browsed through a few blogs about SEO before you got to this one, there’s no telling what grab bag of opinions and directions you were given, as illustrated by this real list of blog titles I found in a fun 3-minute google search:

• Is SEO Real or Fake?
• Top 4 Reasons SEO is Dead
• Is SEO Just Too Hard?
• It’s 2016 and SEO is Dead—Again.
• Conventional SEO is Kind of Dumb, Right?
• SEO isn’t Dead—it’s Just a Shape-Shifter
• When will SEO Die?

So other than the immediate question of why there are so many people out there that want SEO’s head on a platter, from reading these titles, you get the immediate impression that, well, not a lot of people understand SEO. Admittedly, doing SEO right is hard. It takes a professional. However, the concept itself is easy to grasp, and once you do get it, you can guard yourself from the various hucksters out there trying to sell you unrealistic SEO results.

Why you Need SEO

We’ve talked a lot on this blog about validation and its importance in branding and internet marketing for Orange County companies. The topic of validation—of using a wide range of sources and media to show the value of your brand or service—has wide sweeping implications and applications, and keeping validation in mind has the power to bring the strategy of your SEO efforts into focus.

People may experience a deflated feeling from their SEO results if they look about the process in the wrong way—for most people, a search engine-optimized website will not generate leads in the way you might want it to. This is not the purpose of SEO. Rather, a solid SEO website that comes up on the first page of Google results is a form of validation. Paid ads target leads and bring them in. A solid search engine position is more the icing on the cake, or the final nail in the coffin, if you prefer.

Imagine you search for “shoes made in the USA.” If you’re like me, you scroll past the initial Ad results on top, then look at the results and see New Balance at the top. Even if you don’t buy a pair of New Balance shoes, “New Balance, made in America” will go into your head, and either consciously or subconsciously they’ll be validated as the most popular shoe that’s made in the USA. That’s the value of SEO. Your internet marketing in Orange County should be designed around this principle. Establishing your brand over the long term is why you need SEO.