Would SEO survive in a post-Google world?

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Mar 10, 2023 / by
Would SEO survive in a post-Google world?

SEO has been an essential tool for businesses to improve their online presence and attract more traffic to their websites for decades now. However, with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and the increasing use of voice search, it’s worth asking the question of whether SEO would survive in a post-Google world.

We know that Google isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, of course, but if the search engine became obsolete tomorrow, how would SEO adapt and survive? Google has hardly proven itself to be infallible, after all, particularly with the abject failure of the Google Stadia platform. To answer this question, let’s first take a closer look at the role of SEO and its relationship with search engines.

What is SEO?

Search engines have two primary functions: crawling and indexing websites and providing relevant results to users. SEO helps search engines understand the content and structure of a website, making it easier for them to crawl and index it accurately.

Search engines use increasingly complex algorithms to determine the relevance and quality of a website’s content and rank it accordingly. SEO practitioners work to optimise websites to meet these algorithms’ criteria, improving their authority and rankings in SERPs.

Google dominates the search engine market, with over a 90% market share globally. However, as technology evolves, new search engines emerge, and Google’s dominance may eventually diminish. So, the question remains, would SEO survive in a post-Google world?

Yes, it probably would, is the short answer, but it would need to adapt to the changing landscape of search engines. So, here’s the long answer.

Voice Search Optimisation (VSO)

As voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant become more prevalent and relevant, VSO will become an essential component of SEO. Voice searches are typically longer and more conversational than text searches, so SEO practitioners will need to optimise websites for natural language queries.

VSO involves optimising content for featured snippets, creating a question and answer (Q&A) section, and ensuring that the website’s content is easy to understand, as complicated content rarely comes across well as a voiceover and can be more difficult for algorithms to read. VSO will be crucial in a post-Google world, as voice searches are expected to account for 50% of all searches by 2022.

AI Optimisation

As search engines become more sophisticated and use AI to analyse and understand website content, SEO will need to evolve to keep up with the robots, so to speak. AI optimisation involves using natural language processing (NLP) to create content that is optimised for machine learning algorithms.

SEO practitioners will need to create high-quality, relevant content that can be easily understood by AI algorithms. This will require a deep understanding of the user’s intent behind their search query and creating content that meets those needs in an engaging, relevant and organic fashion. Not an easy ask.

Content Optimisation

Even in a post-Google world, content will remain king. SEO practitioners will need to continue creating high-quality, relevant, and engaging content that appeals to their target audience and converts views into clicks and clicks into sales.

Content optimisation involves creating content that is optimised for specific keywords and phrases which are relevant to the target audience. This includes using relevant and engaging images, videos, and other multimedia to enhance the content’s quality and general appeal as well as its usefulness.

A world without Google would still be worth living in

SEO has become an integral part of digital marketing, and it will continue to play a crucial role in a potentially post-Google world. However, as search engines become more advanced, SEO will need to adapt to keep up with the changing landscape. SEO practitioners will need to stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive in the digital marketplace and survive in a world with or without the big G.

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