Eric Siu and Ryan Law debate whether SEO careers are ending as AI and new search technologies reshape the field. They argue SEOs aren't disappearing but must adapt beyond traditional ranking tactics to survive industry shifts like Panda, Penguin, and ChatGPT.
Is SEO jobs dead?
Yeah. So are SEO jobs dead?
Are SEO jobs dead?
So this is interesting because at the Ahrefs conference, you remember Ryan Law who wrote, he used to be at Animals and now he works for Ahrefs, a great copywriter. Okay. Writes great blog posts. So his talk was actually on, I didn't get to see his talk, but we talked for a little bit the day before, but there is a general fear, like I could sense it in the audience too, on like, what's going to happen with my career? And my talk actually became more inspirational, right? And I was like, guys, like, We as SEOs have taken it on the chin. Panda update, Penguin update, Donkey update, right? Like all these updates, right? Yeah. And so SEO jobs, like we've had to adapt the most. And so in my mind, it's like, I don't think SEO jobs are— I think if you just focus on traditional SEO and you don't adapt at all, like, yeah, it's probably just like how paid media jobs are as they, as we know it are probably dead, right? But my whole communication was like, look at all the things that are happening right now. We talked about search everywhere optimization. ChatGPT just came out with apps, you know, ChatKit, like all these different things, right? So in my mind, we've talked about this, like I'm excited about it. And then people came up to me afterwards like, oh man, that was really inspirational, man. Like I didn't intend it to be that way, but I kind of sensed the fear in the audience like, oh, where do I go with our career? Because that was one of the things that Tim brought up like the day before, like he put it on Twitter. It's like, yeah, like where do we go with all our SEO skills? And I'm like, well, you've learned to adapt and take it on the chin. So like, just keep doing that.
Yeah, you don't really have to do anything. I agree. I don't really see them going anywhere. I think they're still gonna be valuable as long as you adapt, and they have adapted over time, so they should be fine.
