A few people at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago this week, including some panelists on stage and many influential members of our industry, made it seem like personalization will mean the death of SEO. Aside from the obvious easy jabs from paid search extremists whose model would predict growth as a result of less emphasis on organic search, others seemed to lean a little too far toward fear mongering.

This is an interesting read on the “demise of SEO”, since the announcement by Google that personalized results will now be served to all search users via anonymous cookies (for non-logged in users). This means that Google will use your past search and click-through history to determine the best results to display.

In my opinion, SEO is not dead, but needs to evolve. Instead of just throwing backlink after backlink, we need to use a strategies to increase clickthrough rates, write better and more enticing content and really “earn” that click. If you offer valuable information, the search user will continue clicking through to your site again and again and your site will rise through the organic (and personalized) rankings. A good SEO expert should be ready at all times for such developments.