SEO is still a very powerful digital marketing strategy. SEO will continue to change as Google updates its algorithm, but that's to be expected. If you're considering SEO for your website, now is a good time to start, 6 days ago. Content optimization for search engines is very much alive.
Old-school methods have disappeared, but contemporary methods that focus on the way search engines “judge content today are very much alive. Old practices will no longer work and, instead, could lead to huge penalties. In this scenario, keeping up to date on all updates to Google's search algorithm is the only way forward. More recently, SEO Book shared an infographic with several marketers who claim that SEO is dead for one reason or another and why they are wrong.
Google eventually made it more difficult or impossible to do things like Black Hat SEO (cover-up, landing pages), and Google's efforts in turn made SEO more difficult, as they obfuscated the way things work. The old SEO techniques will no longer work, so as long as you move with the times and adapt your SEO strategy, it will continue to be one of the most effective long-term marketing tools out there. Optimizing your website for SEO means you're more likely to generate organic traffic, which will turn into customers buying your product or service. When SEO began, it was all about excessive and irrelevant link building, keyword stuffing, invisible or hidden texts, and other similar activities, which were known as Black Hat SEO.
My job as an SEO is to make my client remarkable because I've understood since I started doing SEO in 2000 that's what Google is looking for. So what's really going on with SEO? Those who are still in the SEO business know that, in fact, it is changing rapidly.