I've known a lot of people who complain about how opaque Google is with SEO. If only Google would reveal the algorithm so that people know what to do. That seems fair to everyone right?
Consider this: what is the goal of a search engine and what is SEO's role in achieving that goal?
When we go to a search engine, we generally want to look something up. Our goal is to find information that is relevant to us. Rarely do we want to see ads or marketing gimmicks. If Google is not a monopoly (or is not acting like a monopoly), then Google's goal is to make sure we have the best information available to us. Google may make money from advertising, but they can only do so if people continue to use Google and people will only do so as long as Google provides the best information.
What is SEO's role in that? In reality, nothing. SEO is not something Google had planned on building. SEO exists because no algorithm is perfect. There are going to be factors an algorithm takes into account that are only indicative of returning the best results for a given query. If one knew what those factors were, then you could trick the algorithm into thinking a page full of garbage was actually the best result for a given query.
Those loopholes have always existed and Google has always tried to kill them. The early algorithm focused a lot on backlinks. That makes sense. If people are linking a given page, that page must have useful information on it.
The problem is that links are only a useful indicator if created in good faith. If I link a web page because I legitimately found it useful, then that link is a good indicator of the web page's quality. However, if I created 1000 websites and just filled them with links to each other, then I'm attempting to trick the algorithm into showing my content more prominently. This was an early problem in Google's history and they understandably shut it down by adjusting the algorithm.
Modern SEO isn't that different. The tactics have changed because Google has shut down a lot of attempts to manipulate their algorithm in bad faith and we've normalized the rest as "SEO". The intent however is the same: artificially increase the rankings of a web page without necessarily increasing the quality of the content. The only difference between modern SEO and earlier tactics is that somehow, modern SEO attempts are regarded as more acceptable despite having the same intent. Any attempt to kill SEO today causes an uproar that Google has to consider to manage the monopoly narrative.
Consider some of the SEO tactics used today. Programmatic SEO is the act of creating web pages automatically that contain common keywords. Example: if you run a travel service, you can automatically generate web pages for destinations (e.g. Aruba) or routes (e.g. NYC to Hawaii). The content isn't actually written by a human with unique and insightful content. A template (or now generative AI) is used to mostly dump keywords on a page so that Google will rank it higher.
Other tactics involve trading backlinks, figuring out a good domain name, optimizing between using a subdomain or not, researching competitor's keywords, and the list goes on. Does any of that serve the goal of getting people the information they are looking for? Wouldn't it be better if you could just focus on writing good content?
I think it is a good thing for Google to try to kill SEO. I hope they continue the efforts. If Google was acting like a monopoly, they'd stop trying to kill SEO. Instead of selling ads, they'd start selling points in the ranking. It's a lot harder for us to calculate ROI with points compared to ads. That means we have to spend more money to see if the spend is worthwhile or not. Google would probably make a lot more revenue from that uncertainty. More importantly, it would be a lot harder for us to find what we needed. Instead of a handful of ad results followed by a list of organic results, every result would effectively be an ad.
That all being said, do I ignore SEO? Absolutely not. Here's a link to shamelessly promote the outsourced accounting firm I'm a partner in. Running a business or building a product is hard enough without handicapping yourself by not doing something everyone else considers acceptable. I would however prefer to focus on building the business by improving our service rather than splitting focus to also do some SEO. While I doubt it'll ever happen, I do hope Google kills SEO one day.