Is SEO Still Worth It in 2025?

Is SEO dead in 2025? Or are we just doing it wrong?

In this episode of Marketing Alpha, I’m pulling back the curtain on what’s actually working in SEO today—and what’s a total waste of time. I’ve run SEO campaigns across hundreds of small businesses, and I’ll be honest with you… most people are stuck in 2015.

We’ll dive into:

• Why SEO isn’t what it used to be—and why that’s not a bad thing
• What’s killing your rankings (hint: it's not just the competition)
• What’s still working right now for local and niche businesses
• When you should skip SEO entirely and go paid instead
• How to make SEO part of a real, revenue-generating strategy

If you're tired of SEO hype and want the real, unfiltered truth about what works in 2025, this episode is for you.

👉 Ready to find out if SEO is right for your business? Get a free review at wolfpackadvising.com/proposal

Thank you for listening! We hope you’re taking away some valuable insights to help you dominate your market. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review—it really helps us reach more business owners like you.

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Stay tuned for our next episode, and keep pushing forward with Alpha Marketing!

Transcript

00:00 Welcome back to the Marketing Alpha podcast.
00:19 And in today's podcast, we're talking about something that I think needs to be talked about in our industry and home service industry.
00:24 Especially in 2025. And that's the question we get all the time is, SEO dead? Well, SEO has changed, but it's most certainly not dead.
00:36 So, we're going to break down exactly what's going on with SEO before, and how you really need to navigate the Google search results going forward with your business and some key considerations.
00:48 So, to kind of start, the real thing here is just that the search results have changed dramatically in the last year, two years, three years, especially in the last five years.
01:01 Uhm, the thing is, is it still works, it's just a lot more complicated. There's a lot more moving parts. Uhm, now, if you think, if you think about it, the first thing that changes is is Google AI overviews.
01:15 Those things are taking up more space now, and it's difficult to, like, have traffic go to your blog for an informational, or a, uh, a keyword that's just a question, like, how to cook pasta, right?
01:28 People would normally click on a blog post, and you could show advertisements, or potentially get a conversion, or have somebody sign up with your monthly because they could just read about it.
01:39 Same thing goes about, like, home service-based businesses, like, how do I do my own, uhm, pest control? You know, how does a, how long does a roof last in Florida?
01:49 Different questions, uh, like that, that AI could just answer. So, that's the first part, is we have the AI overviews section.
01:59 The other thing that's a big impact right to search results nowadays is Google Ads seems to be taking up more and more space, and there are other features within search results that are getting added in that push down the regular organic results.
02:14 So, if you were to think about this at the beginning, when you, you know, Google just first came out, it was just a bunch of hyperlinks, right, titles, descriptions, and that's all it was.
02:24 Now, in some searches, you might have, uhm, the sponsored posts, you might have the AI overview, you might have a Google Maps section with some sponsored posts in there, you might have some, like, people also ask section, and then after all of that stuff, after you've scrolled so much, then it actually
02:42 is a regular Google organic results that people talk about when you're trying to rank for SEO purposes. So, So, there's essentially just so much more content and stuff on the search results page that make it more difficult for you to appear at the top, and probably get as many clicks as you were before
02:59 , and not to mention all the changes going on with search results off of Google. So, people are using applications like Chachabitty, uh, they're using applications like Grok, or Perplexity, or Cloud AI, or they're using applications such as DuckDuckGo, um, that are taking a little bit more market share
03:20 from Google than Google would probably care to admit. Now, there's one final thing here which is, overall we're seeing more and more searches around zero-click, meaning people are just not clicking.
03:32 Um, they're getting the information they exactly need from the search, and then they're moving on with- their life, and they're not actually clicking over to your website or wherever- wherever you want to point them whatever page.
03:43 Uh, so, that's obviously really good for consumers. All of this is good for consumers, except for sometimes the ads in a lot of ways.
03:50 But, essentially- Now, this is all really good for consumers. a And, for businesses, it could be a little bit more complicated to navigate.
04:04 So, let's break down what still works, what you still need to be focusing on, and we'll break down at the end why it's still worth it.
04:13 So, the first thing is still just building authority. Authority in your space, authority online, showing that you are a relevant authoritative business for your- you're in.
04:25 Individual niche. Earning backlinks. Earning backlinks still works. Umm, not spammy junk links, right? Umm, I'm talking about, like, real links, real connections with communities and people within your niche.
04:37 Uh, those really work in terms of building your authority online. Technical SEO still matters. Matters. Especially, uh, mobile responsiveness. Especially, Be safe.
04:49 It's speed. Especially, uh, your, um, security certificate, your SSL. Uh, making sure your website secure core web vitals. It was a new algorithm update that happened in 2021, I believe.
05:03 Uh, which has essentially just site speed and site responsiveness. I'm making sure that things aren't moving while loading. Things are loading quickly.
05:15 Um, so those technical SEO stuff still matter as well. The other thing that is becoming more and more prominent is long tail keywords.
05:24 So not trying to rank for, you know, home service provider or Lando, but getting into more niche, uh, keywords or niche search topics and focusing on longer.
05:37 And longer tail informational keywords. And of course, if you're a local business, which majority of the you listening are, um, it's the same stuff of focusing on citations, focusing on reviews, optimizing your Google business profile.
05:54 All of those standard things that you would focus on if you're a local business. So those are all the things that still work.
06:01 Now. Some of the things that I want to highlight don't work anymore or just is not going to be worth your time if you're thinking about getting into SEO.
06:10 And the first one is if you're trying to think that this SEO game is, uh, can be quick, it's not.
06:16 Um, I'm finding that it's becoming like a longer and longer term game. Um, if you want leads fast, if you just want more business.
06:25 Head to the advertising route. That's going to bring in leads. That's going to start, uhm, bringing in business for you or making your brand more predominant very quickly.
06:34 Uh, now if you want to build true authority in business authority, you need to have an SEO strategy. It's just going to take a while.
06:40 Uh, usually when companies sign up with us, we start seeing progress and changes after three months. At six months to a year's when we start seeing the significant progress.
06:49 So if you're not going to be invested for six months or more, don't worry about SEO. And especially if you're like in a business in a situation where you're like, hey, I need leads, I need business.
07:03 You should be focusing on doing other strategies such as advertising or some grassroots marketing tactics. Uh, rather than focusing on expensive search engine optimization.
07:13 Alright, the other things, um, if you're not ready to create content, if you're not ready to try and build local networks and get citations that way, or backlinks that way, if you're not willing to fix your site and focus on conversion rate optimization, then SEO isn't for you either.
07:34 You need to be able to invest in a really solid of design so that way you have solid conversion rates on page.
07:41 For example, if you're an e-commerce store and you don't have, like, good product reviews, good product images, things aren't formatted aesthetically nice, right?
07:51 Compared to your competitors and your particular niche, you're gonna be going up against some very tough competition, especially in e-commerce world.
07:59 If your site isn't designed nicely and doesn't have- a good conversion rate optimization. The same thing goes for home service providers is check out your competition and compare your site against letters to see how your conversion rate or design might stack up.
08:13 If you're not willing to invest in the web design, don't invest in the SEO. The SEO is not gonna fix a site that's poorly designed.
08:23 Now, the last point that I'll make here- is just- if your industry is fairly overly saturated, um, and your business has no unique angle or no unique value that you can show, you'll probably- you're probably just gonna spend a ton of time and effort into SEO with not really getting what you sought out
08:43 for. Uh, so make sure that when you're going into an SEO strategy, you're embedding your own individual- Brand strategy and marketing strategy and brand positioning and brand voice, all of those things matter in terms of your SEO strategy.
08:57 And if you're like, hey, I have no idea what that means. Um, think about it, do some searches about it.
09:03 Um, I'm sure we have tons of blogs on our website so you can read up on brand positioning, brand voice, all those things that are kind of like- at the beginning of your business, the beginning stages that you should be thinking- about, but maybe a lot of small business owners don't think about when they
09:18 first start the business. They kind of just say, hey, I'm gonna start a home service business or I'm gonna start a cafe.
09:23 I'm gonna start this particular business without thinking about the current market and the current positioning and where they could position themselves as a unique value or niche.
09:33 Alright, let's head over to the next section which is talking about when SEO- See ya. This is absolutely worth it.
09:40 So, on the contrary, total opposite, when you're in a niche with a clear search demand, you know that SEO is a hundred percent worth it.
09:50 Easy way to find out this is just start googling for your particular niche. If you start googling for your particular niche and there's tons of search results, there's other competitors in there, or you could do things like looking on semor- I'm right.
10:02 You can do things if you're running Google ads. Google ad, Google ads has its keyword planner within there so you can look at search volumes for keywords relevant to your particular business.
10:11 If you know that you're playing the long game and you can afford the monthly payment of SEO and working with a professional agency, then you know SEO is going to be worth it for you.
10:23 Especially if you're focused on long term f-f compounding results rather than, hey, I need a business here within the first three to six months.
10:32 Umm, you want to focus on the long term compound. Especially too, you want to know or you, you shouldn't know SEO is totally worth it.
10:41 When you pair other marketing strategies such as you're pairing it with your advertising strategy, you're pairing it with email, social media, any particular partnerships.
10:50 You're pairing it with content writing, um, you're pairing it with just any other type of marketing strategy. It's going to tenfold because people might hear from you on social media and then do a Google search and then see you again from SEO strategy, which establishes even more trust.
11:07 It is definitely more expensive obviously because you're investing in two different strategies. But the amount of trust that you could build within that is.
11:14 It's a lot more than somebody that just sees you on Google or just sees you on social media. Alright, now the last point I want to make here is when SEO is absolutely worth it is when you want to lower cost per lead over time and probably get people that are going to be more trusting of your business
11:33 . Um, at first, a lot of people, they might click on advertisements or see brands. 3 4 on whatever type of platform, right?
11:41 But those are typically not people that are trusting of your individual brand. But if you can rank high, highly for key terms for your particular industry or niche, then you can essentially lower your cost per lead over time significantly because you're not paying for anything, right?
12:01 You're not paying for the z- expensive keywords. But those leads that are coming in are going to be the most trusting and best leads you've ever had because those are the type of people that are like, hey, I know this people, these, this company is going to be the best because they're ranking at the 
12:17 top of search results. And this way you gotta need to think about when you're looking at SEO is, are you truly the best in your market?
12:24 Are you truly the best in deserve? deserve. The number one position. Because honestly, that's what Google's looking for. As an SEO agency, as a marketing agency, we can do everything we can.
12:35 We can do everything right. But if you do, if you aren't doing your end of the business, you're not going to magically rank number one for every single keyword that you want to rank for.
12:44 It's just not possible. Google doesn't want you to essentially gain the algorithm to show number f-f or one if you're not the best for that particular keyword.
12:54 Alright. SEO in the bigger picture. One of the things that, um, we try to focus on when we're bringing on, um, potential clients or clients in general and talking about them.
13:05 If we want fast results, we run ads. If we want to focus on long term visibility and compounding results, we focus on SEO.
13:14 to you. If we want to focus on retaining and nurturing and upselling and prospecting, we focus on email, marketing automation, SMS, um, even phone calls, general CRM activities.
13:29 SEO is part of that pipeline. SEO plays a part of your whole marketing strategy. So don't think of SEO as a fix.
13:37 I think there's a lot of, a lot of marketing agencies out there and a lot of people that talk about SEO, like it's this golden egg that's going to magically resolve your business and you're going to get tons of leads.
13:47 It doesn't work that way. It's one piece of the puzzle that you should be doing if you can, uh, one, afford it and do it professionally.
13:55 But two, if you're going to stick to it in long term and you're going to do all the other things that matter, as well.
14:02 Alright, time to end with the brutal truth here. SEO, as I've kind of talked about, isn't dead. Lazy SEO, or bad SEO, is dead.
14:13 If you're going to think you're going to try to rank number one, stuff a bunch of keywords, change a bunch of stuff, and magically rank number one, it's not going to work.
14:22 That part of SEO is now dead. It is more about your- entire holistic strategy as a business, and truly becoming the number one for your particular niche, having a unique brand proposition, and showing that through your website to compound it over time, and doing everything right along the way so that
14:42 way you can naturally rank. And when you do naturally rank, I'm telling you it's going to be the best thing for your individual business, because these people are going to know and- and And if you're wondering for your particular- particular business, if S.E.O. is the right move for you, you can simply
15:01 leave a comment on this podcast, reach out to us, I'm happy to take a look at your website, or have some money on our team, take a look at your website.
15:07 Gotta give you advice about what you should be doing, or if it should be a focus for you. There's going to be a lot of small businesses out there listening to this, and we want to be brutally on- honest here, as a marketing agency, to be your partner, and let you understand what marketing strategies 
15:19 are probably going to be best for you. Anyway, until next time, take care.