In October of 2013, the Queen of SEO quit her job.

Jill Whalen, who’d been the voice of reason for (and one of the chief architects of) the entire SEO industry decided she was no longer needed. She posted a final “thank you and goodnight” to her blog, and hasn’t said much about keywords since.

Why leave the industry you built?

Jill put it like this:

“When I first started writing and speaking about SEO back in the 20th century(!), there was no voice of reason in the industry. Everything written about SEO was based on the latest techniques for tricking the search engines into ranking your site above your competitors’. Yet I knew from experience that the real secret to SEO was not about tricks but about making your site the best it could be for your users while keeping the search engines in mind. It was true when I started doing SEO and it’s true now. Doing that always, always, always works to bring more targeted search engine traffic to your website.”

According to Jill, the industry had finally come to realize that there’s only one tried-and-true way to generate qualified search traffic to your site.

Just. Be. Awesome.

Jill’s words have rung truer and truer in the SEO world for years. And now that even Google is taking her advice, it’s time for marketers to finally admit that SEO is dead.

Fear not. This is really good news.

We’ll talk more about why in a series of upcoming blog posts, all about finding success on search engines in a post-keyword world. But for now, download our newest white paper “SEO is Dead.”