I disagree. Suppose you're unquestionably the world expert in some niche field, and you write a site with high-quality, timeless content. It would be really infuriating if some SEO knocked you out of the search results with an adfarm full of SEO gibberish. Or to use a common example, suppose you make a no-nonsense site with some nifty, original cooking recipes. You fall out of the search results because you aren't padding your recipes with pages of irrelevant anecdotes and other filler material. How is that "deserved"?
In fact i might google a spesific product, like a Monitor, and the top result will be "but Monitor XYZ on Amazon". When i click on the link, turns out they don't actually sell or stock that product at all!
With that being said, in any marketing tactic, the right way isn't always the best way - however - understanding why some garbage site ranks for your query is incredibly helpful in figuring out how you can improve your content to do the same.
It may be deserved because that's what many people want rather than a plain vanilla list of ingredients and instructions.
With that being said, google can recognize brands, influencers and leaders in a given industry - but if they dont actually explain their content or choose to do it in textbooks rather than online, why do you feel that their overly complicated expert opinion deserves to rank over some new site who tries to approach and explain the topic in a more simple way? Furthermore how can this unquestionable expert prove to a new user on their site they actually are an expert? Who cares if the other academics in a field look to this person as a leader, the general user needs to be convinced in a way that leverages experience, authority and trust.
You have to DESERVE to rank. It has always been that way. Yes there will be people who try and game the system, and that game will work for a set period of time, but not forever. They want to display the best content to the user. Just because someone is an expert does NOT mean they automatically have the best content or explain it in the most user friendly way. This has always been Google's M.O. and will be and is also how it should be.
EDIT: Content farm gibberish can outrank unoptimized better content - because its created specifically to game the system, and often those content farms spend more time building links or promoting the content. The bigger worry here is GPT3 and how that begins to erode the trust of content as a medium over time.
Not new cutting edge ideas that have passed your old ideas by, and Google is doing the world a favour.
A pile of garbage.
Industries that work on a workflow of hunting and fulfilling need SEO. People search for an item or service that they know exists and grab the top result.
Industries that work on a workflow of discoverability and browsing take advantage of social media. You didn't know you wanted that cute dress or household gadget until some listing pushed it into your attention.
1. There will NEVER be a time in which being forced to think about and organize your content to align with customer business objectives will be a bad idea.
2. If you're seeing lower traffic on your site and don't feel like you need to improve the content or do something different, you deserve to be losing that traffic to someone else who does.
3. SEO is not a zero sum game. Just because only one person can take the top spot for a grail keyword, that does not mean longer tailed variants or answer box results are not still valuable at driving tons of relevant traffic.
I'd suggest you take a step back and think more about what users coming to your site, or any site, would need to build trust in a brand instead of telling people to optimize their social media accounts. Followers are a vanity metric. High intent organic traffic is much more effective in the long run at communicating who you are and why someone should trust in your brand.