is boosting seo on google still worth the effort?

for most businesses yes, but the easy version is gone. clicks on simple informational queries have dropped with ai overviews answering them on the page, so ranking a generic how-to blog isn't worth what it was. what still pays is the commercial stuff - service pages, product pages, local searches, comparisons - and content only you can write because you actually do the work. if your plan was churning out definitions, i'd rethink it.