How Is AI Changing the Way People Search? (And What Does That Mean for Your SEO Strategy?)

How Is AI Changing the Way People Search? (And What Does That Mean for Your SEO Strategy?)

Aug 26, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
AI has played a huge role in Google’s search engine for decades. It’s what powers the search algorithm and how it connects users to the best results for their search. What’s new is the more public-facing generative AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, Google’s AI Mode, and more. Many of these AI platforms can perform Google searches, and Google has incorporated AI directly into its search engine results page (SERP). But is this changing how people search? And if so, what does that mean for your SEO strategy?

How Is AI Affecting Keywords?

The biggest effect that AI has had on how people search is in the keywords they’re using. Instead of searching for a single word or a short phrase, people tend to treat AI as if it’s another person. They’ll ask full questions, such as “Where is the best coffee shop in Chicago?” instead of “Chicago coffee.” This does mean that keyword strategy can’t just look at words; it needs to involve figuring out user intent and what long-tail keywords would best suit that intent.

What Are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords are longer phrases or even full sentences that are more specific to a user’s search intent. Technically, a longer statement in the style of a shorter keyword may count as a long-tail keyword, but AI’s influence means that most user searches are in the form of a question. This isn’t actually a new thing–long-tail keywords, especially those in question form, have been a part of SEO strategies since people started searching with Siri and Alexa and other voice systems, because they talk to those like they’re people, too. ChatGPT and Gemini are just the first AI systems where you can type the conversation instead of speaking it.

What Is Actually Changing in User Search Behavior?

Even though long-tail keywords have been around for a while, thanks to voice searching, generative AI has still changed the way people have engaged with those keywords. Making a search with Alexa typically involves asking just one question at a time. Searching via ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode actually allows for follow-up questions. Searching with generative AI is part of a conversation, with back-and-forth between the user and the AI platform. This means that your SEO strategy needs to involve not only thinking about what questions users may be asking but also what follow-up questions they may have.

How Can You Optimize for Long-Tail Keywords?

To make sure your SEO strategy takes into account how search behaviors are changing thanks to AI, you can do the following:

Optimize for Questions

Assume that users will be asking questions of AI engines. It’s important to know exactly what questions people are asking, so looking at the “People also ask” section on Google’s SERP is a good free way of incorporating questions into your keyword research. There are paid tools, like AnswerThePublic or AlsoAsked, that can help as well.

Don’t Ditch Core Keywords

Just because users are searching in a longer question format doesn’t mean you should abandon shorter core keywords altogether. These traditional keywords can help Google to classify your content and determine its relevance, authority, and more. They can still have an impact on your rankings, because Google expects that content about a certain topic will include certain keywords.

Structure Your Content for Layered Searching

Your content should be structured so that it’s layered with possible search questions. A table of contents with jump links can help users to more easily do deeper dives once they’re on your page. But each header is an opportunity for a keyword, and smaller headers can be opportunities for the follow-up questions that are becoming more common.

Look for Ultra-Specific Queries in Search Console

When you’re doing keyword research, keep an eye out for ultra-specific, or even downright weird, questions. Don’t treat these as outliers to be ignored; think of them as opportunities for reaching more of your audience with content that they’re looking for.

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How Long Does SEO Take To Work?

How Long Does SEO Take To Work?

Jul 25, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How Long Does SEO Take To Work
SEO can be a very rewarding marketing strategy, but it’s the one that can take longer to show results. But how long can it take for your SEO strategy to start producing that return on investment? The short answer is that it depends. There are a lot of factors involved, from what your SEO strategy involves to your industry to Google’s latest algorithm update.

Keep reading to learn what can affect timelines and how to know if you’re on the right track with your SEO strategy.

Why Is SEO a Long-Term Strategy?

While paid ads can generate immediate results, SEO does not. This is because SEO is more of a long-term trust-building exercise. It takes time for Google to recognize your website as a reliable source of information about your chosen keywords. Google doesn’t just look for technical soundness or content relevance; it also looks for things like trustworthiness and authority, both of which are built up over time, as well as consistency over time. 

By nature, SEO has to work over a longer period of time because it takes time to build trust with users, which translates into trust with Google.

What Is a Typical SEO Timeline?

While no SEO timeline is exactly the same, and a lot of factors could influence the actual amount of time it takes for an SEO strategy to start producing results, it’s possible to start seeing some early results in 3-6 months from when you implement the strategy. Most likely, you may start seeing real results between months 6 and 12. However, be aware that this is only a general estimate, and the actual timeline could be different. Most SEO vendors who promise results on a strict timeline may be using black hat SEO techniques that could backfire in the long run for shorter-term gains.

What Factors Impact the SEO Timeline?

How long it can take for your SEO strategy to produce results can depend on a range of factors, including:

The Age of Your Website

Newer websites have farther to go to establish trust and authority. If your site and domain have been in use for longer, you may have a slight time advantage because if you have established traffic and a foundation in technical SEO on your site, you may be able to gain momentum more quickly.

The Quality of Your SEO Strategy

How good your SEO strategy is also plays a major role in your results. Too small a budget or inconsistent efforts can make it take longer to see any return on your investment. If you aren’t including all possible SEO techniques (technical SEO, regular content creation, keyword research, ongoing link-building), then your SEO strategy just won’t be as effective as if you’d budgeted for all of these efforts. SEO also builds on itself over time, so pausing your SEO initiatives can derail the progress you’ve made.

The Competitiveness of Your Keywords

What this boils down to is that how quickly you can see results may depend on your industry. If you’re trying to rank for specific keywords that are highly competitive, then it may take longer. This is because a lot of others are targeting those same keywords and have had much longer to build trustworthiness for those keywords. You may have quicker success by targeting long-tail keywords, more niche keywords with less competition, or local SEO.

Google’s Algorithm Update

Lately, it seems like Google is constantly updating its algorithm. This can disrupt the rankings, either positively or negatively, which could either set back your timeline or push it forward, depending on how the update affected you. Google tends to make updates with the purpose of improving the algorithm’s ability to deliver the highest-quality results to searchers. This means that focusing on high-quality, trustworthy content that showcases your expertise and experience can help to protect your site from being negatively impacted by a Google update.

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Which UX Signals Is Google Using in 2025?

Which UX Signals Is Google Using in 2025?

Apr 21, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Which UX Signals Is Google Using in 2025?

Back in the dark ages of the Internet, when practices like keyword stuffing and spammy backlinks were rewarded with top search rankings, user experience was a secondary concern, mainly because those who focused on it ended up lower down on the SERPs. However, UX is now a core ranking factor, and those who don’t pay attention to it are likely to miss out. Google has always tried to prioritize user experience (thus the numerous core updates), but how its algorithm measures UX has changed over time.

User experience may be one of the most important factors in search rankings, other than keywords. If users aren’t having a good experience on your site, they won’t stay, and your search rankings will suffer because of it.

How Does Google Measure User Experience?

Google is a search engine that uses an algorithm to match users with content based on search terms. How can it tell whether someone is having a good experience on a website or not? And while Google can’t really tell how you’re feeling, there are some signals that it can measure. For example, if a website isn’t loading quickly enough, it’s not what you’re looking for, or it’s got loud autoplaying ads that you can’t pause, you aren’t likely to stay on that website. Google can measure how long users stay on a site before returning to the SERP–the dwell time–and can interpret a very short dwell time as an indicator that it wasn’t the right fit, while a longer dwell time would be a signal of a better user experience.

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The following are some of the UX signals that Google typically considers when adjusting SERP rankings:

  • Dwell time
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Pogo-sticking
  • Load speed
  • Responsive design
  • Clickable elements aren’t too close to each other
  • Readable text and font sizes
  • Accessible color contrast
  • Semantic HTML
  • Screen reader support
  • No intrusive pop-ups
  • No autoplaying videos
  • Logical site hierarchy
  • Breadcrumb navigation
  • Anchor text
  • Scannable content
  • And more

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What’s New in UX Signals?

The above UX signals are all things that Google has been measuring for years. In 2025, these are still important signals because the information they provide has continued to be useful in indicating user experience. However, that doesn’t mean that Google isn’t continually looking at what works and making changes as needed. A new UX signal that Google has begun monitoring is Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

What Is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint is a metric that measures web performance. First introduced in a Google core update in early 2024, it replaced First Input Delay (FID) because it was considered to be a more accurate indicator of user experience. INP measures the time in between a user’s interactions with the website (be it clicking, tapping, typing, or something else) and the time the next frame is painted on the screen. What this boils down to is that INP measures how long it takes for a website to respond to a user’s actions.

What Is the Difference Between INP and FID?

FID, or First Input Delay, measured much the same thing, except that it measured only the very first interaction. INP takes that many steps further and continually monitors the website’s response time after a user interaction. It’s more accurate than FID because it paints a bigger picture. FID might miss later delays beyond the first one.

Why Is INP So Important?

INP is an excellent indicator of user experience because, simply put, the longer a website takes to load, the more likely a user is to leave unless they really, really want to be on that site. INP is an indicator of website loading speed and responsiveness (200 milliseconds or less is considered good), and the faster a site can load after a user interaction, the better that user’s experience with the site.

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Why Keyword Research Is the Foundation of Great Content

Why Keyword Research Is the Foundation of Great Content

Mar 21, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
woman researching on laptop

While it may seem like online marketing and SEO are constantly changing, some things have stayed pretty much the same since the beginning. Keyword research, and how important it is to creating great content and making sure that that content gets found online, is one of those things. No matter what your goal is, whether it’s to drive traffic to your website or to convert visitors into customers, keyword research lays the groundwork for achieving it.

What Is Keyword Research?

While at its heart, keyword research is simply the process of identifying which words and phrases people are using when searching for information online, it’s also much more than that. It’s through keyword research that you learn what your customers are thinking, how they’re feeling, and their intent when they search. Through keyword research, you can learn what your audience and customers actually want, so you don’t have to guess when it comes to planning your content.

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Keyword Research Is More Than Just Keywords

Modern keyword research isn’t stuffing your content with as many keywords as you can. In fact, that’s a good way to run afoul of Google’s algorithm and earn a drop in the SERP rankings. What keyword research is instead is a blueprint. It’s the foundation that you’ll use to build your content strategy. Keywords are important, but unless you’re using them strategically, you may end up with content that just doesn’t land quite right with your audience.

How Does Keyword Research Guide Content Creation?

There are a number of ways in which keyword research should guide your content creation strategy:

1. Topic Selection

You shouldn’t choose which topics to write about in a vacuum. Keyword research lets you know what people are searching for. You can see the search volume for each keyword or key phrase that is relevant to your industry and find the sweet spot of popular but not so popular that your content would be drowned out in a sea of everyone else writing about the same thing.

2. Content Structure

Once you know what you’re writing about, your keyword research will go a step further and can help you plan out the structure of your content. For example, the title, headings, sub-headings, and more. Each sub-section on a webpage has a chance of ranking individually on Google, so it’s important to pay attention to these, too.

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3. Discoverability

Google can’t match searchers with your content if there’s nothing linking the two together. That’s where keywords come in. A user searches for a particular keyword or phrase, and because that word or phrase is included in your content (especially if it’s in the title or a header), Google knows to pair users with your content. Without keywords, your content just isn’t as discoverable.

4. Low-Competition Keywords

Keyword research also helps you to identify gaps in your competitors’ content. Look for high search volume but low competition keywords–these are the ones that people are looking for but no one else is really writing about yet. That’s a gap you can take advantage of so that Google can send those users your way.

5. Content ROI

Without doing keyword research ahead of time, you may end up with a lot of content that just doesn’t perform very well. That’s because it was created based on guesswork. With keyword research, however, you can take the guesswork out of it and make each webpage more valuable because you already know people are searching for content like it.

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How SEO Has Changed in 2025

How SEO Has Changed in 2025

Feb 7, 2025

Reading Time: 3 minutes
How SEO Has Changed in 2025

We’ve been hearing a lot of digital marketers say that SEO is dead. However, this is far from true. These reports of SEO being dead or otherwise useless in 2025 may be a reaction to how the SEO landscape has changed with generative AI. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead, though. Far from it, in fact! It’s just different than it used to be, and that’s okay. SEO has been changing for decades in reaction to Google updates and other factors that have impacted the SEO landscape. SEO will evolve again to meet new needs.

Why Are People Saying SEO Is Dead?

Those who say that SEO is “dead” do so for the following reasons:

  1. Google’s Helpful Content updates and AI-driven ranking systems reduce the effectiveness of certain SEO tactics.
  2. AI-generated search results take up a large portion of the top of the SERP, pushing traditional website results further down the page.
  3. Zero-click search results from the Featured Snippet, local pack, knowledge panels, and Google’s Search Generative Experience mean that users don’t have to click away from the SERP to get their questions answered.
  4. Ads and paid promotions also take up much of the SERP, pushing organic results further down the page and making organic SEO more competitive.

 

 

 

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Why SEO Is Still Alive in 2025

Despite all of these changes, SEO is still alive and well and as essential as it was before for getting found online. It’s just that it’s different from how it was at the beginning. But that’s a process that has been in progress for a long time, ever since Google’s first major update, the Panda Update. Before that, SEO was kind of a Dark Age of black hat SEO techniques that let people game search engines and spam them with low-quality content, edging out the actual good content that people were looking for.

What Doesn’t Work Anymore in 2025?

A lot of what doesn’t work anymore is SEO techniques that look to game the system, just like the black hat SEO of old. While these techniques aren’t as egregious as they used to be, thanks to Google’s many core updates since then, Google has been gradually pushing for the SEO techniques that are more focused on quality content and user experience than anything else.

What SEO Techniques Should You Use in 2025?

Because of Google’s emphasis on higher quality content and also the increased presence of AI and ads, the best approach to SEO in 2025 is twofold: focus on quality content and focus on what can rank at the top of the SERP.

 

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EEAT

High quality content focuses on experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Aiming for these four qualities will ensure that your content is consistently able to rank well on SERPs. Even though the top spot might be a bit farther down the page than it used to be, it’s still worth trying to rank for because not every SERP has such a big AI section. Even if the SERP does, there are still users who look for actual sites rather than just trusting the AI to be correct.

The main thing, however, is to focus on the type of content that AI can’t provide. That’s where your own lived human experiences come into play.

Featured Snippets and Videos

Another option is ranking at the top of the SERP within the generative AI section. While much of what ends up here is paid ads, there are still featured snippets and videos that are placed right at the top of the page. Creating a YouTube video strategy can help you to rank well on both Google and on YouTube, which is a search engine itself. To try to rank as the featured snippet, you can use long-tail keywords to answer questions directly. This means that sections within a page can rank rather than just a page by itself.

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Is Answer Engine Optimization the Future of SEO?

Is Answer Engine Optimization the Future of SEO?

Jan 8, 2025

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Is Answer Engine Optimization the Future of SEO

By now you’ll have noticed the generative AI section that appears at the top of most Google SERPs. This generative AI answer has been driving search results further and further down the SERP, meaning that the top search result doesn’t mean quite as much as it used to. This doesn’t mean that your SEO efforts are useless, however. But we now have a name for the strategy of optimizing specifically for generative AI: answer engine optimization (AEO).

What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing digital content so that it provides quick, concise, and accurate answers to user queries—often in the form of featured snippets, knowledge panels, or other instantly visible answers on search results pages. While traditional search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on ranking as high as possible for relevant keywords, AEO goes one step further by tailoring content to directly answer the specific questions users are asking.

What Is the Difference Between AEO and SEO?

AEO is a specific strategy that falls under the umbrella of SEO. SEO seeks to optimize for all parts of the search engine through a variety of strategies, including link-building and keyword research.  AEO, on the other hand, is more focused on answering specific user queries. Although the presence of AI is relatively new, the core concept of AEO isn’t actually new. It’s very similar to strategies for the featured snippet or for voice search.

What Are Key AEO Strategies?

Fortunately, the core strategies for AEO aren’t that different from what you should already have been doing. The following are things you can do specifically for AEO but also to maintain a good SEO strategy overall.

Long-Tail Keywords

Focusing on long-tail keywords has already been a strategy for voice-activated devices and apps like Siri and Alexa. People tend to ask questions like they’re talking to another person when they use a voice search rather than typing a few keywords into the search engine. Generative AI is no different. People chat with it like it’s a person, so the same strategy of optimizing for long-tail keywords can apply here, too.

Leverage FAQs

FAQs are an example of this strategy in action. There’s one question highlighted and answered concisely. This is the type of answer that can be featured in the generative AI section because it’s structured as a quick answer. You can use bullet points, clear headings (that are long-tail keywords) and a concise answer directly beneath the heading that is either the entire answer or summarizes longer-form content below.

EEAT

Google has long stated that high-quality content is what the company wants to deliver to its searchers. Generative AI hasn’t changed that. In fact, high quality content across the board can increase your chances of getting the featured snippet because you’ve established your site’s trustworthiness and authority in the subject. It’s a good idea to continue to produce the best possible content you can and even to go through older content to make sure that it’s still accurate and up-to-date.

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