Is SEO Dead in 2025?

Is SEO Dead in 2025?

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Is SEO Dead 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?

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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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How Generative AI Is Impacting SEO in 2024

How Generative AI Is Impacting SEO in 2024

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How Generative AI Is Impacting SEO in 2024

You may have noticed that when you search for something on Google, you get a response from generative AI at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). This is Google Search Generative Experience, or Google SGE, and it’s been gradually changing the landscape of the SERP and thus, of SEO, as it is rolled out across more and more search queries. But what, exactly, does this mean for SEO?

How Does Google Search Generative Experience Affect the Search Engine Results Page?

The primary effect is that the number 1 search result, a highly prized ranking, is much further down on the SERP. The top of the screen is taken up by sponsored ads, generative AI, and YouTube videos. Users have to scroll down to see even the first result on many SERPs, let alone those lower ranked. This makes that top spot much less valuable because generative AI may have already answered the user’s question, reducing the likelihood that they will scroll down to see the web pages that have ranked for that query.

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What Can We Do To Compete With Generative AI?

In many ways, we can’t compete with generative AI. However, that doesn’t mean that we’re out of the SEO game. Even as SEO is changing to reflect the presence of generative AI, there are strategies we can focus on to help users find our content.

1. Improve Your Local SEO

Local SEO is going to be increasingly important as generative AI takes over more of the regular SERPs. If a user searches for a keyword in a specific location (for example, “Detroit coffee shop” or “Mexican restaurant near me”), then Google provides a Google map result with the Google Business Profile entries for local businesses that fit the search criteria. If you have a physical location for your business, then filling out this profile in full can help people to find you.

2. Get Into the YouTube Game

YouTube is a search engine in its own right and many people are turning to videos over written content. This presents an opportunity for ranking within YouTube as well as ranking at the top of the Google SERP, which does, depending on the query, include relevant YouTube videos in the generative AI section of the SERP. This represents an opportunity to appear at the top of the SERP, above the top search result in addition to within YouTube’s own search algorithm, providing two places to rank with one video.

3. Focus on Expertise and Experience

Google has long recommended following the EEAT (formerly EAT) guidelines to produce high-quality content: expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. Generative AI may be useful for many things, but it cannot replicate human experience. Focusing on your expertise and experience within your field can provide insights that no generative AI can offer. This type of content could attract users who are looking for something more than the more generic responses that AI could provide.

4. Keep Humans Involved

Perhaps the most important thing is to remember that, despite the involvement of AI, Google’s aim is predominantly to connect people with the best possible answers. AI cannot understand people the way people do, so people should therefore be involved in every step of your content creation process, even if you use generative AI yourself. This is because AI can make errors or may misunderstand human emotions and experiences. Having everything at a minimum reviewed by a human maintains a personal touch and increases accuracy. On top of that, it provides something that AI can’t, which is what can compete with AI online.

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How Can You Use AI To Produce High-Quality Written Content?

How Can You Use AI To Produce High-Quality Written Content?

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How Can You Use AI To Produce High-Quality Written Content

Generative AI like ChatGPT has been controversial since its release in 2022. Some have wholeheartedly embraced the new technology, while others were resistant to its adoption, concerned about what such technology might mean for their industries. And while nothing can replace human experience, creativity, insight, and strategy, we shouldn’t ignore tools that can help us write better.

So how can writers use generative AI as a tool?

#1: Don’t Let AI Be the Writer

The most important thing is for the writer to still be a person. Replacing writers with generative AI will remove that human creativity and insight from content. Plus, it could also harm SEO strategies; Google’s latest core update (the March 2024 one that took a whopping 45 days to completely roll out) included an improved spam filter intended to eliminate the usage of AI to mass-produce content in order to manipulate search engines. However, if your goal is to use AI in order to create the best possible content for your audience, then you can still use the tool; Google has its own AI tools and isn’t looking to ban its usage altogether.

#2: Reduce Time Spent on Research

Writers may have to be experts in a lot of different topics; this means a lot of research that can take a long time. It might even take longer than the writing itself! Depending on the topic, though, AI can help with the research process and make it go a bit faster. ChatGPT shouldn’t be where you do your research because AI can hallucinate, provide inaccurate information, and may not have access to the latest data. But in subjects where the research is particularly complex, AI can help to simplify difficult subjects more quickly.

#3: Create a Content Strategy

Another way AI can be used as a writing tool is to generate ideas for content. For example, if you’re planning a blog, you can ask ChatGPT to suggest topics to you. Not all of them will be ones you’ll want to use because you know your audience better than AI does, but AI can provide a list of possibilities that you can choose from, which is faster than brainstorming from scratch.

#4: Produce an Outline

Similarly, you can ask ChatGPT or another generative AI program to produce an outline on a specific topic for you. This can provide you with ideas for what you should discuss in your writing. Of course, you should only use what actually works for your content but using AI for this can help to reduce the planning time for your content.

#5: Clean Up Your Writing

Another option for AI usage is to ask it to improve your content after it’s written. Grammarly and other spell checkers typically find typos and grammar and spelling errors, but generative AI can take that a step further. For example, if you know that you tend to be wordy in your writing, you can ask ChatGPT for suggestions on how to make a paragraph more concise.

#6: Keep Your Audience in Mind

No matter how you use AI, make sure to keep your audience in mind. Google’s updates are all to improve their search results for users. If your end goal is to produce the highest possible quality content for your audience and everything you do is towards that goal, then your content will more likely be in keeping with Google’s standards than if you’re doing it to game the algorithm and manipulate your way into higher rankings.

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How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

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How Has the Google March 2024 Core Update Impacted the SEO Landscape?

Google began to roll out a new core update in March of 2024. Usually, it only takes a week or so for a new update to completely roll out. This update, however, was much more complex and took a total of 45 days to complete. What does that mean for the SEO landscape?

What Did the March 2024 Core Update Do?

The March 2024 Core Update was so complex because it addressed multiple core Google systems. However, it had one primary focus: spam reduction. From the onset, Google’s goal has been to provide users with the most useful and high-quality content when they search. Most, if not all of their core updates have been made with this goal in mind.

This latest update is no different. This update’s aim is to reduce or eliminate the amount of spam, or content produced exclusively to attract clicks rather than actually be useful to users, that searchers see. It’s also to reward those who publish high-quality content aimed at users, not search engines, with higher rankings over those who do not.

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What Kinds of Spam Does the Google March 2024 Core Update Address?

According to Google, there are three primary types of spam that this new core update affects:

Expired Domain Abuse

This type of spam involves purchasing an expired domain name and then using it to produce content that has little value to users, thereby attempting to manipulate search rankings.

Scaled Content Abuse

Scaled content abuse involves producing many pages exclusively for the purpose of manipulating the rankings. In many cases, scaled content abuse involves generative AI being used to quickly produce many pages.

Site Reputation Abuse

Site reputation abuse occurs when a site publishes third-party content that doesn’t have close oversight by the site owner and is published with the intention of manipulating search rankings.

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What Changes Should You Make Because of the March 2024 Core Update?

If you’re producing high-quality content with users as your target audience, then no changes are needed. This update targeted content that was aimed at manipulating search engines. If you have experienced a drop in rankings, consider examining your content and making updates where needed to improve its usefulness and quality. Keep in mind the four principles of EEAT:

  • Expertise
  • Experience
  • Authority
  • Trustworthiness

Ensuring that all of your content meets those criteria is the best thing you can do to not only protect yourself from this particular core update but also to future-proof your content from future core updates.

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Can You Still Use AI To Produce Content After the March 2024 Core Update?

The short answer is that it depends on how you were using AI to produce content. If the purpose of using AI was to mass-generate content to manipulate the search engines rather than to produce high-quality content, then that will most likely negatively affect your rankings. If you were instead using AI as a tool to enhance your content, then you might be safe. Our recommendation is to always have a human writer produce your content, whether AI is involved or not, so that there’s expert human oversight over any content that is produced. You don’t necessarily have to avoid using AI altogether, but it should be a helpful writing aid, not the writer.

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Using AI in SEO Optimization

Using AI in SEO Optimization

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Generative AI is a versatile tool that has a wide range of applications across the entire Internet marketing industry. Many have used AI tools in content creation and marketing. But can AI be used to help with SEO optimization? The short answer is yes, but with the caveat that any usage of AI ought to be checked by a human expert.

Can You Use AI for Keyword Research?

To streamline the keyword research process, you can ask ChatGPT or another AI program to search for keyword suggestions and trends. In this case, your AI program may not have access to the latest data and might not be providing recommendations based on the latest SEO landscape. Additionally, even if you ask the AI to explain why it recommends each keyword, you won’t necessarily be able to see the data behind the recommendation. This means that you don’t have a good way to judge the search volume for each keyword recommendation. Plus, you know your own industry much better than any AI would.

Tip: Ask for Long-Tail Keyword Suggestions

Don’t replace Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner with ChatGPT. Instead, ask your generative AI of choice to suggest long-tail keywords based on your top keywords from your actual keyword research. Another way to use AI with keywords is to ask it to make suggestions for how to incorporate certain keywords into a piece of content. Keep in mind that you’ll want to review anything provided by the AI.

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Can You Use AI for Content Creation?

AI can be an excellent tool for writers because it can proofread and make suggestions or even provide inspiration for content. We don’t recommend using AI as the writer without a human to review it. This is because AI can provide incorrect information and doesn’t know your audience and your clients like you do. Additionally, generative AI works by predicting what word should come next given the available context. It doesn’t work by understanding what people will want to read.

Tip: Avoid Using AI as Your Writer

Use ChatGPT or other AI to improve writing or to make the writing process faster. Using ChatGPT to write the entire content for you could end up triggering Google’s anti-spam policies. Google doesn’t punish AI-written content just for being AI-written, but it could be flagged as spam. Additionally, readers may be able to tell that it was AI-written and click away. Either could reduce organic traffic to your website. Instead, a human writer can use ChatGPT to write the first draft, provide feedback, or reduce the amount of time spent on research.

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Can You Use AI for Research?

When it comes to research, you can use AI to significantly shorten the time spent. You can simply ask ChatGPT a question and it’ll provide everything you need to know about it. However, it’s important to remember that you should still double-check your research yourself. AI can “hallucinate,” which means that it can provide wrong information, believing it to be correct. Additionally, some AI programs may not have access to the most recent data and could therefore be providing outdated research.

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