Your description of the state of SEO right now.

Question

Joshua Eberly · Accepted Answer

Local SEO feels tricky right now, but there's real opportunity in it. We've used tools like Google Business Profile and structured data to get brick-and-mortar stores seen much faster than you'd think. If you're juggling paid and organic, you have to watch your numbers closely. The game changes every time Google updates its algorithm, but your results hold steady if you adapt quickly.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email

Tyler Henn · Answer

SEO right now is all about proving you're real.

Google has spent the last two years getting better at one thing. Figuring out which businesses actually exist and which ones are just websites. That changes everything.

I come from roofing sales. I've sat across the table from contractors who got burned by agencies promising them page one rankings. The problem was always the same. Those agencies were chasing tricks instead of building something real.

What works now is what I call entity alignment. Every signal about your business needs to line up. Your Google Business Profile, your website, your citations, your content. They all need to tell the same clear story about who you are, what you do, and where you do it.

I run a local SEO agency for contractors and home service businesses. I've seen a deck builder hit number one on Google Maps in three weeks. Not because he had hundreds of reviews or a pile of backlinks. Because his information was clean, consistent, and aligned everywhere Google looked.

That's the shift. Google doesn't care about tricks anymore. It cares about trust. And trust comes from clarity.
AI is changing search too. But AI still pulls from the same signals. If your business entity is well-defined and easy to verify, you show up in traditional results and AI answers.

SEO in 2025 is simple. Stop trying to outsmart the algorithm. Just be the clearest, most credible version of your business online.

Georgi Todorov · Answer

SEO right now is in a transition phase, not a collapse like some headlines suggest. The mechanics are changing, but the fundamentals are holding. Search engines are getting better at evaluating real usefulness rather than surface-level optimization, which is forcing the industry to grow up.

What feels different today is that shortcuts are expiring faster. Thin content, manufactured authority, and templated link tactics still exist, but they decay quickly. What's working is genuine expertise, strong brand signals, and distribution beyond Google. SEO is no longer just about ranking pages, it's about earning trust across the web and letting search visibility follow.

AI has accelerated content production, but it's also raised the bar. When everyone can publish at scale, originality, firsthand experience, and credibility become the real ranking factors. The winners in SEO right now are the companies investing in brand, PR, and content that can't be easily replicated, not those chasing algorithm loopholes.

Matthew Abaoluwase · Answer

SEO has shifted from a "game of keywords" to a "game of citations." The landscape is currently dominated by Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), which is the practice of optimizing content not just for seaech engines' links, but for AI summaries like Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT.

Before now, the primary goal was to rank Number 1 for keywords. That is different now: The goal is to earn AI Citations & Topical Authority.

The Content Strategy	was high-volume blogging. But you have to have persona-driven niche contents, writing for a specific, living person with a very specific problem.

Few years back. the Key Performance Indicator (that is, a measurable value that shows how effectively you (or a business) are achieving a specific goal) was Organic Traffic and/or Clicks. Now the KPIs are Brand Visibility / AI Mentions

Jason Bland · Answer

SEO is more chaotic and opportunity rich than I've ever seen it.

Google is clearly struggling. The results are noisier, AI overviews are inconsistent, and their spam filters keep missing what users spot instantly. But that volatility is exactly where the leverage is for serious brands and law firms that are willing to build something real instead of chasing shortcuts.

The old playbook of "publish three blogs a week and buy some links" is dead. What wins now is depth, distinctiveness, and trust. Google is desperate for signals that you are the actual authority and not just another AI content farm.

For law firms, that means:

Narrower focus. Stop trying to rank for everything in your state. Own specific issues, case types, and intent.
Content that could only come from you. Detailed explanations, original commentary on new laws, real case stories, local nuance, and strong point of view. If ChatGPT could have written it, it is not a long term asset.

Relentless experience signals. Attorney pages that read like real professionals, not templates. Reviews with detail and volume. Clear local prominence, media mentions, bar work, speaking, community involvement, and a site that loads fast and works beautifully on mobile.

Smarter technical and on page work. Clean architecture, simple navigation, internal links that guide users like a good intake team, and schema that helps Google understand exactly who you serve.

AI is raising the bar on generic content and lowering the cost of spam. That makes human, expert driven SEO more valuable, not less. The firms that combine real world authority, strategic focus, and disciplined execution will pull away while everyone else complains that "SEO doesn't work anymore."

Silvia Lupone · Answer

The current state of SEO operates like a small hotel management system. The essential components now hold greater significance than they did before. The search results from my Stingray Villa desk in Cozumel provide me with useful information that delivers real results, not deceptive tactics. Google has used its system updates to eliminate thin content from search results, as the platform now shows experts who demonstrate their knowledge of their subjects. The commercial style brings back memories of our education on identifying infomercials, which aired during late-night television. You just knew. The current state of SEO requires authors to create content that humans can understand while they provide valuable answers to actual questions and building trust through sustained efforts. Slow, steady, and honest still wins.

Amit Agrawal · Answer

The evolution of SEO is reaching a critical juncture that began with mobile. Where it was once merely a catalogue of hyperlinks, it is becoming a collection of synthesized responses. We are witnessing a radical transition from "Search Engine Optimization" to "Search Experience Optimization" due to the emergence of AI summaries at the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), making the objective of SEO not merely to achieve a high placement in SERPs, but to become an authoritative source of reference for AI.

We are transitioning from the optimization of high-volume, low-intent keywords to building deep topical authority. As per Gartner's projections, it is likely that search volume will reduce by as much as 25% by 2026 as users switch from traditional search engines to AI chatbots for information. Thus, businesses can no longer depend on random/probabilistic traffic to justify the resources they put into their websites. Success in business today requires a foundation of technical capabilities that are "invisible"/fast and content that can assist the user in navigating through the "messy middle" of the customer journey, which is where they typically get "stuck" in an iterative cycle of researching and evaluating products and services that may meet their needs.

The brands that will endure will be those that have adopted a technical foundation of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) as the minimum requirement for their website, not merely a defined standard for what type of content should be published. If the information contained in your content can be easily summarized into a basic language model without losing its value, then it will likely not survive the next Algorithm Update. Your content must contain exclusive data, actual experience, and precise knowledge that AI cannot replicate.

Even though it can be overwhelming to try to keep up with all the AI updates that are happening in SEO, you need to remember that the purpose of search has not changed. Users are looking for answers from reliable sources that have a thorough understanding of their specific pain points. Modern SEO is highly complex; however, it remains simple with one clear objective: demonstrate to the algorithm and to the user that you are the most credible subject matter expert (SME) in the area.

Justin Herring · Answer

AI is really shaking things up in SEO. We used to only track Google at YEAH! Local, but once we started monitoring Bing and DuckDuckGo, we found a 20 percent boost in a client's local visibility we were completely missing. So now I just stay flexible and let the data call the shots. You have to look beyond Google these days.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email

Jon Kowieski · Answer

Just doing Google SEO doesn't cut it anymore, at least that's what we're finding at Brex. As AI search takes off, you have to think bigger. We started tracking rankings across Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and new AI engines all at once, and that was the eye-opener. It showed us exactly how to tweak content for each platform. So don't treat AI engines as a threat. Track everywhere, experiment, and you'll find the opportunities.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email

Anton Strasburg · Answer

While organic search continues to hold value, it is increasingly difficult to access and utilize effectively; with the introduction of AI summary results, zero-click search results and aggressive online advertising methods, there is no longer a direct correlation between rankings and actual visits to the websites themselves. The previous assumption that "if you create more content, then you will receive more visitors" is no longer valid. There is a clear shift towards depth of intent. Content that is created in a manner that solves a specific problem, has a clear structure and is internally linked is likely to do better than general blog posts. Case in point, 20 pages that are closely related tend to do better than 200 pages that are only loosely related.

Another area where authority has shifted is its perception. Brand search, repeat visits, and direct traffic all play a role in authority today. When someone searches for your company after reading your content, that sends a strong message about the authority of your brand. However, if they bounce right away after visiting your site, it sends another message entirely. Additionally, it is becoming much more difficult to create an illusion of momentum. It appears that thin AI created content (created in mass quantities) is not aging well either. The websites that are winning the SEO game are those that combine subject matter authority, a clean technical foundation and a solid distribution network. Today's SEO is more selective than ever, more integrated with a brand's overall strategy and less forgiving for those trying to find shortcuts around achieving good rankings. SEO is not dead, but it has become less mechanical in its approach and far more strategic than what was witnessed five years ago.

Joseph Melara · Answer

SEO isn't about keywords anymore. We updated our project pages with actual guides for homeowners, answering their real questions. People started staying on the site longer and we got better leads. It took some trial and error to figure out what worked, but Google clearly rewards content that's actually useful. Just answer what people are asking.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email

Kevin Lourd · Answer

Here's the thing about SEO these days, it's a moving target because Google is getting better at understanding intent. From my work getting press placements, I've seen that good content with solid backlinks still gets you noticed. But the definition of 'good' keeps climbing. So forget keyword stuffing. Focus on stories that are actually unique. That's what delivers real traffic over time, not the quick fixes.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email

Lin Meyer · Answer

Search engines these days do more than just display links in their results; they can also summarize related links, group similar links, develop an answer to a search query, and generate other types of responses to search queries. This is causing AI summaries to absorb broad/generic keywords into the summary. Given that you have built your content strategy on generic/higher volume head terms through traditional content marketing techniques such as 10 tips, you are experiencing a decrease in the amount of search traffic to your content. For example, instead of targeting the search term "project management certification", you may find better success with the term "CAPM vs PMP salary difference in Texas for career changers" because it would be more difficult to summarize generically and would in most cases be easier to link to an original source.

We are starting to see focus on technical hygiene again; e.g., major improvements to your inclusion in AI summaries can be made with clean/internal linking, schema markup, quick page loading times, and topic clustering, and that is related more to being valuable structurally than to manipulating algorithms. The other major change is in how we measure. Ranking alone is not enough; there are other things (e.g., impressions, your website's presence regarding citations in AI snapshots, growth in search terms directly tied to your website, and assisted conversion) that indicate your SEO efforts are working well. When we publish a deep comparison guide, and we see our branded search queries increase by 10-15% in a short period of time, that is typically an indication that SEO will compound, even if your traffic at that point appears flat on a raw basis.

Dean Whitby · Answer

Everyone is split between two stories of
"nothing has changed and seo is as it always has been and answer engine optimization generative engine optimization, llm optimization, ai seo whatever you want to call it, if someone offers you that its a scam run as nothing has changed an ai engines just use google anyhow" and that is not true and then you have
"you have brands who get 40,000 visitors a month from organic traffic and rank page one of google who then have 150 citations and so AI is serving up someone from page 3 and the reason is it's true traditional SEO is a factor and good structure is important but without schema that includes entity layers AI simply won't see them, without schema for products ai doesn't see them, ai wont read your content first it needs schema to see your content, then it needs to look at the web and decide based on what's on the web who has the most uniformity across business profiles then authority for the companies, then the people, their awards, their reviews and then even the socials they have LinkedIn for authority, reddit, youtube and most businesses are not structured to be seen or to be chosen and finally if they are chosen then their content is engineered for keywords not questions so is there even an answer for ai to copy and paste. There is so much more to SEO when you factor in the revenue potential from AI referrals."
The two responses are so vastly different and well the customer always wins and they are moving to the llm's not just for search but for comparison of who to choose at the back end too. SEO has evolved but many will tell you nothing has changed. Head in sand springs to mind

Rob BonDurant · Answer

And officially, in 2026, SEO is no longer a game of "ranking" but a game of "authority" and "inclusion." We live in a zero-click era where AI Overviews and crawlers can give us the answer before the user even interacts with our site, which has forced us to leave the game of keyword stuffing behind. At Osprey, we're currently looking at our content as a data source for "Answer Engines" and focusing on structured blocks of information that AI can easily cite. But the most surprising shift is that we're no longer concerned with being "visible" but with being "reference-worthy" across the web, not just our site. We're focusing more and more on E-E-A-T by being clear about our technical expertise and our sustainability claims. It is no longer just about the amount of traffic we can drive but about being the brand that the AI references for the "best lightweight hiking packs" in its Overview of the "best" products. It is a more technical, peer-to-peer landscape where the only way to compete with AI-generated noise is through clarity and the authenticity of the human experience.

Dora Bloom · Answer

Technical optimization and scale have dominated search engine results for an extended period. With more pages available, more keywords associated with those pages, and increased link-building activity being the foundation for ranking in search results; the optimization of technical elements on a web page remains an important component in the SEO success of any website. However, it is no longer sufficient alone to rank. Search engines are constantly improving their ability to evaluate:- the depth, authorship, or true expertise of a website's content. Content that lacks depth, regardless of how well structured or coded, will usually lose its appeal in search results quickly. AI has accelerated content creation; therefore, perspectives are now the primary means of differentiation. Everyone creates content that produces an answer, but there are fewer individuals who can generate experiential perspective to their content. Therefore our measure of success has changed from "Are you going to rank?" to "Will we trust you?"

We are also starting to notice a split within search results, because traditional blue links have to compete with AI summaries, video results, forum posts, and mentions of brands; therefore, the visibility associated with a business is no longer limited to one format, thus obligating every business to think outside of keyword capture and focus on building authority across multiple channels. Organizations should now focus on consistent and credible high-quality content. Organizations should focus on publishing fewer pieces of content but of higher quality. Organizations should focus on the building of authorities (i.e., providing relevant citations) rather than just focusing only on the acquisition of inbound links. Organizations should focus on search (SEO) as a trust-building initiative over time rather than a traffic building initiative over time. The evolution of search is transitioning from a mechanical search process to a more human search process; this is not necessarily a threat to organizations but correctional in nature.

Bryan Sekine · Answer

SEO is changing for the better largely due to AI. Keyword research and traditional content optimization are becoming less effective because people are searching differently, with 2–3 word searches dropping as users type long‑tail queries into AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. The effective approach now is short-form content that puts the most helpful answer at the top of the page so visitors and AI bots get what they need quickly. Backlinks and customer reviews remain important; reviews show real human experience to AI, so generate as many as you can. Backlink strategies vary by industry, but whatever is working for you now should be doubled this year and into the future.

Curtis Chappell · Answer

The current state of SEO favors well-researched, answer-focused content that serves LLM-related queries and Google AI snippets. In 2025 we tested creating very specific FAQ pages and adding FAQ Schema for our agency and clients and saw excellent results. We began with 10 FAQs per page and added one new 700 to 800 word FAQ per week from July to September 2025, then continued monthly updates. By October 2025 organic search traffic was up 120% year over year and primary keywords in positions 1 to 5 increased by 50%. For e-commerce, we found that adding FAQ content to product pages helps rankings and inbound inquiries, and we continue to update those pages monthly to sustain gains.

Scott Benson · Answer

Great topic! I
The State of SEO is strong, but changing, and here's how: The emerging Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) trend can't be ignored, and while it has unique tactics that differ from traditional SEO, much of it is the same, assuming you've been doing high-quality SEO consistently.

The main GEO tactics that we see working include:

1. Structured Data: LLM web crawlers reward semantically ordered HTML (when on your own website) like sequential Heading tags, and Structured Data markup to help them understand the content they are extracting.

2. Brand Mentions Over Backlinks (to an extent): Unlike Google (historically), LLMs value high-quality brand mentions from reputable sources even if they're unlinked. As a 20 year SEO however, I'll still take the link with anchor text, and a brand mention along with it, as that's just a stronger signal in my opinion. Really we're talking about growing your quality citations.

3. Extractable Content: This goes along with the structured data, but also, simple design and user experience elements like bulleted lists, FAQs and pull quotes seem to be favored by the AI web crawlers when looking for content to extract and display in an AI search result.

4. Classic SEO: The three bullet points above are really still quality SEO. Locking down your Technical SEO is critical. Creating content that is searched for is still the primary way to get into AI search results. Create web content that can be easily accessed, extracted, and displayed in search results, no matter the application.

With this shift to GEO, we are also seeing some big mistakes: 
These AI web crawlers are not as sophisticated as Google. They behave much more like the early days of GoogleBot since they don't execute JavaScript. What I see time and again is brands are overusing JavaScript to display their content and links in navigation. If the bots can't crawl your website because they can't "see" your content and links, then your brand will be invisible in AI applications. They rely heavily on real-time (grounded) searches of the web, and of Google and Bing search results.

Looking at 2026 and beyond: Monitoring and optimizing for AI visibility will be critical. For SEO my agency has always beaten the drum of; you can't improve what you can't measure. Utilizing an AI visibility monitoring tool, and preferably one with GEO insights built-in is the way forward as more and more people turn to AI search to conduct research and make purchasing decisions.

John Cheng · Answer

SEO moves fast now, especially when you're the little guy. At PlayAbly, we stopped chasing the big keywords and focused on interactive stuff instead. Suddenly our growth wasn't a guess anymore. People stuck around longer and shared our gamified content, which meant more links. If you're just starting out, my advice is to try some weird formats. See what happens.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to my personal email

Your description of the state of SEO right now.

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Your description of the state of SEO right now.

78 Answers