SEO is changing, search & content marketing are changing… It makes more sense to call it multi-channel organic online marketing these days, wouldn’t you agree? I’m thinking about that a lot and what comes to my mind is a pretty clear conclusion, that we (as SEO industry) will be fine, because we will find our way to be present in AI Overviews or AI mode etc. The biggest issue we’re about to face are sales and generally communication of what we do. Redefining SEO in the New Era of Traffic Generation was the topic of my talk on SEO Estonia 2025. This article is meant to expand this ideas and give some useful tips on how to face and overcome those problems.
Some of the slides are simplified or missing because in form of article it wouldn’t be that clear as told from the stage.
Full deck is here:
What you will find in this article:
Scope Of SEO is Expanding
There are multiple channels that we should focus on. On the great majority of markets it was just Google… Now even inside of Google there are many different elements that emerge in SERPs and the biggest change since featured snippets are AI Overviews and AI mode…
But it’s not just that. There’s also Gemini as a separate chatbot, connected to the whole Google Workspace ecosystem (like Calendar, Gmail, Drive etc.).
There’s also ChatGPT, obviously and other AI chats like Claude, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude family (Anthropic). That implies new objectives because of all those models’ grounding methods. ChatGPT is currently the most important one and it does their grounding in Bing Search. Have you verified your domain in Bing Webmaster’s Tools and checked indexation issues? 🙂
There are strange things going on like social media becoming a very important part of the puzzle – like never before.
For new generations some of those social networks play kind of a search engine role like TikTok for instance. And there are rumours that maybe TikTok and Perplexity could merge and create a totally new experience. Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn are booming – not only because of pure content but also for entity and brand exposure. Instagram has already over 1 million citations in AI Overviews according to Ahrefs.
There is YouTube present in SERPs and for some queries it may play important role as it attracts user’s attention.
So far I mentioned mostly just places that you should take care of outside of your website. The offsite elements. But on-page SEO is also going to change a lot because if you combine Google Search with all the Chrome features like payment options, accounts management, authorization for other apps, automatically filled forms, Google Calendar etc. and add super advanced AI that allows conversational experience… then you realize that Google wants to be the most powerful agent of all times.
Also… let’s not forget about all the other disciplines that SEO should know besides of SEO itself like: UX, analytics & statistics, data science, automation & coding, PPC, copywriting, NLP…
Skill we’re lacking in SEO world: sales and communication
Among all those skills, there are some that you need to master in a first place. And usually SEOs aren’t very good at it… It’s sales and communication in general.
The disturbing fact is growing chaos increases costs of what we do. In the same time clients get confused by what’s actually going on in SEO and they don’t know if they should invest or not.
I’m not really suprised. Some of us have fun reading papers, leaks, exploits and Google documentation.
Clients don’t!
Have you ever felt like this guy up there the bell curve while talking with your client?
Don’t be like him.
Business hates SEO jargon so stop talking about semantics, Page Rank, embeddings etc. You will not impress them with that. Don’t make your client feel stupid or anxious. They may think you’re using all that SEO words just to trick them or to cover your incompetence. Explain to your client just a several simple rules.
Technical SEO is important. It was always about indexation in the search engine and now it’s also about being indexable and parsable for LLMs.
Threat for SEO industry
Let’s be honest – we’re facing a major threat as an industry right now. Because of increasing costs and complexity, and lack of simple language to talk with clients.
There are sales issues we’re facing – budget estimations, limited competitive analysis options, because there will be no keywords, problems with conversion attribution, with all that direct traffic and long tradition of hiding queries both in Google Search Console, not to mention Google Analytics.
Clients expect us to deliver organic traffic. This is what SEO was always about. And currently CTRs dropped for over 34,% according to Ahrefs study. How you can deliver your estimates if the CTR drops that much suddenly?
20th century marketing
Rand Fishkin underlined it already a year ago that marketing is going back to 20th century.
Almost 60% of searches are zero click searches, and it’s not only because of AI Overviews, but also all the other featured snippets.
So what to do? Follow 20th century’s marketing logic!
- Identify your clients and their clients’ touchpoints and learn to understand the painpoints.
- Do some customer journey mapping.
- Switch from clicks in browser to clicks in minds!
- Focus on a niche where you can be a top of mind brand.
It’s time to say goodbye to simplified way of how search and online shopping works.
It used to work like:
1) Commercial query
2) Click (Google/organic)
3) Add to basket
4) Pay
But this model is gone. Actually, it’s never been true tbh.
It’s not that simple. Therefore the high percentage of zero click searches doesn’t mean that there’s no demand for products and services. It’s quite the opposite.
This is what you should talk about with your clients.
Better search experience stimulates demand. You just need to find your way through the technology and say what you have to say about your brand, organization, values, products and services.
Analytics and planning issues
We can’t tell what was the story behind each path because it’s already harder and harder to track queries.
TOFU content will drive less clicks… That’s for sure! Don’t even plan KPIs based on traffic (for informational intent).
Focus more on middle of the funnel even if the search volumes doesn’t seem impressive. If there’s a demand, there will be searches.
Examples of mid-funnel queries:
Comparisons & Evaluation
- a vs b (e.g. “Ahrefs vs Semrush”)
- alternative to x (e.g. “Canva alternatives”)
- x or y for [use case]
- [brand] vs [brand] reviews
Benefits & Value
- advantages of [solution]
- disadvantages/limitations of [solution]
- ROI of [solution]
- why choose [x] for [y]
Best Options & Rankings
- best [solution/product] for [use case]
- top [number] [solutions]
- rankings of [providers/tools]
- [industry] benchmarks
Social Proof & Validation
- reviews of [tool/service]
- testimonials / case studies
- “success stories with [solution]”
- “how [company] used [tool] to [achieve result]”
Educational / Exploratory Content
- listicles (“10 tools for…”)
- step-by-step guides (“how to implement [solution]”)
- frameworks / methodologies (“[solution] process explained”)
- parasite SEO placements (guest posts, product roundups, external reviews)
Decision Support
- pricing breakdown / cost comparisons
- feature checklists
- industry reports / whitepapers
- vendor comparison tables
These queries typically show commercial investigation intent — the user already knows the category and is narrowing down options before moving to bottom-funnel actions like “buy,” “sign up,” or “demo.”
Branded search
Nowadays branded search queries are like fuel for your ranking state.
This is why brand is so important. Brand is not just a name and logo. Brand is a trust and unique language that helps to build it. To be trusted.
Remember that this is a very important moment in customer’s journey. So take care of how SERPs for your brand look like.
Create demand for your brand and build trust in search results your traffic will be safe and highly converting.
Where are we heading?
Think about the business model:
- affiliate didn’t go well?
- try ecommerce SEO
- try lead generation for manufacturers
- …
Try using avalanche technique, but like for sales – start with something easy and upsell, scale, until you establish deep cooperation.
Don’t waste time for clients with low quality product and bad customer care. Their brand gonna colapse and your campaign too.
Focus on LTV instead of signing any shitty contract.
We (SEO industry) know how to connect the dots! We’re ready for this new reality. We just need to build communication between what we do and what our clients crave.