For the last couple of years, marketers have been busy declaring SEO dead, inventing new acronyms and warning everyone who will listen that if they don’t optimise for AI immediately, they’ll disappear from the internet forever.
Good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has traditionally included the actions you do to appear higher in the Google ranks. The idea being, you get higher on Google, you get the all important clicks.
With the introduction of AI, SEO became AIO. Then GEO. Then AEO. And depending on which LinkedIn post you read this morning, there’s probably another one on the way.
So what are we to do next?
Our recommendation has always been to focus on what makes a business what it is. Your uniqueness and USP’s that get you customers and sales are exactly what can help you rank higher.
We have always trusted Google’s EEAT principles as the source of truth and believe if you follow the original SEO principles, surely AI will look favourably on us…
Google’s John Mueller recently gave a rather less dramatic answer:
“From our POV there’s nothing really special you need to do for generative AI responses in search.”
It’s nice to be right sometimes! Something we have believed in since the start, good SEO is good SEO.
SEO has just morphed into an umbrella term housing the aforementioned acronyms, muddying the waters of what to focus on.
Underneath all the new terminology, a lot of what helps a business appear in traditional search is also what helps it get found, understood and referenced by AI.
So rather than panicking about an entirely new branch of marketing, here are three things worth getting right in the new era of SEO.
1. Stop optimising for robots. Start being genuinely useful.
Google has spent years trying to reward content that answers people’s questions properly.
AI hasn’t suddenly reversed that. If people are finding the relevant information in FAQ’s, make your FAQ’s more helpful…and so on and so forth.
It also means creating pages that demonstrate actual knowledge of your subject, answer the questions your customers are asking and provide something more useful than another reworded version of what already ranks.
You don’t need to write strangely formatted “AI content” (see any LinkedIn post for examples of strangely formatted pseudocontent).
In simple terms; explain what you do. Answer questions. Demonstrate expertise. Provide examples. Aim to be original.
A revolutionary new SEO strategy. Not.
2. Make sure search engines (and AI) can understand who you are
Good SEO has always been about making your website easier to understand (for Google), but also for the human using it.
At a minimum, that means clear headings, a logical page structure and strong internal linking, supported by product and service pages that explain the details accurately while still maintaining your personal touch.
Those fundamentals matter even more when search engines are trying to understand entities, relationships and context rather than simply matching keywords.
If your website clearly explains:
who (you are)
what (you do)
who (you do it for)
where (you operate)
what (makes you credible)
how (your services, products and expertise relate to each other)
…you’re making life easier for both traditional search engines and AI systems.
This isn’t really GEO, it’s good website architecture and good SEO.
3. Build a brand worth mentioning
This is the biggest shift.
Ranking well is no longer just about what exists on your own website. AI systems now look further than just your website for signals of trust, authenticity and legitimacy.
In other words, SEO is becoming less isolated from the rest of marketing. The more positive, consistent signals that exist online about your business, the stronger your position is likely to be. That includes everything from Google reviews and third-party mentions to user-generated social media content.
This is not an invitation to avoid SEO, it’s a wake up call for businesses. If you’ve been delaying or deprioritising your SEO activity, then not only will you fall down the rankings in Google Search, you’ll also struggle to be mentioned in generative AI answers.
So, is SEO dead? What is the future of SEO you ask?
No, it’s alive and well, and is suspiciously similar to what it has always been. Well-crafted, strategic, unique content about your business.
There are a few more constraints, limiting the ability to ‘hack the system’, but best practices remain best practice.
The slightly less exciting truth is that there isn’t a secret “optimise for AI” button. In most cases, the businesses best positioned for AI search are the ones already doing the fundamentals well.
Call it SEO, AIO, GEO or whatever acronym arrives next week.
The foundations are remarkably familiar.
Ready to get the SEO (or AIO/GEO) basics right? Let’s chat.