Do you still believe in SEO?
Hi there! I've been working in content marketing & SEO for almost a decade - and while I've seen many announcements of the death of SEO, the current search climate, combined with the latest announcements from Google are strong signals that SEO may (finally 😅) be over.
What do you think? Is "answer engine optimization" the answer? 🤔
Replies
Totally agree that the future is shifting towards AEO/GEO.
My main concern, though, is that it seems like AEO will heavily favor the big, established players, concentrating most of the traffic at the very top. This could make it much harder for smaller sites to get noticed.
On that topic, has anyone found any good AEO/GEO tools or products yet? Would love to hear what people are using.
Hey, here is my take, SEO is here to stay but you are optimizing for agents, while users will pivot towards much more specific queries including context over why they're searching for something, what they expect etc
Then agents/AI chats will do the work of digging through links to gather and summarize content, because they've done the work of digging through data for you it means blogging etc likely won't matter as much for humans but product-wise you'll get much more qualified traffic which will get redirect exactly to the page that matches their intent e.g: buying page
Actually been working on a tool to help B2B SMBs/B2C brands improve their AI SEO recently and it's quite fascinating, what I can tell you is that backlinks matter more than ever not to get to the top 10 like you would on Google but because your goal is to increase your backlink coverage in order to make sure whatever query AI ends up on you're cited and then it'll dig deeper and find your website
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Your website needs to be credible to be listed in the answer generated by AI. I fully stand behind the answer that @m_dolr wrote.
It's surely not over but evolving with AI. Only thing I would want to be further refined is that search engines or LLMs are able to better figure out that keywords or content is not being added just for the sake of SEO i.e. it should be genuine. While it has already been there but still there is room for improvement and prevent from gaming the system.
Absolutely fascinating perspective, Aaron! I agree that traditional SEO as we knew it is definitely evolving, especially with Google shifting towards more AI-driven, answer-focused search results. The rise of "answer engine optimization" seems like a natural next step—optimizing content not just for keywords but for providing clear, concise answers that satisfy user intent directly. It challenges content creators to be more precise and user-centric. While SEO might not be "over," it’s certainly transforming, and those who adapt will thrive. Looking forward to seeing how this space continues to change!
For now, it's here to stay. SEO and content are still needed for AI to scrape and learn from. I think AOE will be the new SEO, but if AIs rely on being fed user-generated content, they need a system where that content is relevant, in demand, and accurate, and that’s where SEO comes in.
So now, you're not just optimizing to appear first in Google search, but to show up in AI queries or even be cited in their answers. You can think of it as a new kind of ranking.
We're going through this right now.
I think it will be a blend of both. You'll have to be optimized for SEO with GEO blended into the strategy. You should write content with an understanding on how AI actually searches and selects content to present.
Regular SEO is so ingrained in our society, I don't see that leaving anytime soon. I do see it evolving over the short-term.