How AI Will Transform Search Strategies

RIP SEO. Today was the first time Google automatically pushed me into AI Mode for a basic search. I wasn’t on Labs. I didn’t opt in. No blue links. Just a clean AI-generated answer, with no website listings in sight. This isn’t an experimental feature hidden away anymore. It’s becoming the new default in our #AnswerEconomy. As someone who’s spent 20+ years leading web strategy and SEO efforts, I’ve never seen such a dramatic shift in how information is presented for search. We began moving beyond traditional SEO to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) in late 2023. ChatGPT’s launch three years ago shifted the web from a search economy to an answer economy. At first, it felt like a challenge to Google’s dominance. (The number I’ve seen most often is that Google owns about 90% of the search market.) Last year, I asked myself whether “Google it” would still be a verb in 10 years. Now, after seeing Google’s AI Mode in action, I think the answer is yes, but not in the way we’re used to. The traditional cluttered Google search results page is being replaced by an AI-first interface. If your content isn’t structured, factual, and optimized for AI engines, you risk becoming invisible. The future isn’t just about ranking first. It’s about being the trusted source the AI quotes. No clicks. No CTRs. Just answers. Welcome to the next era of search. #SEO #GEO #AIEO #AIsearch #DigitalStrategy #ContentMarketing #GenerativeAI #SearchRevolution #DigitalMarketing #Marketing

Here's what 99% of B2B SaaS companies get wrong about growth: They're still playing by 2023 rules in a 2025 game. Legacy marketing strategy: keyword research → content creation → hope for rankings. Today? AI has completely reimagined this playbook. The New B2B SaaS SEO Framework: 🎯 Intent-First Content Strategy - Use AI to analyze your customer support tickets and sales calls - Identify the actual questions prospects ask (not what you think they ask) - Create content that matches real search intent, not keyword volumes 🤖 AI-Powered Content Optimization - NLP tools to understand semantic search patterns - Predictive analytics to identify trending topics before they peak - Automated content audits that reveal optimization opportunities 📊 Technical SEO Automation - AI-driven site speed optimization - Automated schema markup for better search visibility - Real-time technical issue detection and fixes 🔗 Smart Link Building - AI identification of high-authority, relevant link opportunities - Automated outreach personalization at scale - Content gap analysis for competitive advantage The companies dominating B2B SaaS search results aren't just creating more content—they're creating smarter content that actually serves their buyer's journey. At GrackerAI, we're seeing cybersecurity companies increase organic traffic by 300%+ using AI-driven AEO strategies that traditional agencies can't replicate. Key Takeaway: Stop competing on content volume. Start competing on content intelligence. #SEO #B2BSaaS #AI #ContentStrategy #DigitalMarketing

If you're still optimizing content like it's 2020, you're leaving opportunity on the table. Because AI-powered search isn't just changing the rules—it's creating an entirely new game. As AI transforms how content gets discovered across social platforms, the distance between visibility and invisibility comes down to adaptation. I've been studying this shift closely. And the businesses thriving aren't following old playbooks. They're embracing a new reality where AI understands intent, not just keywords. The winning approach to AI-powered search requires: → Speaking like humans, not websites (conversational keywords are the new SEO) → Answering questions before they're asked (FAQ-style content wins visibility) → Adapting to each platform's unique AI signals (what works on LinkedIn fails on Instagram) → Creating content in multiple formats (text, image, video—AI searches them all differently) → Structuring information clearly (AI rewards organization and clarity) The days of keyword stuffing are long gone. Now it's about context, relevance, and meaningful engagement. The most powerful optimization strategy? Creating content that AI recognizes as valuable because actual humans find it useful. The search bar isn't just a tool anymore. It's an intelligent curator connecting expertise to the people who need it most. How is your business adapting its content strategy for AI-powered search in 2025?

At Duda, we’ve analyzed traffic across more than 1 million websites published on our platform, and the trend is clear: AI-driven traffic is growing extremely fast, especially from ChatGPT.  That doesn’t mean SEO is dead. Far from it, Google is still generating significantly more traffic to websites than all AI platforms combined. But it does mean that web professionals need to adapt their strategies to make sure their clients’ websites are discoverable in both traditional *and* AI search. The good news is a lot of the best practices to rank for traditional search are still relevant in the age of AI discoverability - with some new considerations… ✅ What still works: Authoritative, well-structured content, following E-E-A-T principles   Strong technical SEO (Core Web Vitals, mobile responsiveness, fast load times) Focus on genuinely helpful content, not just ranking tricks 🆕 Where to renew focus in the age of AI: LLMS.txt files (think robots.txt, but for AI) to help LLMs understand your site Structured data like Local Business, FAQ, and Product schema to surface in AI answers IndexNow & Google Search Console integrations to get new content discovered quickly Server-side rendering (SSR) so content isn’t hidden behind JavaScript 🚫 What to avoid: Keyword stuffing Generic backlink strategies Prioritizing visibility over value At Duda, we’re building tools to help agencies and SaaS platforms stay ahead of the curve, including being the first website builder to automatically generate LLMS.txt for all sites built on our platform. If you’re a web pro building websites at scale, it’s time to optimize for both search engines and AI assistants. Learn more about how to future-proof your sites for AI discoverability here: https://lnkd.in/dA_3YrG6

Organic search is changing. Quietly, but meaningfully. Since Google rolled out AI Overviews, we’ve seen a clear shift. Visibility is up. Rankings are stable. But clicks are down. The summary box answers more questions before users ever reach your site. That changes how traffic flows - and how we think about SEO. Here’s what we’re seeing in the data, and what we’re doing about it. What We’re Seeing in Our Data We anticipated this shift early and have already been aligning our SEO strategy with how AI-driven search behaves, focusing on visibility, authority, and influence across both traditional and generative platforms. The chart below (from GSC, excluding branded keywords) tells a clear story: Impressions are rising sharply. We're now at our highest level of visibility since January 2024. But clicks are steadily declining, even though rankings haven't dropped. This means we're showing up more often in searches, but users aren’t clicking through like they used to. This trend began around the launch of Google's AI Overviews in May and has since accelerated. A good example is a high-difficulty keyword where we recently reached the #1 position (Ecommerce SMS Marketing). While traditional clicks are lower, this ranking still gets us featured as the first citation in the AI Overview, which boosts brand exposure and keeps Yotpo part of the answer. In this new environment, presence and influence matter as much as clicks. The Industry Is Feeling It Too We’re not alone in this. Multiple industry studies and leaders are sounding the alarm: Ahrefs found a 34.5% drop in CTR when AI Overviews appear on a search result. Search Engine Land reports publishers losing up to 37.04% of clicks in affected queries. Cloudflare’s CEO warns the shift is "killing the open web" - Google now sends 1 visit per 18 crawled pages, compared to 1 in 2 ten years ago. The biggest impact? On Informational, non-branded queries. What We’re Doing About It Doubling down on ranking visibility - because top placement matters, especially for being cited in AI summaries. Launching LLM optimization with AI trackers & optimization tools - to ensure our content shows up (and gets attributed) in AI-driven answers. Investing in content AI can't replace - like calculators, success stories, and use-case-specific pages that drive engagement beyond what Google’s AI can summarize. While the metrics are evolving, SEO remains a key pillar for discoverability, brand credibility, and long-term growth. We’re embracing the change - not just reacting to it. Curious to hear how your team is planning for this shift. Kudos to Amit for surfacing this one.

When most people hear “SEO,” they think: keywords, blog posts, and backlinks. And they’re not wrong but they’re not seeing the full picture either. Because today, AI is quietly transforming every part of SEO. From strategy to execution, AI is not just speeding things up, it’s helping us think clearer, act faster, and deliver more impact. When I started integrating AI into my SEO workflow, things changed fast: ✅ I stopped wasting hours brainstorming content ideas—AI gave me topics backed by data and search intent. ✅ Keyword research? 10x more efficient, with long-tail gems surfaced in seconds. ✅ SERP analysis? Instant competitor breakdowns without opening 12 tabs. ✅ Content drafts? 80% done in minutes, in my voice, with SEO best practices baked in. ✅ Internal linking? Smart suggestions that boost page authority and navigation. ✅ Old content audits? Faster fixes and clear priority lists, powered by AI insights. It’s not about replacing human SEOs. It’s about leveling up with smarter tools that multiply your effort and results. AI doesn’t remove the need for strategy. But it removes the friction that slows strategy down. If you’re still doing SEO the old-school way, you’re not falling behind... yet. But you’re definitely working harder than you need to. The future of SEO isn’t just about content and keywords anymore. It’s about how intelligently you use them, with the right systems and support. 📌 My advice? Don’t treat AI like a gimmick. Treat it like your smartest teammate. ♻️ Repost if you believe SEO is smarter with AI. 💬 Comment “AI SEO” and I’ll DM you my go-to tools and daily workflow.

When I started in SEO, traffic was everything. Then, SEO changed. Google got scary good at predicting what content would satisfy a search. So I started optimizing for the searcher, not the search engine. Today, your customers are using different search engines for different types of searches. For informational searches: generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity deliver a better experience -- At best, these platforms feel like a natural language conversation with a knowledgeable friend or trusted expert. For transactional searches: traditional search engines like Google work better, helping you find product pages, local businesses, and specific websites. Today AI search platforms send less traffic, but still represent a huge opportunity to capture organic demand. It’s time to change our SEO and content strategies for gen AI search. Here are 5 changes I would make now: ❌ Stop ignoring zero-click searches because they don’t appear in analytics ✅ Embrace zero-click searches as opportunities to build brand awareness ❌ Stop worrying about rankings and traffic volume ✅ Get forensic about what converts traffic into customers — then  double-down on THAT ❌ Stop publishing tons of informational long-form blogs ✅ Use AI to create interactive content that helps guide customers to a purchase decision ❌ Stop overspending on performance marketing ✅ Overspend on audience research, community engagement and brand building ❌ Stop relying on keyword-research tools to create generic content ✅ Talk to your customers to better understand the questions they ask when making a purchase decision What do all these changes have in common? Focus MORE on customers and LESS on search engines. The key is to understand YOUR customers’ search behavior. Do your research: Start by asking your customers how they search for information about your products. Stop obsessing over traffic and start targeting the search intents that drive conversions. More information: Download our SEO for Revenue Guide (link in the comments).

If you want to be mentioned by AI… You have to be mentioned by people first. I just had a fascinating conversation with Jeremy Rivera on his Unscripted SEO podcast. And I have to admit that when he first reached out to me, I was very skeptical: Why does an SEO guy want to talk to a brand awareness ad guy turned publicist like me? I thought the conversation would be about how social media is essentially turning into search, and how important SEO has become for creating content. But then he started talking about AI. He talked about how more people are using AI to search for things, which is disrupting the SEO industry in a major way. He talked about how traditional SEO was about engineering discoverability. But AI doesn’t search like a robot anymore. It searches like a person. He talked about how AI doesn’t just look for keywords. It looks for relevance. Context. Consensus. He talked about how, when answering a query, AI asks: – Who’s being talked about? – Who’s being quoted? – Who’s showing up everywhere? He talked about how if AI is now the search engine… Then, attention is the new ranking factor, and therefore, fame is the new domain authority. He talked about how SEOs' integration with social media makes them even more relevant. And then HE (not me) talked about how the best SEO strategy isn’t keyword stuffing anymore. It’s publicity. So he wanted to speak with me to learn more about it and how it works And that blew my mind. Because I never would have in a million years thought to frame the benefits of publicity and what I do this way. But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. What comes up when you search for your name on ChatGPT or Perplexity? When you ask AI for the top people doing what you do, does your name come up? When you ask AI for knowledge about something, does it cite you? Or does it say someone more famous than me? The answer to these questions is obvious. Being casually mentioned, my AI is a limitless test of who has the most attention and who doesn’t But what’s not so obvious to SEO people anymore is how to make that happen. My advice: 👉 Leverage personal brands to build a publicity-first model of visibility 👉 Make your people unignorable in the places AI now learns from 👉 Use organic social + performance ads that get press and attention, not just clicks. That’s the future of SEO. This might be the most important shift you haven’t considered yet. Of course, we went much deeper into these things on the podcast, which I really look forward to being released. I’ll put a link in the comments so you can subscribe to it. But if you can’t wait till then, you should sign up for my free two-day LinkedIn Genius Masterclass, where I teach these things that aren’t taught. And if you can’t make the masterclass, you can also learn these techniques from my newsletter (which just passed 500 subscribers). I’ll put a link to both in the comments.

Google is doubling down on AI-powered search. During yesterday’s earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai outlined Google’s plans to transform Search into an AI-driven assistant, expanding beyond traditional query-based results. The shift began with AI Overviews—Google’s attempt to synthesize information rather than simply providing links. Despite a rocky rollout, including widely publicized inaccuracies, Google is moving forward with deeper AI integration. Pichai highlighted Project Astra, DeepMind’s multimodal AI system that processes live video and provides real-time responses. He hinted that Astra could power future AR smart glasses, reinforcing Google’s broader AI ambitions. Another key initiative is Gemini Deep Research, an AI agent that generates long-form research reports—effectively automating tasks that traditionally required multiple searches. Additionally, Project Mariner aims to interact with websites on behalf of users, potentially eliminating the need to visit them at all. Pichai also suggested making Search more conversational, enabling follow-ups and real-time interaction. Will these AI-driven changes disrupt the digital ecosystem? It’s clear that websites that rely on Google’s traffic will see reduced human traffic. It’s also clear that advertisers will need to rethink their SEO and SEM strategies. Google is on a mission. Facing competition from practically every foundational model builder and hyperscaler, our friends in Mountain View have to aggressively evolve Search – failure is not an option. -s

You know when you have those conversations with people that open up your mind to new things? I legit just had one recently with my man John Kunz of VELOX Media talking about SEO and AI and all the impacts of what is happening. I had to share some of his thoughts, so with his permission, wanted to share these 8 points to be aware of in 2025 for AI and SEO: AI Changes the Rules, Not the Game SEO isn’t going anywhere, but AI is rewriting how it works. Google doesn’t just reward keywords anymore—it prioritizes user intent, trust, and authority. Focus on quality content and clear relevance. Schema Markup is Critical AI algorithms use schema to understand content structure. If your schema markup isn’t optimized, you’re invisible. Schema connects intent to authority, making it the backbone of future rankings. Intent Beats Keywords Google and AI-driven search tools like ChatGPT prioritize why people search, not just what they type. Are they learning, acting, or solving a problem? Create content aligned with intent, or you’ll miss the mark. Trust and Authority Decide Winners AI-generated content floods the web, but trust still rules. Build backlinks from respected sources and focus on producing content that helps, not just ranks. AI rewards authority, not fluff. Black Hat Tricks Don’t Work AI doesn’t fall for hidden keywords or cheap SEO hacks anymore. Trying to game the system will get you penalized. Focus on ethical, white-hat strategies that deliver long-term value. AI Content Needs Human Hands Flooding the market with AI content doesn’t help if it’s generic. Use meta-prompting to guide AI outputs, then refine them. High-quality content wins—quantity alone won’t cut it. Long-Tail Keywords Matter AI tools focus on long-tail keywords and context. They read between the lines of a query to understand the whole picture. Your content should do the same—comprehensive, clear, and contextual. AI Doesn’t Replace Fundamentals AI speeds up SEO but doesn’t replace the basics. Backlinks, linking strategies, and strong site structures are still essential. AI enhances what already works—it doesn’t reinvent it. AI elevates SEO, but it can’t fix bad strategy. Align your efforts with intent, trust, and authority while using AI to support instead of replacing your expertise. Thank you John Kunz! #AI #SEO #SearchStrategy