Is Your SEO Strategy Built for the AI Era? [Webinar] via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell
The old rules no longer apply. It’s time for a smarter, AI-ready playbook.
AI-driven search is changing the landscape fast. Organic traffic is dropping, visibility is shrinking, and traditional SEO tactics are losing their edge. If you’re still following yesterday’s strategy, you’re already behind.
Join Siteimproveon July 23, 2025 for an exclusive webinar with Zoe Hawkins and Jeff Coyle. Learn how to evolve your SEO approach and content planning to thrive in a world where AI now plays a central role in search.
Here’s what you’ll walk away with:
A breakdown of how AI is changing enterprise SEO.
Why trust and authority now matter more than keyword volume.
How to adapt to high-intent, low-volume traffic behavior.
We can no longer rely on the same tactics that worked before. This session gives you an inside look at how SEO must evolve to stay effective in the AI-first future.
Register now to stay ahead of the curve. Can’t attend live? Sign up anyway and get the full replay delivered to your inbox.
Kevin Indig: SEO Has Changed Forever. What Marketers Need To Know Now
If you’ve been affected by AI Overviews, traffic drops, or feel uncertain about SEO’s future, then this episode is for you.
Search Engine Journal’s Editor-in-Chief Katie Morton sits down with growth advisor and author of “Growth Memo,” Kevin Indig, to unpack the results of his latest AI Overviews study.
In this 35-minute episode, they discuss how it impacts search, SEO, and brand marketing in 2025.
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Editor’s note: The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity, brevity, and adherence to our editorial guidelines.
What AI Overviews Mean For Search, SEO & Brand Trust
Katie Morton: Hi, everybody. It is I, Katie Morton. I’m the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal, and today I’m sitting down with Kevin Indig, who is a growth advisor to fast-growing tech companies and the author of “Growth Memo,” a fantastic newsletter.
We syndicate it here on Search Engine Journal, but sign up for it directly, too, because he has content exclusive to subscribers. It’s filled with smart insights every marketer needs to know.
Kevin, thanks for making the time today. The study was analyzed in March-April 2025 and published in May. We’ve had time to reflect, and today we’ll unpack the key takeaways.
We’ll start with the nuts and bolts of the study’s background, so listeners understand the context, and then go beyond the data to explore how marketers and companies, especially those frustrated by Google, AI Overviews, or traffic drops, can respond.
So, Kevin, can you summarize the study and share the main takeaways?
Kevin Indig: Thanks for having me on, Katie. It’s great to be here with you.
What The AI Overview Study Really Reveals
Kevin: The study came from a desire to deeply understand, from a qualitative perspective, how everyday users interact with AI Overviews.
In 2024, everyone was eyeing AI Overviews with curiosity, but traffic impact wasn’t significant yet. Then, at the start of 2025, everything changed. It became a “holy cow” moment – this was real and serious.
We asked 70 participants in the U.S., across different age groups, to solve eight tasks that covered dominant user intents: Finding a tax accountant, researching medical questions, shopping, etc.
We intentionally included queries that showed AI Overviews but didn’t tell participants to interact with them – we wanted unbiased behavior.
So, in a nutshell, the three most poignant results are:
1. Classic Organic Results Still Carry Weight
First of all – and this is no surprise – clicks are really rare when people see AI Overviews. That’s gotten through to everyone by now.
And yet, at the same time, classic organic results still have the majority of impact on people’s completion of user journeys.
Let me untangle that for a second: What we found is that people get their final answer – the final piece of information they were set out to get – 80% of the time from classic organic results. Not from AI Overviews, so that was encouraging.
2. High-Quality Clicks Happen In High-Trust Moments
Clicks are going down, but people still click. And each of those clicks has much, much higher quality than, say, in 2024 or before.
Because those clicks are to verify whether the results are accurate, to get human input from platforms like Reddit or YouTube, and to increase confidence in whether what the AI is saying is true.
And for us, that means it’s critical to be present in these high-trust, high-risk moments. I can unpack that a little more…
3. Audience Age Shapes AI Engagement
The third result I found very interesting is that there really is an age difference here. [Younger users] are much more receptive to AI answers. They’re much more active on Reddit and YouTube. Whereas people of a higher age will often just skip the AI answers because they don’t trust them.
You want to know who you’re talking to, who your target audience is. Ideally, what the age group is of your ICP or your target audience, and then make SEO decisions accordingly.
Why Branding Matters More Than Ever
Katie: Thank you for that. What I’d love to talk about next is branding.
I feel like big brands are a little safer with recent developments. If you already have recognition, you’re in a better spot. But if you’re a tiny brand with no recognition, you’re really behind the eight ball.
For the uninitiated or the uninformed, [you might wonder], why is that important? It’s about trust.
When someone sees your brand in an AI Overview, recognition boosts trust. If they click on an AI Overview or scroll to find organic results, they’re more likely to trust and click a name they know. A strong brand increases your chances.
Mordy uses the example of Nike, which was once ubiquitous, but has lost some relevance. Younger generations aren’t as loyal or aware of the swoosh anymore.
So, for big brands, maintaining confidence and trust is critical. For small or new brands, or brands that never had strong recognition, can they still gain traction?
Kevin: You can get traction … but it’s really challenging.
One challenge is that multiple teams need to work together: product, innovation, marketing, support, supply chain. SEO doesn’t control all these variables. It’s always been a discipline of recommendations, relying on others to act.
So, you always were relying on other teams, and that has 10x’d now with AI. Because, as you said, brand, brand perception, and sentiment are so critical to how you appear in search results or answers.
And it goes back to so many different touch points with a brand, not just the logo that people see or the advertising, but also the product that they use, retention, all that kind of stuff.
SEOs need to show other departments where issues lie, using click-through rates, brand search volume, and engagement metrics as signals. They must communicate the story and rally other teams.
But that often runs into cost concerns. Asking for a new call center to improve support has big budget implications, and quantifying ROI is tough.
So, SEOs must push beyond the Google channel and influence company strategy. It’s incredibly difficult to influence.
Katie: Absolutely. And speaking of SEO being declared “dead,” I’ve heard that every few years in my 20 years in the industry, but this is the first time I’ve felt a credible threat.
SEO will never truly die. It’s discovery, and discovery is always needed, but it’s definitely changing. It used to be the most cost-effective marketing channel. Now, ROI is less certain, and budgets are contracting.
But there’s a silver lining. A lot of low-quality, general content meant just to drive mass page views is getting weeded out.
For example, we used to rank for “What is E-E-A-T?” and get tons of unqualified traffic. With AI Overviews answering those general queries now, traffic is down, but the remaining traffic is far more qualified. That’s better for conversions.
It’s hard for publishers who relied on brute-force clicks. But for us, shifting away from programmatic and toward advertisers aligned with our audience, like SaaS, has worked. The industry is changing massively.
So, what do you think is next for SEO and marketing?
The New Role Of SEO In A Changing Landscape
Kevin: You hit it on the head. SEO is contracting; budgets are down, leadership confidence is down, and when people leave, their roles often aren’t replaced. SEO has died and reinvented itself many times.
I see that we’re using a lot of SEO also for AI visibility optimization. I do expect that to change, but however you flip it, we are in a transition period. And the problem with transition periods is that they’re hard to navigate. You lose orientation, and it’s painful.
Once you settle at a new baseline, you just run around a little headless, and you try to find your way. And then slowly, things kind of start to settle back in.
And so I’m very confident that whatever we’re going to call this, we’re going to settle into a new baseline. It might take a while. This is not going to stop in the next six months – probably not twelve months. But it’s hard to predict when.
Based on how quickly models improve and how quickly humans adapt to them, that will decide the pace of this transition.
However, there are also many opportunities in transitions. You can reinvent yourself. And that’s where, as SEOs, we might lose the SEO budget, but maybe we gain some brand budget, which has been much, much bigger in the past.
You see companies spending millions of dollars for multi-year contracts for a tiny logo that sits somewhere on a Formula 1 car. These things happen all the time.
There’s a big opportunity for SEO to detach from that unwanted profiling as a performance channel – detach ourselves from being a performance channel, and become much more of a brand channel, influence channel, presence channel – whatever you want to call it.
New metrics. New levers. Deeply rooted in SEO. And effective and powerful, but kind of in a new design, right? Like SEO 2.0. Whatever you want to call it.
And I do agree with you. I also see people who’ve been in the game for a long time stepping out. Totally get that. I see young people losing a bit of confidence.
But I will also say that I would like (but wouldn’t admit) that there’s a little part of me that’s kind of excited for all this change.
Because it’s an opportunity to kind of reshuffle the cards, find out new stuff, maybe find some secrets, and kind of reverse engineer what’s going on.
When you look at the last just 10 days where multiple people and companies found new ways to reverse engineer what queries Gemini uses and ChatGPT uses, I’m like, man, it’s awesome to see how adamant the industry works on developing the new playbook, dissecting how these mechanics work and LLMs work, and finding new ways.
So, I have high confidence, and I also have a lot of empathy for all the pain and the kind of problems that this industry is going through. But again, I see us coming out the other side at some point in like a new design – and with a lot of impact.
Katie Morton: I love it. I agree with the empathy as well. Because everyone in marketing, it seems, has lost their mind a little bit over the past year or two with these shifts in traffic.
But that Wild Wild West environment is also really exciting because there are going to be all of these developments.
And if people are calm and they persevere and they do the work to figure these things out, either for themselves or to watch what those researchers are finding, people will be okay, right?
Kevin: We always are. Sorry to cut you off there, but there’s a really important point to make here that I didn’t make – and that is: It’s not just search that’s changing.
SEO is at the forefront of AI. At the absolute forefront. Because it’s about words, and it’s about search, and search is kind of the biggest interface between AI and humans right now.
So it’s not just search that’s changing. Marketing is completely changing. And like, all of our lives are completely changing.
Sure, this will take years to trickle through, maybe not even to the degree we’ve thought of it, but it’s pretty clear that AI is at least as revolutionary as the internet. Maybe even the most revolutionary invention that humanity has made so far.
So let’s not forget: Everything is changing. It’s not just us SEOs. It’s all the channels. It’s marketing as a whole.
Modes and levers are disappearing, and new ones are coming up. We’re feeling it deeply in SEO, as being kind of the front line of AI. But make no mistake, this will trickle through to all the paid channels, product, everything.
Everybody is in a state of shock right now, trying to figure out what the new branches are to hold on to and then build on top of. Marketing as we know it is over. LLMs are transforming how they reach us.
Katie: This affects every channel. At SEJ, we’ve collapsed editorial and marketing into one integrated team. It used to be SEO and editorial here, marketing over there, and no one really talked. That doesn’t work anymore.
Now, everything is more cohesive and focused on the ICP and conversion. It’s better for customers and for teams.
Kevin: 100%. I talk to all my clients about this. SEO and paid search should’ve always been connected, but they were siloed, same with product, email, social, etc.
I mean, look: Realistically and ideally, SEO and paid (or paid search) have always been connected at the hip. But I’ll tell you, at least across almost all the companies that I’ve worked with, they were siloed.
The same exists with all these other teams, like product marketing or social media, conversion, and email – all that kind of stuff.
Now’s the time to rip off the band-aid. There can be small teams of maybe an SEO, an editor, an email person, a social person, and maybe a very technical person who can quickly prototype new apps, programs, or tools.
The biggest challenge now is internal red tape. AI is a speed catalyst, but companies’ old workflows slow them down. Big organizations are stuck.
I’m urging clients to form these multi-disciplinary units under one manager, one roof, one mission.
Reaching People Everywhere Requires A Bold Shift To Other Platforms
Katie: Awesome. One last point: other platforms. For too long, people relied too heavily on Google. Diversifying traffic sources – ads, social, newsletters – is now essential. Holistic marketing is the future. What are you seeing [that is] working right now?
Generally speaking, where do people live these days? Where are humans hanging out, and where do we find them? What are the success metrics that you’re seeing?
Kevin: The short answer is: Everywhere.
Katie: Good luck, everyone. Okay, good night. That’s the show!
Kevin: No, but the reality is, everywhere. There’s this interesting paradox. I need to coin this term somehow, but this interesting paradox that basically all the social networks are growing. And new ones are popping up, right? TikTok – I mean, it’s not that new anymore, but it’s still growing. Reddit is becoming much more of a household name now.
And so you ask yourself, what gives? Sure, linear TV’s down, okay. But how is this possible? And the reality is: People are online all the time – speaking for a friend – and they use a lot of platforms at the same time.
So, the best teams, or the companies that are making a big impact, they have this surround sound effect that they’re creating, where they’re present in a lot of places. They engage authentically, say, on Reddit.
When good companies engage on Reddit, it doesn’t feel like marketing. It’s not marketing, really. It’s much more like trying to be helpful, more like customer support or success.
That’s why these people are generally very well-suited to interact on Reddit. They truly add value. They’re truly part of the conversation.
Brands are repurposing their content in a very thoughtful and high-fidelity way, where maybe they create a blog article, turn it into a video, turn it into clips, which then turn into questions they answer on Reddit. There is this kind of everywhere strategy. AI really helps with that.
And I will also say it’s typically not companies that are getting stuck at the quantification-of-impact question. The reality is that steering an organization or a company toward that multi-channel effect – or that surround sound effect – takes a swing.
It takes a leader to say, “Okay, we’re going to spend some money and take six months, and we’re going to invest in Reddit and YouTube, and we’re going to wait for the results to come in. We’re not going to sit there every day refreshing the dashboard asking, ‘How many sales have we generated yet?’”
It takes a bit of a swing. And so it’s defining for this era, for this transition period, where it’s much harder to project and forecast where you’re going to land with some of these things.
It takes judgment and taste and a certain degree of risk-taking to invest in these channels and functions, and being comfortable, or at least okay, with waiting for some of the results to come in and being able to measure them later.
I’m not saying you should wait a year or two. But give it two quarters, maybe three quarters, and experiment with some of these channels.
So, that’s where people are – people are everywhere. It’s not enough to just have one shot at one platform. You need to be kind of everywhere.
And repurposing can help. Using AI with some of these things helps. But at the end of the day, you need to take a swing.
Katie: Very wise, Kevin. One of those things that I found highly annoying is that you can run these experiments, and you’re going to wait for your results, and then before your experiment is even done, everything’s changed again.
Kevin: Exactly. Predictable methods are gone. You take swings, and some won’t connect because conditions change. The best leaders, the best teams – a lot of times, they take a lot of swings.
Because some of those swings will hit full force, and it’s kind of a skill to build.
Katie: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. We’ve implemented monthly experiments at SEJ. Every department runs one. It could be layout, content type … constant iteration. I tell the team: soft knees. Be ready to shift. There’s no “set it and forget it” anymore.
Kevin: Yes, yes. On point. Allow people to fail. Another good skill is being able to take meaningful risks. I’m not saying bet the farm, but as a leader, if you want to encourage your people to take risks, let them.
Again, that doesn’t mean to blindly shoot in all directions. You want to have some thought behind that, some judgment. You want to be critical. But there has to be a point at which you let go.
Katie: That is a really perfect point. We tie experiments to north-star metrics. For us, one is newsletter subscriptions, so most of our experiments support that. We’ve seen great success, not always in raw traffic, but in conversions and revenue.
Kevin: Amazing. Congratulations on that.
Katie: Thank you. All right, Kevin, any parting remarks before we head out?
Kevin: I’m hearing a lot of very concerned SEOs. Concerned about “How do I tell this story?” or “How do I manage my boss or leadership in this time where traffic is down?”
I want to send out some courage. This is one of the biggest shifts I’ve lived through in my life. I would bet it’s probably the same for most, if not all, of the audience.
So, this is maybe the time to make some changes and have some grace about finding a new playbook.
I’m seeing a lot of SEOs very scared about this. I get the initial fear. But again, this is such a substantial, fundamental change. It’s okay for things to look different. It’s okay for you not to have the answer right now. Be honest with leadership. Push back if needed.
Katie: Focus on new metrics, not just UVs or PVs, but ones that connect to business goals. That’s where the story of success will be told.
Kevin: Exactly.
Katie: Thanks again, Kevin. Where can people find you?
Kevin:growth-memo.com, or just search for “Growth Memo.” That’s my main hub.
Katie: Awesome. We’re at searchenginejournal.com. See you next time!
Kevin: Thanks for having me.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Ask An SEO: Should I Hire Candidates Who Can Use AI Tools Or Have Traditional Skills? via @sejournal, @HelenPollitt1
In this week’s Ask An SEO, a marketing manager asks which SEO skills are most valuable to look for in candidates today, especially with AI in the mix:
“I’m a marketing manager who’s been tasked with hiring our first in-house SEO specialist.
With AI tools becoming more prevalent, what skills should I prioritize when interviewing candidates in 2025? Are traditional SEO skills still as valuable, or should I focus more on candidates who can work alongside AI tools?”
This is a great question, and one I imagine a lot of hiring managers in the marketing industry are asking themselves.
For years, we’ve been looking for SEO professionals with skills that will help our websites thrive in Google, Bing, and Yandex. But, what skill set is needed for the emerging markets of ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, and Claude?
And what about keyword research, content creation, and technical audits? Are they still useful activities for SEO professionals to carry out manually when there are so many AI tools purporting to be able to do this for you now?
What Traditional SEO Skills Are Still Needed
We often think of skills within traditional SEO fitting roughly into three categories: technical, content, and authority-building. Are these still needed in the era of large language model (LLM) platforms and tools?
If the bots can’t access the pages you want to have ranked, can’t read the content on them, or find the page to be unfriendly for users, you will struggle in the traditional search engine results pages (SERPs).
Technical SEO skills will continue to be important to online visibility in the new era of organic discovery.
An excellent SEO will be someone who can utilize AI tooling to automate and speed up the checks they are already performing. The really valuable technical SEO skills will still be analyzing, prioritizing, and communicating the issues when they are discovered.
Good technical SEOs have been looking at ways to automate their processes using Python and Structured Query Language (SQL) for a while now.
AI is enabling them to do this quicker, and for those who are newer to those languages, to automate their processes more easily.
Hire SEO specialists who are excited to use AI tools to enhance their work, not replace it entirely.
You will still need SEO pros to be creative in problem-solving and working within the confines of your organization’s technology, resources, and capabilities.
AI-written content has been a hot topic for a couple of years now. Can AI replace human writers? Should you hire with content creation and marketing skills in mind, or can you leave that purely to AI now?
I would suggest that any SEO hire you make needs to understand how to craft engaging copy that clearly defines the brand and meets the needs of users at each stage of the buying journey.
This hasn’t changed much from when SEO pros brief writers and graphic designers in content creation. We still need SEO specialists to understand how to request engaging content, whether that be through AI or human creators.
The ability to define what will be engaging content through research (whether keywords or prompts) and how users engage with it (whether on the brand site or within the LLM’s answer) is still critical.
Previously, there was an evolution in SEO from regarding authority building as getting backlinks by whatever means necessary, to acquiring links through engaging and relevant content.
For optimization in LLMs, the desire is more to cement a brand’s positioning and sentiment through mentions on other authoritative websites.
The skill set needed to acquire authoritative links through digital PR will not be that different from what’s needed to acquire mentions.
In fact, good digital PRs have recognized for a while now that brand mentions are valuable in their own right.
There is a need to understand the publisher who is being targeted, what they write about, when best to contact them, and how. This could well be automated to a good degree by AI.
However, the really excellent PRs build up relationships with their contacts, so they are front-of-mind when a story is breaking. This is something AI will struggle to replace.
When hiring for the digital PR side of SEO, look at their relationship-building skills in particular.
AI has (thankfully!) taken much of the pressure off SEO professionals to be efficient mathematicians, proficient in Excel formulae, or, at least, having a good percentage calculator tool bookmarked.
Summarizing increases and decreases in key performance indicators (KPIs) is something AI can handle. It can highlight correlations between metrics and identify likely causes. AI can also summarize this all into a compelling report.
But, it still needs a human to determine if its recommendations are valid and a viable course of action.
A good SEO will be someone who can utilize the AI tools to draw conclusions and highlight issues, while retaining strategic oversight.
Strategy
That leads on to strategic skills. Good SEO pros will be able to utilize AI tooling for processes while drawing on their own deep contextual understanding and common-sense reasoning.
Hire SEO professionals who are adept at considering the moral and ethical implications of marketing and who can adapt to novel situations.
AI tooling will not be able to build trust with senior stakeholders. It will not be able to inspire and influence them. It definitely will not be able to manage egos and emotions like a good SEO has to.
Skills That Help In Emerging Markets
Beyond the skills that we’ve long been looking to hire for in SEO, it’s important to find people who are able to thrive in a burgeoning environment.
Great SEO pros have been cultivating these skills throughout their careers. Bad SEO professionals have scraped by on second-hand knowledge and following templated procedures.
Experimental Approach
Make sure they have the ability to experiment and apply their learnings.
We’re entering a new phase of SEO where what worked before might not work again. There are no experts in GEO yet; we’re all having to learn as we go along.
Make sure your candidates are willing to learn from trial and error.
Understanding Of How To Work With Uncertainty
The days of following an audit template are both long-gone and a way off. We can’t just apply what we know from SEO directly to GEO.
We need to learn what works in those new platforms. That means good SEO pros are going to have to be comfortable with the uncertainty in their industry again.
Seasoned SEO professionals will remember back to this during their formative years in the industry, but newer SEO specialists will need to break free of the “this is what works for SEO” mentality and be OK with adapting on the fly more.
Ability To Problem Solve And Investigate
This means they will really need to be keen problem-solvers. SEO, at its root, has always been about problem-solving.
With the suite of AI tooling growing, the temptation to delegate critical thinking to a machine will be great.
However, SEO pros will still need to be able to take a step back, consider all the context and angles, and work toward a solution given the resources and constraints they face.
This means that they cannot rely solely on AI to help them.
You need someone who can work alongside AI tools as well as having traditional SEO skills.
The experience and qualities of a seasoned SEO professional will still be extremely useful in the emerging world of LLMs and AI tooling.
It would be a risk to your organic performance if you hire solely based on whether the candidate can utilize AI tools well.
However, you do want to make sure the SEO pro is using all of the advantages that AI can bring. They need to be able to adapt to new technology and processes.
How To Interview For SEO Skills That Complement AI Solutions
The curiosity about new technology. The desire to experiment and adapt. Having an open mind to change. These are all attributes of good SEO professionals that are more important now than ever before.
When considering whether an SEO professional is a likely good fit for your role, find out their approach to new situations.
See how they have adapted in the past to changes in SEO that needed a change of tactics.
Ask them how they have diagnosed and responded to algorithm updates, or expanded their skill sets to include social media search engines.
Summary
In essence, the need for traditional SEO skills is not diminishing. However, great SEO professionals will be those who can adapt their skill set to work in GEO, as well as make the best use of new AI tooling available to them.
Alongside that, problem-solving, experimentation, and a keen strategic approach are what to look for in your next SEO hire.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
OpenAI And Perplexity Set To Battle Google For Browser Dominance via @sejournal, @martinibuster
Credible rumors are circulating that OpenAI is developing a browser. However, the timing of the anonymous tip is curious, because Perplexity coincidentally announced they are releasing a browser named Comet.
It’s a longstanding tradition in Silicon Valley for competitors to try to overshadow competitor announcements with competing announcements of their own, and the timing of OpenAI’s anonymous rumor seems more than coincidental. For example, OpenAI leaked rumors of their own competing search engine on the exact same date that Google officially announced Gemini 1.5, on February 15, 2024. It’s a thing.
“OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab market-dominating Google Chrome, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It will give OpenAI more direct access to a cornerstone of Google’s success: user data.”
Perplexity Comet
According to TechCrunch, Perplexity’s Comet browser comes with its Perplexity AI search engine as the default. The browser includes an AI agent called Comet Assistant that can help with everyday tasks like summarizing emails and navigating the web. Comet will be released first to its $200/month subscribers and to a list of VIPs invited to try it out.
There’s something old-school about Google, Perplexity, and OpenAI battling it out for browser dominance, a technological space that continues to have relevance to users and perhaps the one constant of the Internet, which is that and pop-ups.
Google’s Quality Rankings May Rely On These Content Signals via @sejournal, @martinibuster
The average SEO strategy begins and ends with keyword research, with keyword volume as the deciding factor in what topics will be written about. It’s an outdated approach that fails to resonate with users and no longer reflects how modern search engines evaluate content. Content that delivers a meaningful experience across the factors that matter most to users earns trust, signals quality, and attracts links, shares, and higher rankings.
User Behavior Has Always Been A Part Of Search Ranking
User signals play a central role in Google’s ranking algorithms and the recent antitrust lawsuit against Google revealed how important these are.
One of the exhibits in the recent DOJ antitrust trial against Google featured a confidential presentation called Ranking For Research where Google noted that user behavior signals are noisy and that it takes a lot of data in order to see the patterns.
“The association between observed user behavior and search result quality is tenuous. We need lots of traffic to draw conclusions, and individual examples are difficult to interpret.”
Another Google document stated that user interaction signals are important to search rankings (PDF):
“…not one system, but a great many within ranking are built on logs. This isn’t just traditional systems, like the one I showed you earlier, but also the most cutting-edge machine learning systems, many of which we’ve announced externally– RankBrain, RankEmbed, and DeepRank.”
Google has used many kinds of user behavior signals for ranking purposes:
The Google Navboost patent ranks pages based on user interaction signals.
Google’s Trust Rank patent describes an algorithm that relies on user trust signals to identify trustworthy sites and then identifies sites that are linked from those user-trusted websites.
Google’s Branded Search patent describes an algorithm that uses navigational queries as implied links for ranking purposes.
PageRank is commonly thought of as just a link algorithm but it’s actually a way to leverage user signals in the form of the links they publish on websites. It’s also a model of user behavior because the linked nature of the web can be used to indicate which sites a user is likely to visit.
“PageRank can be thought of as a model of user behavior.”
Do Keywords Matter Anymore?
Yes, keyword still matter. But it’s been a long time since exact match keywords were a major factor that determined which sites are ranked. Look at virtually any search result and you’ll see that many top ranked sites do not contain an exact match for the keywords in a search query.
Content strategies that rely on keyword-based hubs or silos should be given a second look. Those kinds of strategies originated in the earliest days of search engines when adding exact match keywords into titles and headings was a sure way to be ranked. That’s no longer the case, so why are SEOs still stuck with keyword-based strategies that map keywords to a hub and spoke content strategy.
Logical site structure is a part of a quality user interface and makes it easy to find content. Focus on that and interlink in ways that make sense to users.
Try thinking in terms of topics that users are interested in and see how far that takes you.
Write With The Purpose To Be Understood
I’m going to share an advanced concept about writing that helps sentences, paragraphs and entire web pages reach an audience more effectively.
Cognitive Load
There is a scientific concept called cognitive load. In the context of reading, cognitive load is the amount of mental effort used to process information.
For example, sentences with confusing instructions or jargon can take extra effort to process. When the load exceeds a certain threshold, the person’s ability to understand or learn from what they’re reading suffers.
Cognitive Dissonance
I have my own theory that’s similar to cognitive load that I call cognitive dissonance. It’s not something scientific that I read, it’s just my own theory.
Dissonance means a lack of harmony, when sounds clash. Poor writing can be dissonant due to the choice of words that are abstract (lack a clear meaning or have multiple meanings) , using jargon, or simply using words that aren’t commonly understood.
Another source of dissonance is writing a paragraph that rambles rather than builds up to an idea.
Cognitive dissonance causes a reader to lose track of what they’re reading and consequently engage less with the content.
Here’s the same sequence of paragraphs you just read, with an explanation of their purpose:
1. Define the idea: I explain that I have a personal theory
I have my own theory that’s similar to cognitive load that I call cognitive dissonance. It’s not something scientific that I read, it’s just my own theory.
2. Explain my idea with a definition and metaphors
Dissonance means a lack of harmony, when sounds clash…
3. Apply the metaphor to writing:
Poor writing can be dissonant due to the choice of words…
4. Expand the definition to paragraph structure
Another source of dissonance is writing a paragraph that rambles rather than builds up to an idea.
5. The big idea I was building up to: What it all means
Cognitive dissonance causes a reader to lose track of what they’re reading and consequently engage less with the content.
SEOs like to talk about hooks and other little tricks to writing, but good writing is not about tricking the user. It’s about clear communication. It doesn’t always come out right the first time the words spill onto the page. Sometimes it helps to step away and come back to it for the errors in sentence and paragraph structure to become visible.
Crafting Content Around the User Experience
Publishers who build sites around keywords face an uphill struggle obtaining links, and since links remain an important ranking factor, it makes sense that the SEO strategy works together with obtaining links. This is where user experience marketing shines.
Nobody links to a keyword-based site because the keywords make them feel good about the site. Keyword-based sites feel sterile because they are optimized for keywords, not people. That approach also results in a made-for-search-engine website structure. Nothing screams “made for search engines” like sitewide title tags with keywords ripped from Google’s People Also Asked keyword lists.
What I would suggest is to acquaint yourself with who you’re writing for by speaking to people who are interested in your topic, joining some Facebook groups, checking out popular forums, listening to podcasts about the topic, watching YouTube videos about your topic, and reading the comment sections of those videos. This will not only give you an idea of what people are talking about, it will show you how they’re talking about it and quite possibly give you ideas for your business, whether that’s selling things online or writing about a topic
Users Share Experiences, Not Links
Perhaps the best kind of link is the kind created because of a positive experience (learning, usefulness, fun). Scientific research has discovered that experiences motivate sharing and that positive experiences are shared the most.
Insight: Those aren’t just links that people are sharing. Links from one website to another website or even on social media, are the expression of the experiences people had with a website. Cultivate positive experiences and people will begin linking and sharing your website.
Insight: Devoting time to the user experience is a pragmatic approach to promoting a website because inspiring site visitors with emotional resonance, a feeling, is a sure way to encourage more sales, more links, and more traffic. And that’s why we optimize, right? To make more money.
Make Visitors Want To Return
Make your content (even if they’re products) easily viewable from the top of the fold
Make your content easy to scan (with headings)
Offer related articles at key points where visitors tend to become disinterested
Encourage messaging opt-ins
Post-Transaction Experience
Successful entrepreneur Justin Sanger pointed out that everyone knows about the sales funnel, but less well known is the funnel that opens up after the sale. He calls this upside-down funnel the Post-Transaction Funnel. The Post-Transaction Funnel represents all the things you can do to send a signal back to the search engines that site visitors had a good experience at your website. This activity includes:
Encouraging social sharing
Cultivating good reviews
Encouraging word of mouth referrals
Cultivating relationships with non-competitors in your space
I believe it is a good practice to consider the post-transaction funnel because those are the kinds of activities that tend to cultivate more sales. Post-transaction marketing is something to consider outside of the Classic SEO box.
1. User-behavior signals are used within Google’s various algorithms and machine learning systems as evidence of page quality and trust.
2. Logically considered, visitor-friendly sentence, paragraph, page, and site architecture that makes it easy to understand information supports strong quality signals.
3. Content that uses clear, jargon-free sentences and paragraphs that build logically enables readers to process information effortlessly and helps build a better user experience.
4. Content planned around user experience rather than exact-match keywords makes pages feel more human-centered and less like they were made for search engines, which contributes to greater trust.
5. Positive emotional experiences that motivate natural sharing and backlinks act as strong indicators of authority and trust.
6. Page design that includes above-the-fold visibility, scannable headings, related-article prompts, and opt-ins helps keep visitors engaged, active, and returning, reinforcing external content quality signals.
7. Post-transaction funnel actions, such as encouraging reviews, social sharing, and word-of-mouth referrals, feed satisfaction signals back to search engines and strengthen trustworthiness.
It is important to recognize that the foundation of a successful website is the user experience. Even a successful PPC landing page is crafted with the principle of a quality end-to-end user experience, from the layout and ease of data delivery to convenience.
User experience marketing is about moving beyond simple keyword phrase optimization, with a content strategy built on understanding what that content means to the user. Is it important? Is it entertaining? Does it rock, and does it roll?
Relevance is still king, but the definition of relevance is now focused on the user, not your keywords.
Payment Processor Startup Finix Announces WooCommerce Plugin via @sejournal, @martinibuster
Finix, a payment processing company, has launched a new WooCommerce plugin that enables WordPress merchants to integrate embedded payments directly into their stores. The new plugin enables WooCommerce merchants to accept all major credit cards, as well as Apple Pay and bank transfers. Setting up via the WooCommerce plugin is easy and is said to take only ten minutes to set up and start accepting payments.
“Flexible Payment Methods: Accept major credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and bank transfers. Offer flexibility customers expect and reduce checkout friction.
Transparent Pricing: Finix uses interchange-plus pricing for clear, detailed fee breakdowns, ideal for high-volume merchants.
Apple Pay Integration: Enable Apple Pay on supported browsers like Safari and Chrome, with customizable button styles and types that blend seamlessly into your storefront.
Customizable Checkout Display: Match your brand’s voice by tailoring the look and language of each payment method for a more intuitive customer experience.
WooCommerce Blocks Checkout Compatible Fully supports WooCommerce’s new block-based checkout and the classic flow, keeping your store aligned with the latest updates.
Automated Dispute & Bank Return Handling Reduce operational overhead with automatic order status updates triggered by webhook events.”
Finix is a payment processor that was founded in San Francisco in 2015. It has received funding from major Silicon Valley venture capitalists and is regarded as a rising competitor to companies like Stripe.
Finix claims that merchants report faster payouts using its systems and that it offers a streamlined checkout flow.
ChatGPT Recommendations Potentially Influenced By Hacked Sites via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern
An investigation by SEO professional James Brockbank reveals that ChatGPT may be recommending businesses based on content from hacked websites and expired domains.
The findings aren’t a comprehensive study but the result of personal testing and observations. Brockbank, who serves as Managing Director at Digitaloft, says his report emerged from exploring how brands gain visibility in ChatGPT’s responses.
His analysis suggests that some actors are successfully gaming the system by publishing content on compromised or repurposed domains that retain high authority signals.
This content, despite being irrelevant or deceptive, can surface in ChatGPT-generated business recommendations.
“I believe that the more we understand about why certain citations get surfaced, even if these are spammy and manipulative, the better we understand how these new platforms work.”
How Manipulated Content Appears In ChatGPT Responses
Brockbank identified two main tactics that appear to influence ChatGPT’s business recommendations:
1. Hacked Websites
In multiple examples, ChatGPT surfaced gambling recommendations that traced back to legitimate websites that had been compromised.
One case involved a California-based domestic violence attorney whose site was found hosting a listicle about online slots.
Other examples included a United Nations youth coalition website and a U.S. summer camp site. They were both seemingly hijacked to host gambling-related content, including pages using white text on a white background to evade detection.
2. Expired Domains
The second tactic involves acquiring expired domains with strong backlink profiles and rebuilding them to promote unrelated content.
In one case, Brockbank discovered a site with over 9,000 referring domains from sources like BBC, CNN, and Bloomberg. The domain, once owned by a UK arts charity, had been repurposed to promote gambling.
Brockbank explained:
“There’s no question that it’s the site’s authority that’s causing it to be used as a source. The issue is that the domain changed hands and the site totally switched up.”
He also found domains that previously belonged to charities and retailers now being used to publish casino recommendations.
Why This Content Is Surfacing
Brockbank suggests that ChatGPT favors domains with perceived authority and recent publication dates.
Additionally, he finds ChatGPT’s recommendation system may not sufficiently evaluate whether the content aligns with the original site’s purpose.
Brockbank observed:
“ChatGPT prefers recent sources, and the fact that these listicles aren’t topically relevant to what the domain is (or should be) about doesn’t seem to matter.”
Brockbank acknowledges that being featured in authentic “best of” listicles or media placements can help businesses gain visibility in AI-generated results.
However, leveraging hacked or expired domains to manipulate source credibility crosses an ethical line.
Brockbank writes:
“Injecting your brand or content into a hacked site or rebuilding an expired domain solely to fool a language model into citing it? That’s manipulation, and it undermines the credibility of the platform.”
What This Means
While Brockbank’s findings are based on individual testing rather than a formal study, they surface a real concern: ChatGPT may be citing manipulated sources without fully understanding their origins or context.
The takeaway isn’t just about risk, it’s also about responsibility. As platforms like ChatGPT become more influential in how users discover businesses, building legitimate authority through trustworthy content and earned media will matter more than ever.
At the same time, the investigation highlights an urgent need for companies to improve how these systems detect and filter deceptive content. Until that happens, both users and businesses should approach AI-generated recommendations with a dose of skepticism.
Brockbank concluded:
“We’re not yet at the stage where we can trust ChatGPT recommendations without considering where it’s sourced these from.”
Yoast SEO Functionality Is Now Available Within Google Docs via @sejournal, @martinibuster
Yoast SEO announced a new feature that enables SEO and readability analysis within Google Docs, allowing publishers and teams to integrate search marketing best practices at the moment content is created instead of as an editing activity that comes after the fact.
Two Functionalities Carry Over To Google Docs
Yoast SEO is providing SEO optimization and readability feedback within the Google Docs editing environment.
SEO feedback consists of the familiar traffic light system that offers visual confirmation that the content is search optimized according to Yoast SEO’s content metrics on keywords, structure and optimization.
The readability analysis offers feedback on paragraph structure, sentence length, and headings to help the writer create engaging content, which is increasingly important in today’s content-first search engines that prioritize high quality content.
According to Yoast SEO:
“The Google Docs add-on tool is available to all Yoast SEO Premium subscribers, offering them a range of advanced optimization tools. For those not yet subscribed to Yoast Premium, the add-on is also available as a single purchase, making it accessible to a broader audience.
For those managing multiple team members, additional Google accounts can be linked for just $5 a month per account or annually for a 10% discount ($54). This flexibility ensures that anyone who writes content and in-house marketing teams managing multiple projects can benefit from high-quality SEO guidance.”
This new offering is an interesting step for Yoast SEO. Previously known as the developer of the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, it’s expanded to Shopify and now it’s breaking out of the CMS paradigm to encompass the optimization process that happens before the content gets into the CMS.
Stop Paying the Google Ads Tax Without Realizing It [Webinar] via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell
Most brands don’t know they’re wasting money on branded ads. Are you one of them?
What if your Google Ads strategy is quietly draining your budget? Many advertisers are paying high CPCs even when there’s no real competition. It’s often because they’re unknowingly bidding against themselves.
Join BrandPilot AI on July 17, 2025 for a live session with Jenn Paterson and John Beresford, as they explain The Uncontested Paid Search Problem and how to stop it before it eats into your performance.
In this data-backed session, you’ll learn:
Why CPCs rise even without competitor bidding
How to detect branded ad waste in your own account
What this hidden flaw is costing your brand
Tactical strategies to reclaim lost budget and improve your results
Why this matters:
Brands are overspending on Google Ads without knowing the real reason. If you’re running branded search campaigns, this session will show you how to identify and fix what’s costing you the most.
Register today to protect your spend and improve performance. If you can’t attend live, sign up anyway and we’ll send you the full recording after the event.
