SEO isn’t quite dying, but AI answers present new complications.
Historically, in the SEO landscape, businesses would be forced to compete against each other for the finite real estate of search engine results pages (SERPs). But these days, there’s a new competitor emerging: AI.
Powered by a sophisticated array of generative AI tools, Google and other search engines are attempting to answer user queries without forcing them to visit websites. Already, business owners relying heavily on AI are starting to feel the pressure.
But is this a sign that AI is in the process of killing SEO? Or are your SEO strategies likely to continue paying dividends into the future?
The Current Situation
As it stands, AI does pose a bit of an SEO risk. If you’ve built your entire strategy around giving people answers to their questions with your content, AI is effectively attempting to usurp you. However, the impact of AI generated answers isn’t as severe or devastating as it’s sometimes made out to be. For some businesses and in some contexts, organic traffic is down, but this is far from the norm.
Also, AI can’t generate answers for every query. Even if it siphons organic traffic from some of your queries, it won’t be able to devastate your entire SEO strategy.
The Future
The future is a bit more opaque. Months and years from now, AI may become sophisticated enough to completely take over SERPs, effectively reducing your organic search visibility to zero. But it remains to be seen whether this is possible and if it is, how long it will take to come to fruition.
Best Practices
If you want to contend with an SEO environment starting to be dominated by AI, your best course of action is to diversify your marketing strategy portfolio. Don’t exclusively rely on organic traffic; instead, use a blend of different digital marketing strategies to bring people to your website. You can also mitigate risk by focusing heavily on keywords and search queries that can’t easily be answered by AI.
Are you struggling to stay modern with your SEO strategy? Contact us for a free consultation today!
