There’s a lot of FUD right now about the fate of SEO. Is AI search going to collapse our industry? Kevin Indig doesn’t think so. He believes we’re simply entering the next exciting cycle of SEO —… | Tim Soulo

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CMO @ Ahrefs / $100M+ ARR bootstrapped(!!!) SaaS / Questioning all marketing best practices.

1mo

There’s a lot of FUD right now about the fate of SEO. Is AI search going to collapse our industry? Kevin Indig doesn’t think so. He believes we’re simply entering the next exciting cycle of SEO — one where the industry and the profession continue to evolve, not disappear. Check it out:

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Transcript

Let's shift gears a little bit and I want to hear your answer about the. Question or in some cases a statement that SEO is dead so stick a fork in it. SO is dead, AI has disrupted it, things will never be the same, blah blah blah. But what are you seeing is assured that this time? I think SEO died many times, right if you will, and it kind of revitalized over and over again, so. I wanna I wanna draw a different viewpoint of this which is. In the minds of leadership, right, they see it at a 30% structural decline of web traffic. And in their minds, SEO might not be dead, but it's probably close to being in a coma, right? So it's very hard to go back to somebody who sees that number and then say, oh, no, SEO was fine, like, we're OK. So they all ask themselves the same question, which is what is next? Like what comes after? And I would say the majority of them see AI/AI surge as the next thing. So everybody's hungry to invest. They're all asking, cool, how can we be more visible? In chapati and coal, because they all understand that there could be a potential first mover advantage and I would say in some cases that's true. We can talk a bit more about like how much classic SEO influences LM visibility, etc. But. They all smell the first mover advantage. They're all very keen to invest. All of a sudden budgets are opening right and and people and companies are willing to invest and as we all know like or have seen based on the data. I traffic converts at a much, much higher or better rate than organic traffic and it's also still very small, right. So all these companies, all, all this excitement is an investment in the future with an implied expectation that this AI traffic grows to a meaningful size and hopefully at some point. Either comes on top of what's left of classic organic search from Google or adds even more. I really really like your perspective. So basically AI is not killing SEO, it's creating a whole new cycle each Revs podcast.

Diane Emily-Rose Heart, graphic

Diane Emily-Rose Heart

Founder of The Visual Business Accelerator | Helping brands create AI-findable, law-compliant visual content that drives visibility, trust, and results.

1mo

I’m looking forward to listening to this one. It’s a whirlwind of information out there… and still, no one talks about the power of adding filenames, alt text and captions to images used on website pages or within blogs. I’m always happy to chat about that one! 😁

Jace Russell, graphic

Brand Partnerships @ Stacker | Earned Media & AI Search | 2x Startup Founder

1mo

Lot of notes on that one

Great Opomu, graphic

Founder @ WPFlat, a WordPress agency

1mo

Working deeply with media companies on technical SEO (not on-page or off-page), I am certain SEO isn't going anywhere. Without proper SEO these AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude etc) won't thrive. In a layman's understanding, how can ChatGPT trust my brand's content if they don't find it online to crawl? And for them to crawl it online, my content should be properly optimize or those who mention my brand should properly optimize their content. I know there are things to consider like training, real-time access, content quality and discoverability but I hope you get my point.

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Tim Soulo

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