The AI revolution is transforming the search landscape rapidly, leaving traditional SEO tactics struggling to keep up. Here’s a 13-point roadmap to help you deal with changes caused by AI technologies. These include large language models, knowledge graphs and conversational search engines.
By adopting modern strategies, you can thrive in a world dominated by AI search and increasingly closed ecosystems.
What’s making traditional SEO a minor player
Over the past three years, search has undergone more upheaval than in the previous two decades combined. Traditional SEO tactics are struggling to keep pace, making it essential to embrace a modern approach.
To thrive in a world dominated by AI search and assistive engines, you’ll need to optimize for three core technologies:
- Traditional search engines.
- Large language models (LLMs).
- Knowledge graphs.
SEOs must now account for conversational search and generative AI, and their integration into a growing array of products.
While this might seem daunting, adapting your SEO mindset and strategies can ensure you stay ahead and help your clients and teams thrive.
1. Elevate your content’s credibility beyond the page
“Seth Godin said, ‘You are your work,’ and that may not be more true than in modern content SEO, where LLMs make content generation cheap. Google needs an anchor to determine whether a piece of content is trustworthy and valuable. The entity that is you is that anchor. Your work defines how heavy it is.” — Dave Davies, Head of SEO, Weights & Biases
Traditional content and website-level optimization remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient on their own.
Google now looks at more than just content. It also checks the trustworthiness of the people and companies behind it. This is done using E-E-A-T principles. This means Google is assessing the entire picture — content, authors and publishers. If you’re not optimizing for these entities, you’re falling behind.
To gain a competitive edge, you need to go beyond traditional SEO. You should add two more layers: content creator and publisher optimization.
- Secure Knowledge Panels for content creators.
- Secure Knowledge Panels for companies and key figures, such as the CEO.
- Use the hub-spoke-wheel model detailed below to take control.
Optimizing for these additional tiers already has an impact on rankings, visibility and algorithmic preference. As this trend grows, ignoring these layers of SEO will be increasingly detrimental.
2. Rebuild your approach to digital authority
“There are 97 billion triples extracted from 3.4 billion pages in the latest Web Data Commons report, which provides structured data from webpages. This data is crucial for refining entity disambiguation. A ‘linkless link’ can be as important as a traditional link for building credibility, provided that an AI system can properly disambiguate the entity.” — Andrea Volpini, CEO, WordLift
Hyperlinks between webpages remain valuable for findability, prioritization and credibility. However, their direct influence on search engine performance — ranking, visibility and recommendations — is diminishing.
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If you’ve mastered entity understanding, focus on:
- Entity mentions in relevant contexts (linkless links).
- Stated relationships and attributes for entities across formats (text, video, audio, visuals).
- Credibility relationships expressed in content and links (topics, expertise, qualifications, awards).
Building these pillars gradually establishes meaningful entity-to-URL relationships, such as profile pages, authored content, media mentions and topic pages. This process is slow and difficult to measure, as knowledge acquisition takes time.
Using a proprietary measurement method, I’ve found that my personal entity, “Jason Barnard,” is explicitly linked to 480 unique URLs, driving significant visibility across Google, ChatGPT, Bing and other AI-driven platforms. Among tracked entities, our client “Scott Duffy” ranks second with 90 associated URLs. “Barry Schwartz” is third with 58.
This is only the beginning.
Google and other AI platforms leverage named entities and their relationships to:
- Better understand content.
- Identify the “who” behind it.
- Evaluate credibility at the content, creator and publisher levels.
Note: Even for content, links are losing their importance.
The Google leak in May 2024 showed that some pages are more valuable because of their connection to other pages (relatedPage) and use as a reference (isReferencePage). Our data shows that inbound links help a page attain the status of a reference page or related page, but they are optional.
3. Craft conversations, not just keywords
“The concept of keyword has changed in SEO. Focus on words that are key. It’s now used to connect with user intent across the buying funnel, converting users while remaining clear for search engines and training LLMs to offer accurate insights.” — Mariana Franco, Founder, BrilliantSEO
The words people use to initiate a search remain important as the starting point. However, in a world where users transition between search, generative and assistive engines, three shifts are occurring:
- Search queries are evolving to become more specific and nuanced.
- After the initial query, users are drawn into a conversational funnel where keywords are replaced by exchanges.
- Engines like Google, Bing Generative SERP, ChatGPT and others are becoming walled gardens. They are keeping users within their ecosystems and move away from traditional sequences of keyword-based queries.
This means traditional keyword-focused strategies are no longer enough.
These platforms shape conversations that marketers won’t see. So your focus must shift to creating a broader, brand-focused marketing strategy for both engines and your audience.
- Use language your audience naturally searches for.
- Align content with the intent of the initial query and its logical progression.
- Adopt vocabulary that resonates, engages and inspires trust.
- Maintain consistent, on-brand language across all channels.
- Create context clouds in your content with relevant terms.
- Clearly communicate entity attributes and relationships.
- Structure your content ecosystem to define an intuitive consumer journey.
- Include clear next steps for the user within each piece of content.
- Prioritize clear, accessible communication to effectively convey your message.
4. Build a multi-modal content strategy
“SEO relied on the written word because initially the cost/performance element of SEs (and their accuracy) didn’t allow for anything beyond it and the slow-loading time of media pages couldn’t hold audience attention. We’re now in a world of fast connections and rich-media enabled devices. Written content plays an ever-diminishing, supporting role at best.” — David Amerland, SEO strategist
Written content is losing its dominance, with Google introducing new SERP features and rich elements such as:
- Carousels.
- Video boxes.
- Image boxes.
- Knowledge panels.
- Entity lists.
As Google and Bing become increasingly multimodal, expect to see fewer website text results. These rich elements will dominate even more in the coming years as multimedia processing improves.
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However, this doesn’t mean you should stop creating written content. Focus on:
- Building a comprehensive FAQ section that addresses questions at every stage of your funnel (starting with brand queries at the bottom and moving upward).
- Developing a detailed About page to establish who you are, what you offer, and why you’re the most credible solution.
- Creating content to bridge information gaps.
Written content will remain essential, but its value will shift to being implicit. It will be less visible to users while powering results in the background.
5. Redefine your visibility beyond traditional results
Gary Illyes from Google and Frédéric Dubut from Bing have confirmed that blue links remain the foundation of search results.
While this is encouraging, their presence and influence are steadily diminishing. Like written content, blue links are becoming more implicit. They power the technologies generating results rather than being the visible results themselves.
For marketers, blue links have traditionally been the gateway from search engines to content. Now, it’s crucial to rethink your strategy:
- Aim to occasionally secure direct blue link appearances in search results (a short-term strategy).
- Focus on influencing chatbot platforms like ChatGPT, which now integrate real-time search results (a mid-term strategy).
- Use detailed webpages to guide every step of your funnel, enabling walled-garden engines to natively connect users to your solutions (a long-term strategy).
Relying on blue links solely for visibility and traffic is an unsustainable approach.
Note: “Cascading queries” is a process where, starting from the user’s initial search query, the search engine generates and analyzes a series of additional queries to deliver the final results.
These behind-the-scenes cascading queries rely on blue links, but the user does not see them. They function as implicit blue links.
Examples of cascading queries include:
- Google’s Learn About.
- Generative SERP elements that answer follow-up questions in Bing and Bing Deep Search.
6. Optimize your on-SERP brand presence
Google and Bing are increasingly transforming the SERP into walled gardens. This shift cannot be ignored. The move toward generative SERPs and assistive engines is accelerating, making an on-SERP SEO strategy essential.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Diversify your focus: Optimize not only for traditional blue links but also for knowledge elements, multimedia features like videos and images and on-SERP generative results.
- Capture user attention: With user attention becoming the most valuable online currency, on-SERP SEO is critical for seizing this opportunity.
- Enhance brand presence: Prioritize getting your brand name and narrative onto the SERP through entity optimization, building N-E-E-A-T-T credibility, and refining your brand’s web-wide digital footprint.
7. Extend your brand visibility across digital touchpoints
SEOs must fundamentally rethink their approach to websites. Websites are no longer the primary portal and will continue to diminish in importance. Instead, they are just one of many channels where you need to maintain an active and effective presence.
To adapt, implement these three primary strategies:
Think beyond the website
- Optimize your presence on platforms where your audience naturally spends time, such as social media, review sites and forums.
- Focus on managing these platforms directly to ensure you meet your audience where they are.
Ensure consistency across all platforms
- As search-driven website traffic declines, prioritize consistent brand communication across all touchpoints throughout the funnel.
Use your website as a central hub
- The website remains critical for conversions and is the only fully controlled channel for your brand narrative.
- Its future role will be as a central hub that connects and integrates your web-wide digital marketing strategy for both humans and machines.
8. Build a brand that machines understand and trust
Now is the time to detach emotionally from the importance of domains because, in the future, domains will matter far less than brands. Well-developed, optimized personal and corporate brands will dominate search and assistive engine results.
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The ability to build a brand that machines confidently understand and perceive as credible will soon be paramount. All other things being equal, this favors larger brands and famous individuals with strong existing brand presence.
However, the career of every SEO is founded on the promise that we ensure all other things are not equal. 🙂
Smaller personal and corporate brands can carve out a place by working smarter. Focus on these three key areas:
- Entity understanding
- Ensure Google and other big tech platforms understand your brand.
- Your primary KPI today is achieving a Google Knowledge Panel. Without this foundational understanding, you’re not even in the game.
- Brand credibility
- Build credibility using N-E-E-A-T-T principles and establishing topical authority.
- Your KPI here is appearing in “best of” entity lists.
- Branded niche content
- Develop niche content tailored to your funnel.
- Your KPI is citations in Google’s AI Overviews.
If algorithms don’t understand your brand, they cannot evaluate your credibility. Without being perceived as a more credible solution than competitors, your visibility in search results will gradually decline.
Entity understanding is the cornerstone of future success. So the most important brand KPI today is building an information-rich Knowledge Panel. However, be cautious about building your entity understanding primarily through Google and its properties.
These platforms are excellent for feeding data directly to Google. However, they only indirectly influence other engines like ChatGPT, Bing, Meta, Alexa, Siri and Perplexity. Over-relying on Google’s walled garden risks leaving your brand behind in broader search and assistive e