2024 AI & SEO: Your 24-Expert Guide To Successful SERPs

This year continued with the same theme as the year before – a bombardment of updates and rapid developments in AI.

AI Overviews were introduced in May, which then saw a drop in organic traffic alongside major drops from Google updates.

It’s not been an easy year in SEO.

Whereas last year was considering how AI tools could be leveraged to augment our work, this year has been the acceptance that Google SERPs are changing and not delivering the same levels of organic traffic as before.

This introduction of AIO and the uncertainty of Google organic traffic has accelerated the move towards SEO becoming “marketing.”

Moving forward, SEO is now as much about branding and marketing as it is about what we used to know about SEO.

To make this transition, everything that you were doing in SEO needs to be reconsidered. The future of online marketing will involve being found in generative AI apps, AI-powered search engines, social media, forums, and communities.

The bottom line is that SEO is now marketing, and that could be challenging for anyone who holds on to a one-dimensional SEO mindset.

As is our tradition this time of year, we turned to some of the best minds in the industry to get their thoughts on where the industry is going and what might happen next.

We asked 22 of the best practicing SEO professionals: In your expert opinion, what should SEO pros focus on in 2025 to maintain visibility and get results?

1. Focus On The Fundamentals

Jono Alderson, Consultant at Jono Alderson

Make 2025 the year you actually optimize your website. Forget shiny new toys and focus on the fundamentals.

Fix your errors. Make it faster. Make it more accessible. Improve the UX. Correct the typos. Redirect the broken links. Clean up the mess.

And while you’re at it, trim the fat. Remove the zombie pages that nobody visits. Prune your bloated navigation. Consolidate duplicate content.

Fix those annoying forms that never seem to work. Make your images smaller. Stop auto-playing videos. Test your site on a cheap phone on bad Wi-Fi and see how frustrating it is. Then fix that, too.

SEO professionals are so busy chasing trends, tweaking metadata, and begging for backlinks that we’ve lost sight of what really matters: creating a website that works beautifully for users.

A faster, simpler, cleaner site isn’t just better for people – it’s better for search engines, too. Do the unglamorous work. Google notices, and so does the market.

• Read More: 13 Essential On-Page SEO Factors You Need To Know

2. Focus More On UX

Arnout Hellemans, Consultant at Online Market Think

Here are a few tips for SEO pros to focus on in 2025:

Stop focussing on keywords and shift to user intent. Look at SERPs into all the questions users have.

Check the People Also Ask (PAA) features and check if your article satisfies that intent on the page.

Focus more on the UX (usability, site speed).

If you want to get traffic from other AI discovery engines, check your website without JavaScript. You can use SSR or pre-render your webpages, so that other crawlers can consume your content too.

• Read More: What Is User Experience? How Design Matters To SEO

3. Start Considering Awareness And Upper Funnel Metrics

Ryan Jones, Senior Vice President at Razorfish

2025 will be the year when we finally treat SEO like full-funnel marketing. 

SEO pros will have to move beyond just measuring clicks and start considering awareness and upper funnel metrics as users less frequently desire websites in favor of AI, instant answers, and other search features. 

SEO pros will still be needed to help influence these features and ensure brands show up, but we’ll have to focus on user intents – the queries where users want to do or accomplish something – over high search volumes.

• Read More: What Is A Conversion Funnel? Optimize Your Customer Journey

4. Start With Video-First Content

Mark Williams-Cook, Digital Marketing Director at Candour

Over the past 20 years, we’ve consistently seen Google take steps to keep users on their SERP, as it’s more profitable for them.

In its Q3 announcement, it revealed a 90% reduction in the cost of generating AIOs, signaling even more aggressive deployment of these and AI-organized results in ecommerce.

This likely means a decline in traffic to “solved” knowledge and informational spaces – though that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the web (how many lasagna recipes does humanity really need?).

On the other hand, we can expect increased traffic from sources like Google Discover and Lens, particularly for non-text content such as video.

I believe those who rely solely on GenAI to generate content directly from LLMs will struggle.

However, those leveraging LLMs to enhance original material – such as generating transcriptions from video—are positioned to benefit, as this top-down approach now feels even more strategically aligned with current trends.

In 2025, I am going to be encouraging clients to start with video-first content and work backwards, with a special focus on Discover and Lens search, which has now been integrated.

• Read More: How Short Videos & User-Generated Content Impacts Marketing

5. Diversify Where Your Community Might Be Spending Time Online

Miriam Ellis, Consultant at Miriam Ellis Consulting

A trend to pay particular interest to in 2025 is the diversity of digital platforms to which your potential customers may be going for local business information and recommendations.

2024 has seen many developments that may not be increasing searcher satisfaction, such as the rise of AI Overviews, which can’t be relied on for factual information, and a growing sense that Google search has become less skilled at intent matching.

I’ve fielded sentiment from a range of users encompassing some of the best SEO pros in the world to everyday searchers stating that it’s simply harder than it used to be for them to find what they’re looking for in Google.

While all the traditional SEO and local SEO skills and work remain relevant, diversifying your picture of where your community might be spending time online will be smart work for the year ahead.

In the U.S., we’ve reached a state in which half our counties no longer have access to local news, so people looking for trustworthy, authentic communications about their community will have to look elsewhere. This could include the big social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, but don’t stop there.

I recommend taking a very good look at Discord to see if it has become a community hub, or if you could turn it into one to increase your neighbors’ awareness of your brand taking an active role in your town or city. YouTube, Reddit, and hyperlocal podcasts are also very strong candidates for contributing to community life.

In summary, while normal SERP visibility will still be essential to your marketing strategy, be sure you’re studying consumers’ shifting behaviors so you can learn to be present wherever they feel information can be trusted.

• Read More: The Rise Of Micro-Communities: What This Means For Social Media Marketers

6. Organize And Structure The Content Hierarchy

Motoko Hunt, Founder & President at International SEO & SEM Consulting

Many SEO pros have been focusing so much on content generation in recent years, especially in 2024 with the help of AI.

It’s time to better organize generated content based on the target audience’s intent and business goals.

1. Identify the purpose of each content/page on site.
2. Identify the target audience’s intent and stage for each content.
3. Group content by topics.
4. Create a content tree within the group based on the searcher’s intent and stage.

By organizing and structuring the content hierarchy, you can touch searchers at each stage of their journey and influence their decision-making.

You should also update the content as needed. You want your content to stand out in the sea of similar content out there. Make sure that your content adds value.

With this, the content will not just generate traffic but will contribute to the business growth.

• Read More: A Complete Guide To Site Taxonomy For SEO

7. Build Author Authority And Explore Alternative Traffic Sources

John Shehata, CEO & Founder at NewzDash and Former Global VP of Audience Strategy at Conde Nast

I believe these key areas will be crucial for SEO success in 2025:

E-E-A-T Is King

Google’s emphasis on experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness will be even more critical.

SEO pros need to build Author Authority by showcasing expert credentials and first-hand experience, and digital and social footprint, especially in niches like health and finance (think doctor bios with links to publications).

Strong Domain Authority still relies on high-quality backlinks, but focus on those that drive traffic.

For Document Authority, create in-depth, entity-focused content that satisfies user intent better than competitors. Think comprehensive guides with clear attribution and original research.

AI Is Your Co-Pilot

AI is transforming search. Optimize for AI-generated answers by structuring content around topics and entities.

For example, instead of just targeting “best running shoes,” create content around “best running shoes for trail running” and “best running shoes for flat feet.”

Use AI tools to scale – not to write – content creation, but maintain a human touch for quality and originality. Think of AI as a research assistant and editor, not a replacement for your own expertise.

Diversify To Thrive

Expect fewer Google clicks with all the new SERP updates, and don’t put all your eggs in the Google basket.

Explore alternative traffic sources like Threads, Reddit, newsletters, and even push notifications.

A diversified approach makes you less vulnerable to algorithm updates and opens up new audience streams.

Adapt And Analyze

Stay informed about algorithm updates and adjust your strategies accordingly. Pay close attention to user behavior on your website to identify areas for improvement.

Tools like heatmaps and scroll maps can provide valuable insights.

• Read More: AI Agnostic Optimization: Content For Topical Authority And Citations
  

8. Create More Q&A Content To Be Present In LLMs

Kevin Indig, Growth Advisor and publisher of The Growth Memo 

In my opinion, the big question is, “What is the story of your brand in an LLM world?”

Track sales/revenue/leads from LLM referral traffic like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc. See if this could become meaningful when extrapolating the trend from the last six months out over the next two years.

If so, you want to invest in technical SEO to make crawling easier and create more structured content (like Q&A style content) to be more present in LLMs.

• Read More: Unlocking The Power Of LLM And Knowledge Graph (An Introduction)

9. Index Licensing Will Become Increasingly Important

Jes Scholz, Marketing Consultant at JesScholz Consulting

The Bing index powers ChatGPT (and thus will be integrated into Siri), as well as Microsoft Copilot and many answers of Meta AI.

It’s also leveraged by smaller search engines, including Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia.

While other players, like Perplexity, aim to build their own index, it’s clear that index licensing will become increasingly important as the search landscape diversifies.

This means SEO marketers need to expand their focus beyond Google from an indexing perspective.

Now is the time to revisit Bing Webmaster Tools. Conduct a content audit using XML sitemaps for each page type to compare indexing rates on Bing versus Google.

If either search engine is missing valuable content, prioritize crawling and indexing optimization.

Because no matter the surface – whether it’s in traditional SERPs, AI-powered SERPs, chatbots, Google Discover, Google Shopping, or elsewhere – if your content isn’t indexed, you have no chance to earn visibility.

• Read More: Website Indexing For Search Engines: How Does It Work?

10. Build Relationships With Other Well-Ranking Sites In Relevant Industries

Glen Allsopp, Fonder at Gaps.com

One recommendation I have for 2025 is to actively study as many of the main search results you’re trying to rank in, see what Google is rewarding, and look to get involved in those sources.

Bear with me – it gets better.

Besides traditional service or shopping pages, there’s a good chance you’ll also see:

• Guides recommending products and services.
• YouTube videos.
• Similar but non-competing brands.
• Interviews.
• Tweets.
• Forum posts.
• Reddit posts.

While a simplified goal of SEO is to get more targeted search traffic to your own website, you shouldn’t ignore the possibility of getting more exposure via creating videos, being involved in relevant Reddit communities, and so on.

One of the most effective things I’ve done is build relationships with other well-ranking sites in relevant industries. Even better if you’re in the same space but don’t compete on the end product you’re selling.

You would be surprised how open people are to also cover your product, service, or content when they get to connect with a human who actually cares about what they’re working on.

It’s far from the most important or only thing you should be doing, of course, but it’s always good to expand your marketing horizons.

• Read More: Why Client Trust Is Essential In Paid Media & How To Build It

11. Building And Enriching Knowledge Graphs With Well-Defined Entities Is Key

Andrea Volpini, CEO and Co-Founder of Wordlift

SEO professionals and marketers should optimize for both human and AI audiences, particularly large language models (LLMs).

LLMs excel at processing structured, concise text but often struggle with complex, visually rich websites.

Providing clear, organized, and dense content – such as markdown files or LLM-specific resources like /llms.txt – helps LLMs better understand and represent your brand to users.

Structured data remains essential for search visibility and enhancing AI-driven customer experiences. It enables training models, improving content suggestions, and supporting advanced features like conversational search.

Understanding how LLMs function is equally critical. These models can be interpreted through monosemanticity – the ability to extract precise, entity-like features from their deep neural networks.

SEO pros should focus on creating clear, entity-rich content and evaluating how these entities align with openly distributed models.

Building and enriching Knowledge Graphs with well-defined entities is key. This approach ensures LLMs can effectively contextualize your content, unlocking new optimization opportunities and improving both AI and human experiences.

• Read More: Introducing SEOntology: The Future Of SEO In The Age Of AI

12. Sit And Sync With Comms

Mordy Oberstein, Founder of Unify Brand Marketing

Let’s define “maximum visibility” for a second. Do we mean as many eyeballs as possible as quickly as possible? If so, I have no tips for you.

On the other hand, if we mean being visible as much as possible in as meaningful a way as possible, then I have one tip for you: Sit and sync with comms.

Be aligned with and on board with your company’s or client’s comms or brand department. Understand where they want to go. Understand how they see the company’s identity, positioning, and the messaging they want to send.

Be a part of that process. Help them align and amplify that positioning and messaging. Help the brand become what it aims to be.

We’re entering a digital winter. There is so much volatility and so much dysfunction (hello, search and social algorithms).

Most of all, there is so much noise. It’s much harder for your audience to tune it all out and to allow themselves to be impacted by what you’re putting out there.

That’s a huge hurdle to overcome. We’ve become inundated and numbed to all of the digital content thrown at us. And we’re only getting more inundated and more numb.

There’s a huge need for resonance. Your content needs to be crafted in a way that can cut through all the noise and resonate.

There’s not a whole lot of point in grabbing as much traffic as possible if it’s not going to be “seen” by the audience.

That old model of garnering as much visibility as possible is outdated. It’s better to be purposeful more than anything. And to do that, SEO pros can no longer afford to be siloed.

Sitting with whoever is running the overall communications strategy is an absolute must. It leads to a healthier approach and better outcomes. It’s what will drive visibility that actually matters.

• Read More: Communicating Major Google Changes To C-Suite

13. Know Who Your Customers Are, Create Resonant Messages, And Deliver Value

Ameet Khabra, Founder at Hop Skip Media

Fully embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in every part of marketing.

This is about so much more than automating PPC campaigns, though that’s a huge part, especially since Google is retiring manual bid controls like eCPC.

The marketers who will succeed are the ones who can make the most of AI and automation while keeping that human touch to connect with customers.

Build strong first-party (1P) data sets, as third-party (3P) cookies will continue to fade away, and privacy rules will get stricter.

This is all about the information you gather directly from your customers – their website habits, how they interact with your brand, and what they’ve bought.

Those who invest heavily in tools and strategies to collect 1P data will be able to deliver compelling experiences at every point of the buyer’s journey.

You must also incorporate that data into creating experiences that catch your customer’s attention.

Create immersive, interactive experiences that capture attention and spark emotion, and look beyond the screen to voice interfaces, wearables, and wherever your customers engage.

It’s the brands that can create these amazing, human-centred experiences that are going to be the real differentiators.

Finally, create some organizational agility. This is not news, but things are moving fast for us in this industry, and we need to create a culture where ongoing learning and testing are part of the rhythm.

The fundamental rules of marketing remain constant. It is all about knowing who your customers are, creating resonant messages, and delivering value in every interaction.

• Read More: 7 Methods To Research & Analyze Your Audience For SEO

14. Users And Search Engines Prioritize Trusted Brands

Montserrat Cano, Consultant at MC. International SEO & Digital Strategy

In 2025, understanding your audience and market is key to building brand authority, increasing visibility and driving online leads or sales.

Users and search engines prioritize trusted brands, so consistent branding and high-quality content are essential.

This is especially important in international markets, due to the unique cultural nuances and search behaviours.

Combine this with a solid website that focuses on user experience and accessibility for long-term growth.

• Read More: Why Brand Awareness Is The Fifth Pillar Of SEO

15. Communities Can Have A Big Impact On Visibility

Jo Turnbull, Digital Marketing Consultant at Turn Global, Organizer of Search London, and Co-host of SEO Office-Hours

SEO professionals should focus on being part of communities, supporting them or creating ones where there is a gap in the market.

This is particularly important for small brands who do not have a lot of budget to make significant changes to their website.

Communities can have a big impact on visibility, helping to build brands and subsequently conversions.

Through communities, SEO pros can connect with and support one another in initiatives such as mentorship, writing for key sites, as well as attending virtual and/or in-person events.

• Read More: Building Brand Authenticity Through Community

16. Understand How Users Consume Information

Navah Hopkins, Brand Evangelist for Optymzr

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, it’s all about understanding how users consume information.

By focusing on non-login forums (Reddit, Quora, etc), and getting indexed on Bing for ChatGPT visibility, brands can bypass expensive and time intensive conventional Google SEO.

Forums often rank better on SERPs and offer a more authentic, human touch compared to traditional websites.

If you plan to promote yourself, make sure you’re honest about it – building an infrastructure for your customers and brand influencers to share on your behalf can serve better.

• Read More: Why Every Marketer Should Be On Reddit

17. Gain A Foothold In New Trends And Topics Before Larger Competitors

Tory Gray, CEO at Gray Dot Company

There’s a fundamental shortcoming to traditional SEO keyword research that we maybe don’t talk about enough: It’s a lagging indicator.

So, when it comes to identifying new trends, topics, or questions for content, relying on traditional keyword research makes SEO professionals and content strategists late to the game.

That’s especially important for smaller, less authoritative domains. In established industries and verticals, many existing topics are dominated by high-authority competitors.

Gaining a foothold in new trends and topics before larger competitors is one of the few, strong tactics that can help close the gap.

Today, trends and topics take off on platforms like TikTok and Reddit before they make their way to search engines like Google.

In 2025, looking outside of traditional search data – and incorporating platforms where “newness” happens – is how we can tap into leading indicators that let us know which new and useful information our audience really wants.

• Read More: How Marketers Can Reach Gen Z On Social Media

18. Finding Truly Unique Angles For New Content Will Reward You

Alli Berry, Search Engine Optimization Consultant at Alli Berry Consulting, LLC

Less is more when it comes to your content strategy.

Google has been busy continuing to punish lower-quality pages, so it’s time to cut the robotic-like programmatic and low-quality AI-generated pages that may have given you some short-term gains.

I know everyone says they’d never do that, but the internet suggests otherwise.

I would also be cutting low-performing pages and thin pages because they may be harming the overall quality of your site from a search engine lens.

Finding truly unique angles for new content will reward you, especially if you can incorporate proprietary or 1st party research.

The Google documents leaked suggest that high-quality news links and links from new pages count for more, so anything you can do to drive new external links should reward you.

Also, if you’ve got all of your eggs in the affiliate revenue model basket, it’s time to diversify your business model. Google is coming hard for affiliate sites.

• Read More: How To Create High-Quality Content

19. Mentions In LLMs Will Emerge As A Key Aspect Of SEO

Olga Zarr, SEO Consultant at SEOSLY

SEO professionals should broaden their focus beyond just Google to include Bing and LLMs, as visibility across all these platforms will likely become increasingly critical.

Mentions in LLMs will emerge as a key aspect of SEO, extending the discipline beyond traditional search engines.

Good rankings in Google will still matter, especially since they will influence mentions in AI Overviews. However, the dynamics shift when considering the leading LLM player, ChatGPT, which relies on Bing for search results in both ChatGPT and GPT-powered search.

This means that strong rankings in Bing will become significantly more valuable. SEO pros must familiarize themselves with Bing’s ranking criteria and closely study its documentation, as its algorithm and priorities differ from Google’s.

For other LLMs – regardless of their data sources – SEO marketers should ensure that the brand they aim to promote is consistently and clearly positioned online.

It’s crucial to communicate what the brand represents and offers, so it becomes a reliable source for LLMs to cite. Cohesive and authoritative branding will play a big role in improving visibility.

• Read More: Introduction To LLMs For SEO With Examples

20. Do More With Less By Swapping The Fluff For Trustworthy Information

Jamie Indigo, Director of Technical SEO at Cox Automotive Inc.

Visibility in 2025 is all about understanding the context in which your site exists. More content will be created this year than 2010-2018 combined.

In the face of a rapidly expanding internet full of regurgitated AI, Google’s goal of crawling less makes sense. If your site is made of the same content as all the others using that particular AI tool, why bother?

AI-generated content is statistically probable rather than factually accurate. It may lack the depth, nuance, and originality that users seek.

Google’s emphasis on crawling less underscores the need for unique, high-quality content that provides genuine value to users.

This is why your website’s unique context is so important. Smaller sites should have different focuses than large sites.

If your site is greater than 100,000 pages … does it need to be? How much of that content do users actually engage with? This is your time to be intentional about the index.

If it doesn’t solve a real human problem, cut the cruft. Do more with less by swapping the fluff for trustworthy information.

This includes all the bells and whistles on your site to make it as shiny as possible. A feature no one uses is waste. Great content with a bad user experience is still bad content. Even great content is useless if it isn’t relevant to why the user came to the page.

SEO professionals should prioritize trustworthy experiences that fulfill user intent. If you’re answering questions and helping get things done, you’ll see growth.

• Read More: SEO Experts On Helpful Content: It’s Bigger Than You Think

21. Learn How To “Program Personas” Effectively

Michael Bonfils, Global Managing Director at SEM International

As you already know, SEO professionals who figure out how to combine data, creativity, and AI-driven innovation will be the ones who win.

An opportunity for SEO pros in 2025 will be learning how to “program personas” effectively.

This means taking tools like ChatGPT and other LLMs and feeding them the right inputs – like your target audience’s behaviors, their pain points, and the brand tone – to create AI-driven personas that are specific, strategic, and actionable.

Think of these personas as virtual assistants who can brainstorm and refine ideas with you tailored to your exact needs.

For example, you could program an AI persona to act like a Gen Z skateboarder or a busy CFO and have it generate ideas or strategies that would appeal directly to that group.

This goes beyond traditional keyword research; it’s about having AI provide insights you might not have considered, delivering fresh, relevant angles.

• Read More: Customer Personas Can Transform SEO, PPC, And Content Marketing

22. Businesses Should Invest In A Strong Internal SEO Product-Oriented Team

Pedro Dias, Founder and SEO Consultant at Visively

SEO professionals should step back and try to understand how their strategies impact the new rules of the game we’re currently playing in search.

There’s a lot of noise around promises of easy traffic at scale that are more designed to catch off-guard anyone not fully aware of what they should be doing, and make money from the less savvy.

That said, the important pillars of SEO remain:

Technical Excellence

Ensuring a site is crawlable and indexable by search engines is foundational – log file analysis, optimizing crawl paths, and resolving technical barriers (e.g., redirects, canonicalization, and URL structures).

Data-Driven Decision Making

Leveraging tools like Google BigQuery to analyze search and performance data — making SEO decisions based on solid data, such as understanding user behavior, identifying patterns in search intent, or assessing technical performance.

Scalability And Sustainability

Building scalable systems and processes that support SEO growth — preventative measures, automation, and frameworks (“Improvements, Prevention, Recovery” models) for a proactive approach over reactive fixes.

Collaboration With Product Teams (For Internal Teams)

Integrating SEO into product and development workflows, highlighting the importance of SEO as a core component rather than a marketing afterthought.

User-Centric Approach

Ensuring SEO efforts align with delivering value to users, as user satisfaction often drives ranking improvements.

I believe it’s more important than ever that businesses seriously invest in having a strong internal SEO product-oriented team.

This will be a game changer for the future as this will increasingly be a factor to differentiate sustained growth better catered when you have a deep knowledge of your product and vertical of operation, rather than the sole reliance on intermittent external collaborators.

• Read More: 6 Important Lessons Learned In Building An In-House SEO Team

SEO In 2025

In a continuation from last year, SEO is changing more rapidly than at any other time in the history of the industry.

As we said at the beginning, SEO pros need to change their mindset away from the old way to a new holistic approach that seeks to find visibility where your audience is – most likely across Google SERPs, Bing SERPs, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Gemini, TikTok, YouTube – all in varying degrees.

Most of the experts agree that focusing on brand and producing quality content that demonstrates expertise is an area of focus.

We also think that removing reliance on Google for organic traffic would be a smart investment to make right now.

More Resources:

• Entities & Ontologies: The Future Of SEO?
• What 7 SEO Experts Think About AI Overviews And Where Search Is Going
• SEO Trends 2025

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

SGE and generative AI are here, and they’re making a splash in a big way. SERPs as we know them are completely changing, and it’s up to us to pivot.

But how do you do that while keeping your SEO strategy strong? And how do you convince your higher-ups (if they need convincing) that your new path is worth the shift?

These are the questions we wanted to tackle in this collection of articles. We know that it can be tricky to keep up with all the latest developments and new tech in SEO, so it’s time to demystify some of the latest trends.

After all, it’s better to embrace change than run from it.

I especially think you’ll like referring to “Google SGE And Generative AI In Search: What To Expect In 2024” as you build this year’s strategy. I know I did. SGE has continued to evolve this year, and I’m already hard at work discovering ways to adjust to this new way of using Google.

Read on and find out how your 2024 SEO strategy can benefit from these new developments.

Until next time!

Are keywords still important today?

Keywords – ranging from single words to complex phrases – are still instrumental in shaping website content to boost relevant organic search traffic and essential tools for connecting the target audience with your website.

But just how much? Let’s explore.

There is no short answer to this. If you ask whether keywords in queries are essential to provide a list of relevant files to satisfy an informational need, then the answer is no.

But if you ask if keywords matter to Google’s indexing and retrieval system, the answer is absolutely yes.

Let’s take a closer look.

Why Keywords Matter In SEO

Keywords are the key phrases commonly used by consumers to find what they are looking for online.

They use the search bar in their browser to type in the terms, which are usually made of one or more words that describe what they want.

There are many types of keywords, including:

• Branded.
• Non-Branded.
• Local and Global.
• Brand + Geography.
• Brand + Product, etc.

Here are four ways keywords continue to help brands.

1. Keywords Help Indicate User Intent

Keywords are directional. They give very good clues that “point” to the kind of content the searcher is trying to retrieve.

However, there is still a vocabulary problem between the index system and end users, who have many different ways to ask for the same thing or something similar.

This is why Google and other search engines have extremely advanced query expansion technologies.

For example, an end user typing “solar energy” as a query may well see the first result for solar power, which may be more relevant and useful to satisfy the informational need than another page that only has a direct match to the words “solar” + “energy” to qualify it.

Plus, timestamps appended to keywords in the index for temporal analysis give a clue to freshness to help detect trends, and then there has to be event detection for news results.

And so much more.

So, yes, the closer a user can get the query to match the relevant content, the better.

However, users tend not to know what they’re looking for (if they did, they wouldn’t need a search engine), so search engines must be sophisticated with definition and association discovery.

2. Keywords Help Find Quick Wins

Finding quick wins or striking distance opportunities, especially for keywords that bring in conversions for other channels, should be your quickest path to improving organic visibility.

For example, if you’re a large-scale retailer like Walmart and you’re ranking in position 13 for Nintendo Switch, which has millions of searches per month, that would be on my priority list to optimize.

I would examine and optimize the landing page, internal and external links, etc., to see what you need to do to get this term on the first page of Google to drive more sales and revenue.

Screenshot from author, December 2023

3. Keywords Help Identify The Right Target Audience

When we perform competitive analysis and look at keyword visibility for a prospect or current client versus the competitive set, we can uncover a content gap.

We could find they don’t have content related to that topic or that the content they have is not ranking or optimized.

For example, I previously had a financial client who wanted to rank for “Tesla Loans.”

After looking at competitor visibility, we noticed competitors ranked for “Tesla Financing,” and my client did not have “Tesla Financing” in their page title, headings, body content, etc., and therefore did not rank for the term.

But loans and financing are not synonymous.

Once we developed content for “Tesla Financing” instead and optimized it, marked it up with schema, built content around it, did some internal linking, promoted the content, etc., conversion rates increased by 15% YOY.

The keyword “Tesla Financing” helped us identify the proper target audience that had a much higher search volume than Tesla Loans.

Screenshot from author, December 2023

4. Keywords Help Drive Traffic

Most traffic occurs on page one of Google. In fact, the top result alone takes 28.5% of the clicks.

If you increase visibility into the first page, your site can drive a considerable amount of incremental traffic, which can potentially lift sales on keywords that have high volume.

Having a top position on a low-volume keyword is not meaningful.

Instead, focus your efforts on keywords that drive business value and have some volume and holistic content that answers questions end users will find useful.

Far too many clients and articles focus on counting keyword success stories instead of measuring the impact of those successes (or not).

Should We Still Track Keywords?

The answer here is an overwhelming yes. Keywords still provide value by delivering traffic, conversions, visibility, and sales in prime positions.

For enterprise-level brands with a lot of products and services, it can be expensive to track keywords because there can be thousands or millions of keywords to monitor across desktop and mobile.

It’s a great idea to keep a golden keyword list of terms that deliver the most business value to your brand, i.e., traffic, revenue, and conversions, and a mixture of non-brand, brand, and product keywords that are vital to your first-page visibility.

A brand wants to know what its highest volume terms are doing and get as much traffic as possible from those keywords.

It makes sense to track a few hundred keywords per core business line and region for enterprise-level brands.

Tips For Finding The Right Keywords

Before you start using a wide variety of keyword research tools, always think like a customer and ask, “What is the purpose of my website and what problem am I going to help end users solve and satisfy their information need?”

If you can answer that question, you are on the right path to defining your audience and your content and keyword strategy.

One of the keyword research data sources I like to use is paid search data if it is available. If you have historical paid search data, you can see which keywords resulted in conversions and sales, which can help define what content you should create.

Additionally, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, KW Finder, Moz Keyword Explorer, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Long Tail Pro, offering diverse functionalities to aid in finding the right keywords.

At the end of the day, SEO is all about delivering qualified traffic that converts into customers. If your site is receiving a lot of traffic and no one converts, what is the point?

(Unless, of course, you have a site that depends on ad revenue, affiliate traffic, or any other advertising model.)

When Keywords Are Actually Useless

Some SEO pros are still focusing on keyword density. News flash: Keyword density does not matter.

Stop trying to stuff keywords into content – it won’t help you get higher rankings if you have your primary keyword at 10% KD, etc.

Focus on writing content that will satisfy the informational need and give users what they want.

I also still see sites using the keyword meta tags. Google devalued that a long time ago, and it has no ranking value and won’t move the needle.

Lastly, using exact match anchor text for all your links is not a good idea. Anchor text should be a mixture of brand and non-brand with different keyword variations.

Google is sophisticated, and if you have too many keywords with exact match anchor text links, you can send off an alarm, and your site can potentially get penalized.

Wrapping Up

While the landscape of SEO and the role of keywords have undergone significant changes, especially with the advent of AI and NLP technologies, keywords remain a crucial element of SEO strategies.

Their proper usage and understanding are integral to connecting with the target audience, understanding market needs, and ultimately driving traffic and conversions.

Always focus on the user experience and E-E-A-T as Google’s focus on providing valuable, relevant content to users has led to the emergence of E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) as a key ranking signal.

Creating content that genuinely addresses user queries and demonstrates first-hand experience is crucial.

The evolution of SEO practices towards a more holistic, user-centric approach underscores the need to stay updated with the latest trends and tools to maintain effective online visibility.

More resources:

• How To Find Low Competition Keywords (Using Free Tools)
• Tangential SEO: Finding Keywords for Content No One Else Has
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: The Ultimate Guide

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