I'm not going to lie: It's been tough to scroll on LinkedIn lately. Every other day, someone is declaring the death of SEO, website traffic, and marketing as we know it.
I get enough drama from Below Deck (IYKYK). ⚓
Don't get me wrong — we should all be paying attention. But let's separate facts from feelings and figure out what actually deserves our attention.
Because while everyone's busy panicking, there's a real opportunity here for marketing leaders who keep their heads.
What's NOT changing (let's start here)
Despite all the drama, the fundamentals that have always driven successful marketing remain exactly the same:
- Great content is still great content. EEAT principles — experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness — aren't going anywhere. If anything, they're becoming more important because AI systems are getting better at identifying quality.
- Topic clusters and comprehensive coverage still matter. Whether a human or an AI is looking for information, they want complete, well-organized answers to their questions.
- Writing for your audience first is still the winning strategy. Clear, well-structured content that actually helps people will always outperform keyword-stuffed nonsense.
- Brand authority and expertise continue to be your competitive advantage. AI doesn't create trust — humans do. The businesses succeeding in traditional search with quality content and strong user experience are the ones set up to succeed in GEO.
What IS changing (and why it matters)
Now for the part everyone is ✨anxious✨ about:
- Website traffic is dropping and will continue to drop. Users are getting the information they need from AI overviews and AI chats instead of traditional search. They don't need to click through to your website to get the information they need. In fact, 86% of AI searches result in zero clicks — that's a fundamentally different behavior than traditional search.
- Traffic quality is improving. Good news: People who use AI to research are more qualified and therefore more likely to convert when they find you. They're doing their homework with AI first, then going back to traditional search for transactions.
👉 Despite AI apocalypse talk, Google is still handling 345x more traffic than the top 3 AI chatbots combined. - AI search is becoming another step in the customer journey. AI search isn't replacing SEO. It's becoming another step in the customer journey — one we need to optimize for differently.
- Success looks like being cited and remembered — not just clicked. The new goal is to become the source AI turns to first when users ask questions related to your business. We want to get cited or mentioned by AI, and get remembered when users go back to traditional search for transactional queries.
How to find out if AI likes your brand
There are lots and lots of new brands that can tell you how your business appears in AI. But they can quite expensive and still have blind spots. If you don't have the budget for fancy software, that's okay. You can:- Partner with an agency like Vye that can justify the cost across all its clients.
- Try manual query mapping. This is essentially what those fancy softwares do. They just do it faster and at scale. It's as simple as this:
- List your core business topics
- Test related queries across AI platforms
- Document which platforms provide answers
- Note which sources they cite
- Identify gaps where you're not cited
Want to talk to a real human about AI?
AI search and GEO are BIG topics, but you don't need to know everything. You just need to know the next best steps for your business. Let's connect on where you're at now and what you need to prioritize.
