By now, you\u2019ve heard the doom and gloom. <\/p>
SEO is a white-collar job. So does that mean our jobs will be eliminated, too? The answer isn\u2019t as obvious as you might think.<\/p>
Yes, the world is changing. But if you\u2019ve been doing SEO for a while, you should be used to that by now. <\/p>
SEOs have always been forced to wear strange combinations of hats: part technical analyst, part content strategist, part UX researcher, part marketer, and part analyst.<\/p>
I don\u2019t think AI will make SEO expertise obsolete. But it will make shallow SEO obsolete. <\/p>
The people who thrive will be the ones who understand search behavior, business outcomes, technical systems, content strategy, analytics, and how to turn all of that into better decisions.<\/p>
The old version of SEO stopped working years ago<\/h2>
I\u2019ve been doing SEO since before there was a word for \u201cSEO.\u201d Every few years, there\u2019s a viral article declaring that \u201cSEO is dead.\u201d One of the first to catch fire was a 2005 article by Jeremy Schoemaker, repeating something he\u2019d heard from Jason Calacanis.\u00a0<\/p>
Then, in 2009, Danny Sullivan wrote an article on this site reacting to a blog post by Robert Scoble declaring that \u201cSEO isn\u2019t important anymore.\u201d<\/p>
We know the reality. SEO never died. But over the years, it\u2019s changed a lot. <\/p>
Look at this screenshot of a Google search for [flowers] in 2007 versus the same search in 2026.<\/p>
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/05\/Google-Search-in-2007-for-flowers.png\" "\\"How")
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2026\/05\/Google-Search-in-2026-for-flowers.png\" "\\"How")
This example is near and dear to my heart because I wrote that title tag in 2007. I was fortunate enough to lead SEO at 1-800-Flowers at a time when a No. 1 organic ranking meant significant traffic and revenue. <\/p>
Twenty years later, their team has maintained the No. 1 organic ranking. However, today it\u2019s so buried on the SERP that I wonder whether it gets any clicks at all.<\/p>
This phenomenon isn\u2019t limited to searches for \u201cflowers.\u201d Search for any competitive head term these days, and chances are you\u2019ll see the organic result buried.<\/p>
Is SEO \u201cdead\u201d? That really depends on your definition of \u201cSEO.\u201d <\/p>
If your definition is \u201cgetting to the top of Google organic search\u201d by spending your whole day writing title tags, then yeah, SEO is pretty much dead. It has been for a long time.<\/p>
If your definition of SEO is understanding that people are looking for your goods and services, understanding their needs, answering their questions, and meeting them wherever they go to find information, then your journey as an SEO expert \u2014 or whatever you eventually decide to call yourself \u2014 is only beginning.<\/p>
Dig deeper: Could AI eventually make SEO obsolete?<\/em><\/strong><\/p> Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up<\/span>. <\/p> The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Start Free Trial<\/span> <\/p> Get started with<\/p> There\u2019s one phenomenon I\u2019ve noticed with AI, not just in SEO, but across every industry. You might have noticed it too.<\/p> On social media, you\u2019ll see a lot of AI-generated videos. The vast majority are silly \u201clook what I can do with AI\u201d videos. You see them, maybe press \u201cLike,\u201d and then forget about them. But the ones with staying power are made by people who understand filmmaking: pacing, framing, lighting, composition, camera movement, editing, sound design, and how to build toward an emotional payoff.<\/p> In other words, even though everyone can generate videos with AI now, the differentiator is no longer how \u201ccool\u201d the visuals are. It\u2019s how skillfully creators use AI as a tool to achieve their vision.<\/p> There\u2019s an analogous situation happening with SEO and AI. I\u2019ve noticed a lot of people typing simplistic prompts and, like Neo in \u201cThe Matrix,\u201d declaring, \u201cI know SEO.\u201d<\/p> What these folks don\u2019t realize is that SEO is a lot more than title tags, and it was never just about reverse-engineering search engines. It was always about reverse-engineering the human brain, drawing on knowledge and experience across keyword lists, user behavior, content strategy, technical systems, analytics, persuasion, UX, and business outcomes.<\/p> When others are typing simplistic prompts into their LLMs, SEO experts will be having deep conversations with their LLMs, teaching them, challenging them, and finding ways to get the best out of them. Those who excel in this new world won\u2019t be the ones who have all the answers. They\u2019ll be the ones who have the right questions.<\/p> While it\u2019s still early, and I\u2019m convinced we haven\u2019t even scratched the surface of ways to use LLMs in SEO, here are just a few ways I\u2019ve been using AI in my SEO work to make it more efficient and effective than ever.<\/p> I\u2019m generally not a fan of AI-generated long-form writing. You end up with generic, inauthentic slop that, in the words of Shakespeare, is \u201cfull of sound and fury, signifying nothing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> I predict that a year from now, most people will be able to spot the clear signs of AI-generated copy: not just obvious tells like excessive use of em dashes and repetitive phrasing (\u201cThat\u2019s not X \u2026 it\u2019s Y!\u201d), but a lack of authentic personality and stories.<\/p> Metadata is one of the places where I don\u2019t mind AI assistance because its job isn\u2019t to invent original thought. It\u2019s to compress the page\u2019s value, intent, and positioning into the right format for the right surface.<\/p> The big mistake I see people making with AI-generated metadata is that their prompts are far too generic: \u201cWrite a title tag for this page.\u201d<\/p> A seasoned SEO knows the goal isn\u2019t to create a \u201cpretty title tag.\u201d It\u2019s to create the most effective title tag possible for human, search engine, and AI discovery. It takes into account various search intents, brand positioning, competitor gaps, conversion drivers, and practical space limitations.<\/p> AI opens up new opportunities that weren\u2019t practical before. Not many people know that ideally, your title tag, Open Graph tag, and Twitter card should be distinct from one another because they\u2019ll be shown to different audiences on Google, Facebook, and X. And it took me a few tries to remind AI that title tag length isn\u2019t based on character count, but on pixel width.<\/p> Those \u201cin the know\u201d will start using AI to generate everything: title tags, meta description tags, OG tags, Twitter cards, and the right structured data.<\/p> Someone without SEO experience will write generic prompts and wonder why their perfectly polished title tags aren\u2019t doing anything for them a year from now.<\/p> Dig deeper: <\/em><\/strong>The AI writing tics that hurt engagement: A study<\/em><\/strong><\/p> One \u201cedge\u201d I\u2019ve had throughout my career is the ability to translate vague marketing goals into precise technical requirements developers can actually execute.<\/p> But as technology has become more complex, I found myself hitting my own limits. I understood the principles of coding, but had a hard time articulating exactly what I needed developers to do. Googling hardly ever helped because I\u2019d just find high-level articles written by consultants, some of whom clearly didn\u2019t understand it either.<\/p> A practical example is modern React or single-page app architecture, where a page may look complete to users while key SEO content is assembled after load from JavaScript rather than appearing as crawlable HTML.<\/p> In the past, I might\u2019ve written a vague recommendation like \u201cwe need more crawlable content on this page,\u201d forcing my poor developer to figure out what that means.<\/p> With AI, I can turn that into a real implementation ticket: grounding the LLM in the site\u2019s tech stack, translating the SEO need into concepts like server-side rendering, hydration, DOM content, and crawlable links, and adding examples, test cases, edge cases, and acceptance criteria.<\/p> The point isn\u2019t to become a React engineer. It\u2019s to communicate SEO requirements in a way that developers can execute without forcing them to think too much about it. Trust me, your developer will thank you.<\/p> Treating AI optimization as long-tail SEO done right has been one of the game-changers for me when it comes to my own productivity.<\/p> The holy grail of SEO has always been to read your users\u2019 minds and create content that meets their needs. Anyone who\u2019s spent a lot of time with SEO data knows that there are enormous amounts of insights locked within this data. The first problem is unlocking them. The second problem is getting them into a format that will get people to pay attention.<\/p> In the past, I would literally lock myself in a room with a giant spreadsheet open on my screen. I\u2019d go through search terms one by one, categorizing and clustering them, and, if I was lucky, end up with a handful of insights days later. <\/p> I might start with a list of 30,000 keywords and get through maybe a few hundred before getting completely exhausted. And when I\u2019d present my insights, along with my giant pivot table, to stakeholders, they\u2019d nod their heads, and then everyone would forget about them.<\/p> LLMs are changing the game. You can simply upload data from GSC, GA4, and Semrush and Ahrefs, along with your own business and market insights, and then simply ask your LLM questions.<\/p> Here are just a few recent examples of analyses I\u2019ve done for my clients. These would once have taken days or weeks. Now I can get to a strong first pass in minutes.<\/p> There are literally an endless number of questions you can ask. I didn\u2019t present these as sample prompts because they\u2019re thought starters. While you\u2019ll probably get a decent answer, the real value from AI comes only when you:<\/p> Dig deeper: How to use AI to diagnose and improve search intent alignment<\/em><\/strong><\/p> <\/p> Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <\/p> Something else I\u2019ve found LLMs can do really well is generate a solid wireframe of a page or page module that you can pass on to your web designer and developer. But this is another area where the quality of the output depends almost entirely on the quality of your prompt and the context you provide the LLM.<\/p> Most people will simply type \u201cdesign me a web page,\u201d perhaps with a few \u201cwish list\u201d items they\u2019d like to see. AI may produce something that looks \u201ccomplete\u201d on the surface, perhaps a hero section, a list of benefits, some FAQs, and a call to action (CTA). But when executed, it\u2019ll feel lifeless, generic, and disconnected from the actual business problem.<\/p> The better approach is to ground the LLM with as much background information as possible. This doesn\u2019t need to include every SEO report, but rather the ones that provide the highest-quality signals, such as the ones we discussed above: topic clusters, competitor gaps, conversion data, and on-site search data. Add other useful information like sales objections, customer reviews, your brand\u2019s unique value propositions, and a clear explanation of what the page needs to accomplish.<\/p> With proper context, AI can help lay out something that transcends a generic landing page. For example, it can propose a strong hero section with suggested wording, recommendations for CTAs, section order, comparison tables, proof blocks, FAQs based on real questions, trust elements, and paths for different stages of intent.<\/p> Remember that it works in reverse, too. Upload a screenshot of an existing page, either yours or your competitor\u2019s, tell the LLM what your goals are for the page, and ask it to critique the page.<\/p> AI can also open up other SEO opportunities that have previously been roadblocks.\u00a0<\/p> In some cases, it can go beyond a static mockup and produce a working prototype that a developer can evaluate, harden, and turn into production code.<\/p> Your edge as an SEO is knowing what information to feed the model, what problems the page actually needs to solve, and which ideas are strategically useful versus just AI-generated decoration.<\/p> The one thing that I haven\u2019t seen AI do very well yet is generate professional-quality design and production-quality code. But everything up to that point is at your fingertips now.\u00a0<\/p> As I\u2019m sure it was for many of you, July 1, 2024, was a dark day for me. That\u2019s when Google shut down Universal Analytics and forced us all onto GA4.<\/p> Since it was called Urchin, I\u2019d all but mastered UA. Then one day, all of my reports and dashboards were simply gone. And I had no interest in spending another decade on a learning curve just to recreate reports that they\u2019d once given me by default.<\/p> But with the arrival of LLMs, you can simply ask the LLM to walk you through building whatever report you want.<\/p> The first report I had to re-create was the on-site search report, one that\u2019s inexplicably missing from GA4. I wrote my own prompt to walk me through creating this, but for the purposes of this article, I had ChatGPT write the prompt:<\/p> The key to writing these prompts, or prompts that generate prompts, is including the phrase \u201cstep by step.\u201d One of the nice things about AI is that it doesn\u2019t judge.<\/p> Take as long as you need, ask it to break the setup down into steps as granular as you like, and feel free to ask \u201cdumb\u201d questions. It\u2019ll oblige enthusiastically.<\/p> You can imagine what this opens up. One of the classic issues with SEO analytics is that all too often, they\u2019re merely vanity metrics.\u00a0<\/p> Conversions, clicks, impressions, and rankings may look impressive at first, but eventually the dreaded \u201cso what\u201d question will arise. Who really cares if you see impressions and rankings growing like wildfire if your revenue isn\u2019t increasing?<\/p> This is where you want to ask your AI to help you tie data to business performance.\u00a0<\/p> Again, the sky\u2019s the limit. You can build a report or dashboard to answer just about any question your stakeholders have, provided you\u2019re collecting the right data, and if you\u2019re not, AI can help you create tickets for your web developer to collect that data.<\/p> Dig deeper: SEO analytics: How to interpret SEO data & anomalies<\/em><\/strong><\/p> See the complete picture<\/span> of your search visibility. <\/p> Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Start Free Trial<\/span> <\/p> Get started with<\/p> Like I said, this is only scratching the surface of how AI can help transform the work we do as SEOs.<\/p> But let\u2019s get to the question everyone is really asking: Is your job safe?<\/p> I don\u2019t have a crystal ball. But one thing is pretty clear to me. Not every SEO job will survive unchanged. Big companies will likely cut roles. Teams will likely get smaller. A lot of tactical work that used to require specialists may be done faster, cheaper, or \u201cgood enough\u201d by someone using AI.<\/p> If your value is limited to tasks that AI can perform on command, there may be challenges ahead.<\/p> But if your value is understanding customers, interpreting search behavior, connecting data to business outcomes, translating strategy into execution, and helping companies become more findable, useful, and trusted, then AI isn\u2019t the end of your career. It may be the best leverage you\u2019ve ever had.<\/p> And there\u2019s another reason I\u2019m optimistic. The same AI disruption hitting SEO is hitting every other white-collar profession, too. If large companies do lay off significant numbers of talented people, many of those people aren\u2019t just going to disappear from the economy.<\/p> Some will start businesses. Some will finally pursue ideas they\u2019ve had in their heads for years. Some will use AI to build prototypes, launch products, test markets, and create companies in ways that would have required far more capital and staff just a few years ago.<\/p> That should give us hope.<\/p> Many of the great companies we know today started with little more than a few people, an idea, and the willingness to figure things out as they went. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, and many others did not begin with massive corporations behind them. They began with ideas, persistence, and the tools available to them at the time.<\/p> If they were able to accomplish what they did with their tools, imagine what a new generation of entrepreneurs will be able to do with AI.<\/p> Maybe you\u2019ll be one of those entrepreneurs. Or maybe your role will be helping one of them turn their ideas into businesses people can actually discover, understand, trust, and choose.<\/p> Either way, the products, services, brands, and businesses built with AI will still need to be found. They will still need to explain why they matter. They will still need to earn attention, authority, and trust.<\/p> SEO is dead. Long live SEO.<\/p> <\/div> Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em> <\/p> Opinion#increase #SEO #expertise1779493227<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By now, you\u2019ve heard the doom and gloom. SEO is a white-collar job. So does that mean our jobs will be eliminated, too? The answer isn\u2019t as obvious as you might think. Yes, the world is changing. But if you\u2019ve been doing SEO for a while, you should be used to that by now. 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<\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p> Why true SEO experts are uniquely positioned to thrive\u00a0<\/h2>
1. Performing SEO basics with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness<\/h2>
2. Turning SEO recommendations into dev-ready tickets<\/h2>
3. Mining GSC, GA4, and Semrush or Ahrefs data for actual user needs<\/h2>
4. Prototyping page layouts, content modules, and more<\/h2>
5. Making analytics useful again<\/h2>
Act as a senior GA4 analytics consultant. I want to rebuild a useful onsite search report in GA4\/Looker Studio. GA4 does not provide the same dedicated Site Search report that Universal Analytics had, but I can use the `view_search_results` event, the `search_term` parameter, and any custom parameters needed. Create a practical, implementation-ready plan that covers: 1. How to confirm onsite search tracking is working. 2. Recommended event name and parameters, including which should be registered as custom dimensions. 3. How to track searches when the site does not use URL query parameters. 4. The most useful report sections, including: - total searches - unique searchers - top search terms - zero-result searches - refined or repeated searches - searches followed by exits - searches followed by conversions - searches by page, device, and user type 5. Step-by-step instructions for building the report in GA4 Explore and Looker Studio. 6. A QA checklist to make sure the data is accurate. Keep the answer concise, practical, and usable by both a marketer and a developer. <\/code><\/pre>
<\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p> The work is changing. The need for expertise isn\u2019t.<\/h2>