How many LinkedIn posts do you see claiming SEO is dead? It’s becoming tiresome. Every few months, someone declares the end of search engine optimisation, usually with a screenshot showing how Google’s AI overview answered their query without them clicking a single link.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: SEO as it existed five or ten years ago is dying. But SEO itself? It’s just changing. And if you understand how it’s changing, you can adapt your strategy rather than abandon it entirely.
How Search Results Have Changed
Think back to how Google looked a decade ago. You’d search for something, and the top organic result would often appear right at the top of the page. There might be one or two ads above it, depending on your industry and how competitive the keyword was. That world is gone.
Google added more ads, so now you might see three or more paid results before you reach organic listings. Then came schema markup for frequently asked questions, those expandable boxes you can click to see answers. Product schemas arrived for e-commerce searches, showing images with prices and titles. Suddenly, that top organic result you worked so hard to achieve was pushed down the page. You had to scroll to see it.
The last few years have amplified this trend dramatically. Now we have AI snippets as well. That’s probably the biggest change, and it’s the one causing all the panic.
Why AI Affects Different Businesses Differently
But here’s where most people get it wrong. They assume AI snippets affect every business equally. They don’t.
If your entire website exists as a blog that thrives on traffic because you link to other people’s websites and earn income that way, you’ve got a problem. Lots of people now turn to AI for informational answers. They ask ChatGPT or look at Google’s AI overview, get their answer, and never click through to your site. If you’re in the affiliate marketing or content publishing business, this is genuinely challenging.
But if you’re selling a product? People searching on Google aren’t necessarily interested in looking at Gemini’s AI overview. They’re looking for a product. They scroll past the AI snippet because it doesn’t help them make a purchase decision. They want to see options, compare prices, read reviews, and click through to buy.
The reality is that SEO strategy needs to be tailored to what industry you’re in. When someone searches on Google for a product and you’re an e-commerce company, you’ll have product snippets. You don’t need to worry as much about AI listings because people are likely to click on one of the product listings or the Google Ads rather than read Gemini’s description of the products they searched for. That doesn’t make sense for their intent.
However, if you’re a B2B business, people probably aren’t looking to make a purchase or spend money immediately. They might be comparing options and gathering information. There won’t be product snippets. So you might need to look more into optimising for AI or for question and answer features. Good modern SEO is very tailored to the client’s industry, their existing ranking strengths, and the seasonality of their business.
The Numbers Tell a More Complex Story
The traffic mix is changing, and the data reflects this shift. According to recent industry research, brands now allocate about 72% of their total marketing budget to digital channels, with organic search remaining a significant component of that investment.
Purely organic traffic from traditional search terms has drifted downwards overall. For some of our clients who get a few thousand visits a month, if we can keep traffic at that level whilst knowing it’s on a very gentle decline, that’s actually a good result. It’s still very profitable when you compare it to paid advertising. It’s worth investing in.
Research shows that more than half of UK shoppers routinely research products or services online before making a purchase. They’re still searching. They’re just encountering more options about where to find their answers, and the path from search to website has become more complex.
Redefining What SEO Means
AI is starting to take a greater share of that traffic. But when you look at the overall stats, particularly because Google has integrated AI into its results, Google is still the dominant force. The question shouldn’t be “is SEO dying?” When you think about it, search engine optimisation includes all of the above. It’s local listings, organic listings, shopping listings, and ad listings. It’s about being present at the top of search results for the keywords that matter for your business and having the right messages there.
We want to get a strong number of impressions on the relevant keyword phrases and searches, particularly on Google. Obviously we don’t want to ignore Bing and ChatGPT and others. We want clients to have the lion’s share of opportunity when it comes to visits to their site, regardless of where those searches happen.
The mix of where your traffic comes from will continue to change. More possibilities exist for ads now. You’ve got shopping ads, display ads sometimes on the sides, your local business profile on the right, and then Google Ads search results at the top. Traffic from traditional organic rankings has gone down, but it’s not dead.
We’ve had some success helping clients create content that ranks well for organic search but also performs well in AI results. It’s about making content that works across multiple formats. Sometimes it means repurposing really good content they already have but making it function better for their business rankings.
Who Will Thrive and Who Will Struggle
The businesses that will struggle most are those that treat this as an all or nothing situation. Either they panic and stop investing in SEO entirely, or they refuse to acknowledge anything has changed and wonder why their results are declining.
The businesses that will thrive are those willing to have honest conversations about what’s working and what isn’t. They’ll adapt their content strategy based on their specific industry and customer behaviour. They’ll understand that maintaining traffic can sometimes be the win when the overall market is declining. And they’ll recognise that search engine optimisation now means something broader than it did five years ago.
SEO isn’t dying. It’s evolving into something more complex, more fragmented, and more dependent on understanding user intent across multiple platforms. The question isn’t whether to invest in it. The question is whether you’re adapting your approach to match how people actually search today.
Is Your SEO Strategy Keeping Up?
If you’re unsure whether your SEO approach is adapted for today’s search landscape, we can help. We offer a straightforward SEO audit that assesses how your website performs across traditional search, AI platforms, and the various SERP features that now compete for visibility.
Get in touch to discuss how your SEO strategy needs to evolve for your specific industry and business goals.
If we were to make two wagers with visitors to this blog, we’d suggest these two things:
It is easy to get seduced by real-time numbers. When you work on a website, all the visitors are remote, often relegated to numbers in a spreadsheet or weekly report. So real time analytics can seem like the perfect answer – you can see what visitors are doing RIGHT NOW on your website.
