AI grifters want you to think “SEO is dead” and “new SEO” is wildly different.
They’re dead wrong….
There are an insane amount of “gurus” on LinkedIn — with 0 clients or successful projects yet 50,000 followers by the way — claiming that SEO as we know it has flipped the script overnight.
It hasn’t. In fact, it has barely changed at all.
I know this because my agency has 100+ clients, and the same high-level SEO tactics we implement with them have skyrocketed their LLM and AI overview citations, too.
To anyone actually well versed in SEO and how AI works, this is no surprise.
The biggest brands crushing it in SEO are also the biggest brands crushing it on AI overviews, LLMs, etc. This shouldn’t be a shocking revelation given LLMs and AI are…simply pulling data from search engines and spitting it back out to you in conversational formats.
Don’t wanna take my word for it?
Ahrefs data proves it:
Out of 1.9 million AI overview citations processed, they found 76.10% of citations were from content ranking in the top 10 spots on Google.
The game has barely changed, at all.
Want more visibility? More clicks? More revenue from organic search? More AI presence?
Get your content ranking first page on traditional search engines.
This is the 80/20 of search marketing. Anything else is just the cherry on top.
There is no “old SEO” and “new SEO.”
Those trying to convince you of this is are selling you something, or simply seeking clicks, likes, and attention, rather than providing genuine value based on experience.
People are not fleeing traditional search engines.
Data from Semrush and SparkToro show the opposite: LLM and AI usage is just additive to traditional search and actually increases the use of traditional search engines in tandem.
This ain’t a zero sum game where LLMs and AI search sends Google traffic to 0.
The rules haven’t changed as much as grifters want you to believe.
Yes, there are new tactics you can apply to maximize both traditional search engine rankings and retrieval in AI overviews and LLMs.
But that does not mean 99% of what you are doing on a given page isn’t just great, traditional SEO. New-age made up acronyms be damned.
