This is the single worst SEO advice I’ve ever heard.
And it’s being shared daily on LinkedIn by your favorite “SEO influencer” who has never had a real client case study in their life.
LLMs are distribution amplifiers, not platform replacements.
The data shows: AI adoption has actually increased traditional Google search volume, not decreased it. (Semrush 2025 data) Over 2.5 years— AI adoption is slowing, while Google search keeps growing. (Sparktoro 2025 data)
Telling people they don’t need to rank on page 1 anymore is blatantly bad advice.
The vast majority of searches still happen on Google—by orders of magnitude AI can’t touch.
Yes, LLMs pull from more than just page 1… but does that change your strategy?
Are you going to optimize your pages for LLM citations, hit page 4 on Google, and then say “cool we got a few citations from LLMs, no point in trying to get our best money pages ranking in #1 in traditional search where traffic potential is 10,000% higher!”
Laughable.
You should be optimizing every page for Google page 1 potential AND LLM visibility. The strategy to DO BOTH OF THOSE is quite literally THE SAME!
You don’t simply optimize for LLMs, get 10 hits per month from ChatGPT, and then say “that’s better than trying to rank #1 on Google”
Not when Google traffic is still infinitely higher than what you can get from LLMs.
And listen…
This isn’t a zero-sum game. You don’t choose between “Google SEO” and “AI optimization.”
LLMs pulling from deeper Google pages is actually a huge win.
It means your pages ranking on page 2–4 of Google can still drive visibility and brand exposure, much more than ever before (most Google users don’t go past page 1!), all while you work to get those pages to #1 on Google, too!
That’s huge.
But let’s be real: page 1 of Google still dominates results and conversions.
Now, with both in play and working synergistically, you can reach more users as your pages climb in rankings.
💪 Tactical next steps 💪
- Stop chasing hacks. SEO fundamentals haven’t changed. Ranking page 1 is king. It just so happens that ranking page 2-4 can also still get you traffic now….fantastic…but that doesn’t replace the traffic gains from ranking page 1 and having good LLM visibility.
- Structure your content so it’s both crawlable for Google and digestible for LLMs — something that should simply be default for every page on your site now, meaning your strategy is unchanged when it comes to traditional SEO vs AI anyways…
- Treat LLMs as distribution amplifiers, not replacements.
- Don’t get lazy. “Page 2 is fine now” type of thinking will cost you traffic, leads, and revenue.
Page 1 of Google + LLM optimization = who will win this next cycle.
Peace ✌️
