Earlier this October, I asked some of the top SEOs about AI and what they said was insane…
What are the real, ground-floor SEOs who are actually doing client work seeing?
Since part 1 was met with huge interest, here’s part 2 of the conversation.
This time, I asked how they see AI reshaping the future of search.
“I always said that I love SEO because it is changing so fast and those who adapt – win. Now the challenge is how to adapt to this pace of change. Evergreen SOPs have to be replaced regularly with fresh discoveries and it is more important than ever.
Building projects from scratch on new domains will become more complex and harder without visitors from other channels than Google. When there is no brand and no social signals, SEO is getting harder as everyone now can have unlimited amount of optimized content. Teams may shrink or just take on more work as the automation goes to the next level every single quarter.”
-Michal Suski, Co-Founder and Head of Innovation at Surfer SEO.
“AI will increasingly take over repetitive SEO tasks like keyword research, clustering, brief creation, and content optimization. We’re already using it, but as AI becomes more advanced, it won’t just automate processes; it will transform how we measure success. Instead of focusing solely on clicks and impressions, SEO metrics will shift toward broader brand visibility and authority across both search engines and AI models.
The main challenge isn’t the technology itself but people keeping up with it. AI is evolving much faster than most teams adapt, so the real bottleneck is hiring and training talent who not only understand SEO fundamentals but also know how to experiment with custom AI workflows and agents, beyond the standard “ChatGPT QA workflow.””
-Irina Maltseva, Growth Lead at Aura
“Shifting from clicks to influence is going to be hard for many experts in the field that have spent the last 20 years operating on clicks. At the moment, I see Google going away from sending traffic out – unless it’s transactional – and becoming more of a conversational experience. Not that Google didn’t already keep more clicks for itself over time, but I see this trend accelerating with AI Overviews and, of course, AI Mode.“
-Kevin Indig, Growth Advisor
The fundamentals haven’t changed.
The winners in SEO and AI have the same things in common:
Reputation. Authority. Content. Brand.
The companies that understand this will dominate in both Google search and AI discovery.
We haven’t thrown SEO out the window, we’ve doubled down….and our clients are crushing it on LLMs.
Ready to drive AI rankings? Book a call with uSERP today.
