A whole new concern every brand and website is dealing with is “SEO is dead”. Even many have started believing that whatever you do, there is no impact on the final result. The use of AI by consumers and Google Search’s AI preview is making people believe that being in or not in the search results has no value at the present time.
But is it the truth that everyone is looking for? Is SEO Really Dead? Let’s understand.
According to recent data from Forbes, there are more than 200 million active Google websites. Hence, even in the AI search snippets, AI bots can’t showcase every website or search result; they focus on the prominent results, and accordingly, they pick the relevant information. So, do you think that these AI bots are aware of your digital presence? Where is this data coming from? How come a few websites are highlighted in AI suggestions while many are not? The suggestions by AI are based on your content quality, authority, and user search intent.
For that, you need to ensure that you have a well-optimised website that can be indexed and searched by search engine bots and that the website content is user-friendly. Hence, in short, there is a need for an SEO-friendly website, which leads to the fact that SEO isn’t dead; you just require a better strategy to work on.
What’s New In SEO?
SEO is evolving along with the search trends and user search intents. Hence, it can be mentioned that “Traditional SEO is Dead”, but SEO is still relevant. So, let’s proceed to discuss key changes that you need to adapt in your new SEO strategy.
Focus More on Intent
SEO is not just about placing keywords throughout your website, but aligning them with the user’s or the audience’s intent. Keyword stuffing used to offer traffic to the websites, but with time, Google bots have started avoiding websites with such approaches. Hence, it is more important for the websites to focus on the user and their search intent, and accordingly, the keyword placement should be defined.
User intent is the purpose behind a search made by a user. For instance, if you search “Pizza”, Google provides a list of places serving pizza, platforms to order pizza from and reviews from customers posted on other websites like Reddit. You need to create content that matches the user intent, be it informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. So, identify important and relevant keywords that your target audience uses and strategically place them in your content.
Take another example to understand how Google analyzes user search intent. If a user searches “Best paragliding in India with price”, it will be considered an informational search where the user is trying to find specific places providing this experience. The relevant searches are provided by Google, which includes top-ranking websites that have accurate information that matches the user’s search.
SEO for Voice Search
The only hack to reach your target customers is to “Evolve” because technology is. Voice search has become a new paradigm in online browsing. But remember, the audience you are trying to reach is not simply surfing the internet; they are constantly looking for something, be it a product, a service, information or directions. So, understanding which keywords and phrases are searched by your potential customers is crucial, especially in the wake of ‘Voice Search’.
The diverse population from all over the world is becoming adept at voice search, no matter if it’s the tech-savvy millennials, Gen-Z or people from low-middle and middle-class backgrounds. As per a recent report, more than 1 billion voice searches are conducted on a monthly basis worldwide. As anticipated, the growth of voice search has been prominent in India in 2025 so far. With the advent of voice search, brands and websites are required to be proactive in providing content that matches the needs/voice search queries of their customers.
Hence, the focus of brands and websites should be on conversational queries and longer phrases that may be used by customers in voice search. You can embed the long-tail keywords in your content strategically. This is because, in voice search, the queries by users are longer in comparison to text-based search. Another good practice to make your website voice search-friendly is to embed FAQs in the website content. They will answer the most common questions that may be asked by customers in voice search.
Adopting voice search on your website will make it more convenient and user-friendly. Voice search optimisation of your website will improve the ranking in SERP (search engine results page). For instance, if a user enters a voice search query – “Pet boarding hostel in Jaipur jo open space me dogs rakhte hain”, the Google voice search assistant converts the speech into text using Automatic Speech Recognition.
Combined with AI and machine learning, Google understands the user’s intent and gives relevant results to the user. Hence, by optimising the website for your brand for common user searches, you can improve website visibility and drive more traffic.
However, AI still struggles with decoding the Hindi-English mixed linguistic phenomenon. In the above example, it is witnessed that the Google Voice search assistant understood the searched query along with the user’s search intent. The user intent in searching for a pet boarding service is informational, where the customer is trying to find a pet boarding hostel where dogs are kept in open spaces. Based on the search intent, the relevant results are provided by Google.
SEO Is Not Just About Content
SEO goes way beyond just being the content strategy for brands. Along with the content strategies, SEO also involves technical aspects, which include website optimisation for growth.
Are you aware of Technical SEO? If not, then this is what you might be missing out on. Technical SEO is all about optimising a website for better user experience, optimising meta tags, image Alt text, schema markups and other relevant aspects that make the website readable for both Google bots and your targeted audience.
An Ahrefs blog published in 2024 states that a total of 2.96% of global traffic comes from Google Search, Google Maps and Google Images. What do you need to do differently when it comes to SEO? Understand that Technical SEO has all the elements that make a website function optimally. To put it in simple words, your website will be easy to navigate, load and show mobile-friendliness as a result of technical SEO. Technical SEO combined with quality content will give your brand a strong foundation to reach potential customers.
Understand The Keywords
Do you know that more than 29% of keywords having over 10,000 monthly searches have a minimum of 3 words, as per an Ahrefs blog? So what does it tell you about how the keywords should be formed and placed on your website?
But first, you must know that keyword stuffing is no route to secure better results for your website. You should keep in mind that stuffing keywords that do not feel naturally integrated into your content is a long-forgotten practice when it comes to SEO. It does not help your website rank well in the Google search engine. But keywords still hold significance in modern SEO. The users and audience across platforms use relevant keywords to initiate their search. Hence, having these keywords on your website can help search bots redirect the user to your website. But while doing so, keep in mind the relevance and search intent behind these keywords. Accordingly, the content needs to be planned. In addition to this, you can target long-tail keywords to cut down your competition and make your website rank strongly. Let’s see how it is possible.
For instance, if you search ‘website copywriter’ on Google, you will get more than 20,000,000 search results. Users are not likely to find the most relevant information they are looking for with a short-tail keyword. Instead, when you search ‘freelance website copywriter for clothing’, you will get fewer but specific and more relevant search results. Google understands user intent more accurately with long-tail keywords. For better website optimisation, including long-tail keywords along with short-tail keywords will improve the website ranking and searchability for users.
SEO is Not Just For Google
Also, you must know that SEO is not just for Google, but it is a process that you need to adapt to make your content or profile optimised for a specific platform or audience. Hence, even if you are on Amazon, you need to plan SEO accordingly; you can do SEO on social media, YouTube and more.
For example, YouTube is the search engine for videos. In order to attract views, users need to optimise tags, descriptions and video titles. Similarly, social media platforms, shopping sites, and other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, etc have their algorithms and ranking factors. Hence, optimising content is crucial not only for Google which is possible by understanding user queries and search intent on all respective platforms.
Understand The Marketing Funnel
Even the content appearing on the AI snippets is that aligns with the user search intent. An SEO strategy without a well-defined content strategy won’t work for your brand or website. You need to understand what your users are searching for, and accordingly, you can plan your strategy.
For instance, rather than just focusing on “How-To” guides, focus more on the real issues or challenges that your audience might be facing. Doing so can improve the chances of your website appearing in SERP or AI snippets when a user searches for it.
SEO Helps Build Website Authority
Investing in SEO is important as it helps build or develop your website’s authority and reliability among users. If you are aware of the SEO process, then you must be aware of the dedicated process of acquiring backlinks and improving your website’s domain authority. These aspects often go unnoticed but play a crucial role in boosting your website’s visibility and authority. Such an aspect can’t be created with the help of AI, nor a website with no backlinks and poor authority will appear in AI snippets and results.
Will SEO Exist In 5-10 Years?
Does SEO have a future? Most definitely yes. As we already said, search engines are evolving. While answering your search queries, the search engines focus on user experience and changing customer preferences. With rising businesses and new brands coming into the market, differentiation is paramount. The core principle of SEO is not to simply rank you on top of the search engine, it is to optimise content and user experience.
On top of that, Google is not the sole platform used for searching and discovery. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, AI assistants (like Siri and Alexa voice search), and YouTube, among others, are also where users search for content. For instance, a Google product review search shows more than 80% of customer review data from Reddit. Google pulls data from various platforms; hence, your content strategy should be optimised and evolved to meet the changing consumer needs. To sum up, SEO is not going away; it’s changing.
It is time to ask yourself – Are your content strategies adept at pulling the audience your way?
Is AI Helping SEO?
The existence of AI tools and platforms has further made brands believe that these tools can be used for the SEO process and that they can deliver better results. But is it so?
As per the experts and the leading SEO company in India, there exist ways through which AI tools can be leveraged to boost SEO performance. But again, these need to be done strategically, as AI still lacks strategic and human thinking and relevancy. Such an approach becomes more relevant when it comes to content marketing strategies. Content marketing needs to be aligned with the user intent and should be able to create brand differentiation. But simply relying on AI tools for creating such a differentiation won’t work for brands.
What Should You Do To Improve Ranking?
Now, if you are looking for ways to step apart from your competitors and make your website visible in both search and AI results, then several aspects can be followed. These include:
Restructure Your Content Approach
- The fact that Google gets more than 90% search queries from users all around the globe is still a fact in 2025.
- However, it should also be noted that the search market share of Google dropped by 90% for the first time after 2015.
- Citing the StatCounter data, Hindustan Times in their article highlighted the drop in Google’s search market share, which highlights that change is coming and AI is ready to embark.
- This is the time when your SEO strategies must be robust to gain traction from users.
- Start by focusing on the content that you are putting on your website, whether it is the on-page content, blogs or any other form of content.
- It needs to be relevant and aligned with the user’s search intent.
- Not only the content strategy, but you also need to rethink your keyword strategy.
Focus on Creating Differentiation
- The stats by Semrush highlight that the most visited and ranked website in India in the ‘Beauty & cosmetics’ category is Nykaa, showing 7,913,392 visits and a 70% bounce rate.
- There is a significant impact of content differentiation and uniqueness on overall site visits and bounce rate.
- You need to create a differentiation in your content without impacting the user’s experience and overall website performance.
- Such differentiation can be based on engaging and optimised content pieces, a well-structured website, relevant product/service images & descriptions and many more.
Create Content Clusters
- People-first content is given priority as per Google’s 2022 helpful content update.
- Rather than just proceeding with creating random content pieces for your brand, you should focus on creating content clusters.
- Topic clusters can be created based on the topic areas. Instead of providing bulk information in one place, you can make small clusters of topics that relate to your central topic area, which can be internally linked to each other.
- Hence, it is important to look for an experienced content marketing agency in India or an SEO company in India.
Adapt To Changing Trends
- You need to focus on the changes emerging in the SEO space and the Google algorithm.
- LLMs like ChatGPT find information for user search queries mainly from web engines like Google. So, optimising your website by including long-tail phrases will help your brand be visible in AI searches as well.
- Understanding such shifts and changes can help you better plan for your SEO strategies and proceed ahead as per the key transformations happening in the sector.
- For example, optimising your website for common voice search terms that are used by potential customers.
To Sum Up/Final Thoughts
It can be concluded that SEO still has its relevance even after the introduction of AI and other relevant SEO tools and techniques. If you still think SEO is dead and won’t contribute to your business or website growth, then you should reach out to the SEO experts at VerveOnlineMarketing. They have a team of SEO professionals who can better guide and assist you with the modern SEO strategies for your brand.
Also, being a leading Performance marketing company in India, VerveOnlineMarketing offers a range of digital marketing services including social media optimisation, paid marketing and several others. So what else are you looking for? Reach out to experts now.
FAQs
Why is the relevance of SEO ending?
“SEO is dying” is a complete myth that brands and website owners need to understand. With time, SEO is evolving to its level best and helping brands to get more user-centric through relevant and real-time results.
Why Should I Do SEO For My Website in 2025?
The myths surrounding the declining impact of SEO are making brands think that there is no need to do SEO in 2025. But it is not the truth. Even in 2025, SEO is important as it helps build your website authority, attract and engage users organically.
Will SEO Ever Be Replaced by AI?
The emergence of AI tools and solutions is expected to support SEO rather than replace it. Hence, SEO experts are required to be well aware of key transformations happening in the field of AI and SEO, and accordingly, modern approaches need to be adopted.
Is There Any Alternative To SEO?
If you want to ensure a better ranking of your website and ensure that it appears on your feed. You need to perform actions that can help optimise your website. Hence, in short, you need to perform SEO to keep your website relevant and competitive even in a modern scenario.
