• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

It’s all happening.  I wrote a February 2023 column in which I predicted the demise of SEO.  Since that time, many people have started predicting the same thing.  Now we‘re starting to see it come to fruition, and the question remains: “What comes next?”

Why is SEO going away?

Generative search is the reason.  When AI can answer your questions and give you what you were looking for in a more natural, conversational manner, you no longer rely on search results, paid or natural. 

A higher percentage of queries are being done in a generative AI format.  Google is starting its shift towards AI search, which will result in a massive decrease in overall traffic during the next two years as blue links become a thing of the past.  Since search results won’t be as important, the need to optimize those natural search results becomes less important as well.  What we’re left with is the concept of LLM (large-language model) optimization -- or maybe LLMO, since we love a good abbreviation.

Why do you need to optimize for an LLM?

The LLMs are going to scrape through your content and use it to respond to questions from users which it synthesizes into a chat.  That means your site becomes more of a knowledge base and brochure that details all the information about your brand, your products, your company and even the scenarios and use cases when consumers will engage with your brand.  Most of those site pages will never be seen by a person, so their design will be less necessary than the content placed within them.  Maybe the design elements will extend to a few top-level pages that people will see. To be honest, most of those will be viewed on a mobile device.  As a result, marketers will shift from beautiful sites to functional ones that any LLM can turn into a conversation.

SEO is an entire subindustry of marketing that is going to change dramatically.  If I were an SEO specialist, I would be diving into this new area of LLM optimization ASAP. The funny thing is, you can sit down and engage with the LLM to ask it what it will be relying on, so the practice or craft of LLM optimization is not the black box SEO was.  Most big brands outsourced their SEO work because it required you to be on top of the constant changes being implemented by Google and others in the background, most of which were not widely publicized.  In the case of LLMO, the only thing you need to know is how the algorithms are working. You can simply ask the algorithm itself, and it will tell you!

SEM is an area that will also likely change quickly.  I imagine that Google (and even Bing for that matter) will still offer some form of links that can be purchased to drive people to their site.  That’s where the few designed pages will still be important, but I wonder what impact that will have on those designs.  Will those pages be more dynamically produced to reflect the need of the visitor in that moment?

AI is going to continue having a ripple effect on the business of marketing, and while we can’t predict everything that will happen as a result, there are some immediate things you can start planning for.  And optimizing for LLMs is one area for certain.