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SEO: It’s still not dead, and it’s still vitally important for businesses. As with everything on the web, it’s evolving. What worked five years ago isn’t necessarily what works now. That isn’t to say that some core principles are not still there, but SEO has evolved to add layers of complexity. It’s adapted to the ways people use the internet in 2025.
Search intent optimization
When someone types a search into Google, they’re almost always looking for something very specific. They want information that will help them make a decision, whether it’s the best Thai restaurant near them, which cars have the best safety ratings, or which search engine marketing methods will bring more people to their website.
Anyone who wants their website to rank for specific keywords needs to do a good job answering those questions with their website’s content. It’s the main reason people use a search engine, to find an answer to their question. Answering those are how search engines build trust and attract eyeballs, so if your website has good answers, it will rank high in searches. In many cases, the answers people are seeking are to help them make a purchase, or direct them to where they can purchase what they know they already want. They also want to see reviews, so they can compare competitors who sell similar items.
To do well in search intent rankings, then, you need fresh content that provides a specific answer to a question, and plenty of reviews from your customers telling searchers why your product or service is better than your competitors’.
AI in SEO
As it has changed so much about the internet in the last couple of years, AI has made a big impact on SEO. By processing huge amounts of data quickly, AI can figure out what gets similar content ranking on search engines and optimize yours based on its findings. It can find the right words and suggest the right backlinks to boost your page in SERPs. To make a website stand out in a crowded sea of competition, AI can suggest content topics that highlight what is unique about what a business has to offer. It will even suggest alt text and tags to make images on pages another way to draw clicks rather than simply fill space once people are already visiting a page.
Zero-click search optimization
Thanks in part to AI displays at the top of SERPs and due a lot to the fact that people are busy and want answers quickly, zero-click content’s importance is on the rise. Zero click is when users get the answer they want directly from their search, without having to click a link for one of the top results. Even if you don’t get the click, you can get the sale by presenting information on your website in concise, bite-size chunks that fit neatly into a snippet on a results page. Distilling key information about your business into a few sentences with FAQs, infographics, and bullet points make it easy for search engines to pass that information along to searchers, who in turn get the answers they want, fast. That can make all the difference in whether they choose your business or move on to the next.
Voice search SEO
Typing in keywords isn’t the only way people search for something nowadays. Often, they’re speaking into their phone, or using a smart speaker that doesn’t even display results visually. While it might be good SEO to rank for short, concise searches that a user would type in, people talk to voice search the way they would to another person. That means ranking for full sentences and answering who, what, when, where, why, and how. Some of the same things that rank well for zero click work for voice search as well. If your website can make it into a snippet with a few short sentences that explain something concisely, a voice search will be inclined to read that out. Voice searchers tend to be looking for things close to them, so mastering local SEO will boost a site to the top, as will loading speed.
Google’s mobile-first indexing
As we’ve made clear above, search engine users want answers now. They’re often asking on the go, and nearly two thirds of internet searches are now conducted on mobile devices. Thus, over the past five years, Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing, where the appearance, UX, and speed of a mobile website take precedence over the desktop version in search rankings. At this point, if a website’s content can’t be pulled up on a mobile device, it will not rank at all on Google. That’s how important mobile has become, so you to be absolutely sure that your website has a mobile-friendly design and content and is fast on mobile devices. Otherwise, you risk being left behind as search zooms by.
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