The case for and against AI-driven SEO in the zero-click era

“[Clients are] building the bones right now and a lot of companies are starting, and taking it really seriously – others are further ahead,” said Brandon Biancalani, head of paid advertising at Modifly, a performance media and creative agency. There’s not, Biancalani added, “a code red where everyone needs to make the switch because they’re losing out on revenue.” 

For now, the question is whether to go all in on an AI strategy or stick to the fundamentals of traditional SEO. Digiday has delved into the debate, weighing the arguments for and against marketers ushering in an era of AI search strategies.

The case for AI search strategies 

While Google is still the frontrunner in search, the number of people who use generative AI is expected to rise 16.8% this year, that’s about 34% of the U.S. population, per eMarketer.

Agencies are already pitching AI search strategy tests to clients as a way to future-proof brand awareness. A brand’s online presence will be pulled into LLMs whether they like it or not, forcing execs to have a strategy to better control how their brands appear, per agency experts. 

“Google’s decided that all informational search is basically what we call consensus content,” said Ryan Carroll, head of growth at Markacy performance marketing agency. Consensus content, as Carroll describes it, is aggregated content the LLMs pull and present to users. Because of that, it’s harder for brands to stand out without a unique point of view. “That shifts the imperative to the brand, to the publisher, to convey more personal experience, opinions and contemporary takes.”

Even a loose AI strategy of testing and learning allows brands to experiment and understand the ripple effects, per the execs. Notably, AI-powered platforms have rolled out things like chatbots, agentic shopping and other features. Experimenting with the slew of new tools puts marketers on the offense rather than defense, allowing brands to maintain organic visibility, said Jen Cornwell, senior director of AI SEO on the innovation and growth team at Tinuiti.

“The rules are just changing on the platforms themselves,” Cornwell said.

The case against AI search strategies

Despite this change, there’s still a case to be made for traditional SEO tactics. Structured, accessible, information-rich content still performs well and lends itself to AI environments, per the execs. 

“If you do really good SEO with some adjustments for the AI systems, then you’re doing well on the SEO front for Google search,” said Ryne Landers, expert lead SEO at Markacy, “and you’re increasing your visibility in the AI systems.”

Notably, there’s still a black box nature to the LLMs. Marketers are looking to crack the code on things like return on ad spend (on platforms where there are ad opportunities) and how the LLMs determine what information to present. Last year, Perplexity started testing ad placements in its conversational AI search engine. Ad opportunities have since cooled as the platform lost its head of advertising Taz Patel and stopped accepting new advertisers. Meanwhile, OpenAI is said to be headed down the ad path, per Digiday reporting.

“A lot of that [hesitancy is] grounded in us not having a perfect way to measure the efficacy of the efforts we’re doing, and there being no real source of truth right now,” said David Dweck, president at Go Fish Digital. Dweck added that because there’s no real source of truth, it can be tough to justify overly committing to an AI search strategy. Instead, he added, agencies are relying on a hodge podge of tools, like brand lift studies, the chatbots themselves and other signals to understand what and how people are searching. 

Ultimately, marketers recommend a blend of traditional tactics in addition to experimentation.

“The more things change, the more they actually stay the same,” said Markacy’s Carroll. “We know better than to invest all of our dollars into one thing at this point, because everything’s moving too fast.”