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As 2024 already draws to a close, many website owners are left wondering what 2025 and beyond will hold for search engine optimization (SEO) and search engines. As we are still in the dawn of the AI revolution, there is no doubt massive change lies ahead.
A Brief History of SEO
1998 just two years prior to Y2K, Google launched it’s first public search engine. It ha the task of helping to organize the rapidly expanding internet, which had grown to a massive 2.5 million websites, up from just 250,000 2 years prior.
Over the next 25+ years, Google would undergo a variety of changes to their search engine as the internet continues to sprawl and grow, all the while savvy marketers were figuring out how to manipulate Google’s results and make massive amounts of money along the way.
This trend would yield massive changes in Google’s search engine algorithms, the largest of which included:
- Panda Update: Assigning a quality score to webpages as a ranking factor to put quality over quantity
- Penguin: Downranking websites with unnatural backlinks
- Hummingbird: Helping Google understand unique search queries and intent behind search to provide more accurate search results
- Mobile-First: Adapting to the increasingly mobile-first world we live in today
- Pigeon: Ranking websites based on their proximity to the searcher for local searches
There were millions of other updates, some small and some large, which shaped Google into the search engine it is today. Today, Google is tasked with crawling over 2.5 billion websites, a massive increase over the mere 2.5 million websites the year Google launched its search engine.
The AI Revolution
As we embark on the next ten years, AI will undoubtedly shape every facet of our lives including digital marketing and SEO. For the past few years, it has been shouted from the rooftops that AI will lead to the end of SEO. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
AI will undoubtedly change search as we know it today, but that doesn’t mean AI will be the end of SEO. In our 16 years of performing SEO, we have seen countless major changes in Google’s algorithms, increases in competition and have heard on dozens of occasions that “____ is going to kill SEO”.
As we round out 2024 and enter 2025, we can’t help but laugh this off the same way we have for 16 years in this industry, as the only constant in SEO is change. AI will lead to massive change, but those who adapt and adapt early will have a leg up and see even stronger ROIs from their SEO campaigns.
Today, we already position our clients for AI search, both on search engine giants like Google and Bing, but also on newly emerging AI technologies like ChatGPT, Amazin Alexa search and countless others. The process of SEO – helping searches find websites, businesses and information – will never go away. Dating back to Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1883 when a printer ran out of white paper and the “YellowPages” was born to 2024 where Google dominates search and everything in between, the process of being optimized for searches is something that will never go away.
What Will 2025 & Beyond Hold For SEO?
2025 will continue to be a transitionary year for SEO. On one hand, Google continues to dominate and our clients continue to see massive ROI from SEO investments specifically in Google Search. However even Google search is evolving, with the incorporation of AI results right into search queries.
On the other hand, consumers continue to gain information from a more diverse array of platforms – from in-home smart devices to wearables to smartphones to 100% AI driven search platforms like ChatGPT. We continue to optimize our clients for these platforms concurrently, ensuring they can capture the growing volume of searches on these additional platforms and be well positioned with a first-comer advantage as these platforms continue to grow.
In our opinion, Google isn’t going away anytime soon. Brands that worry more about the future find themselves losing out on ROI and revenue today. While our vision is always looking forward for our clients, it’s equally important to get results today.
SEO in 2025 will continue to see quality outperform quantity in every regard – from content to links to website structure – all the same aspects that held true in 2024 will continue in 2025 only with greater emphasis. As more and more website owners try to leverage AI generated content and strategies, human crafted content, websites and SEO work will continue to deliver the strongest results.
Google has a unique task in 2025, one which they have seen countless times before. Google is tasked with rewarding websites which put in the hard work. Anyone can tell ChatGPT to write them an article and throw it up on a website, but that doesn’t provide value to Google’s search audience. So Google and other search engines will continue in 2025 to reward those who put in the hard work, provide human generated information and rank them accordingly.
Google will also continue to roll out their own AI into more and more search phrases in 2025. This means a potential drop in click-through rates for website owners, as more and more information is integrated right into the search page. While many would see this as a negative, we actually have seen it as a positive for our clients as Google continues to leverage their websites as information bases for their AI generated content. While this may lead to a decrease in click throughs, it actually can lead to an increase in conversions as more and more searchers gain exposure to the information and data put out by our clients’ websites through Google AI search.
Staying Ahead Of The Curve
As mentioned earlier, the only constant in SEO is change. 2025 will be a critical year to embrace the change which is undoubtedly coming in the next 5 years to search while also continuing to leverage legacy search because frankly it just works.
At Simple SEO Group, we continue to position our clients for the search of today and the AI driven world of tomorrow. To learn more about our SEO strategies and how they can help drive traffic and revenue for your brand, contact us to schedule a complimentary consultation.