It’s time to adjust your SEO strategy
Google’s 2024 rollout of AI overviews at the top of search results made a permanent impact on how businesses need to approach SEO. As many businesses are still in the process of adjusting SEO strategies to respond to AI-powered search results, 2025 will be the year we see the true disparities between businesses who have adapted and those stuck in the past in regards to SEO.
The most important impact to consider involves the increasing importance of topical authority from third-party sources. Google’s AI overview feature draws its summaries from leading content on a given search topic, citing its sources meticulously. In recent years, Google has made efforts to prevent low-quality content from ranking high in search by penalizing activities like keyword packing. With AI overviews set to persist, high-quality, informative content will be more valuable than ever if you want Google’s algorithm to consider your website as a trusted source of information in your industry.
What to expect
AI-generated search results change what businesses need to prioritize with SEO. In 2025, you’ll start to see competitors building topical authority in places that are sources for AI search. This will involve not only developing content on their own websites, but securing more appearances in trusted sources in your industry in order to appear in local searches. Here’s an example of this strategy in action: if you’re a family law firm, search queries like “family law firms in my area” will return an AI summary naming top law firms with a presence on trusted third party sites such as online directories, your State’s association, or LinkedIn. Your business needs to have a presence on these sites in order to appear in the AI search results over your competitors.
Want to learn more about AI search and its implications on SEO? Read a detailed breakdown here.
How to respond
Adapt your SEO strategy to respond to AI search, and make time to keep learning and adjusting as needed on a regular basis.
Your website is still important and that won’t change. In order to appear as a source in Google’s AI overviews, you need information that the AI finds worthy of drawing info from. Continue to post high-quality articles and blogs, make your web pages clear and informative, and iterate on your website content regularly to optimize performance.
You also need to focus on gaining authority across the web by expanding your visibility on external sources. Use an SEO tool to monitor for backlinks, eliminating toxic backlinks and ensuring that your business has a strong presence on websites like LinkedIn and industry-specific directories or databases.
