Every week someone tells me that SEO is dead.
This week, I was given an online conference by a young man with a start-up company.
First came the humble brag about how his business grossed over $20 million in one year with PPC ads.
And this combination ended with a brutal statement about how AI will kill SEO.
In today’s article I will tell you why he is right. But what’s coming is much bigger.
OSO – Organic Search Optimization (it’s bigger and badder than SEO)
When I was recovering from the online wildness of the review, I did what any SEO does on the receiving end. Place the user’s domain name in Ahrefs.
The result of $20 million in turnover?
Only 2,000 brand searches per month. This is not a brand; are some people who verify that you are legit after seeing your ads on TikTok.
To be fair, he’s right. And he’s not the only one who thinks so.
Ever since Google told everyone that the Search Generative Experience (SGE) was coming, even SEO consultants have been crying into their tea, fearing that traffic will be destroyed.
And for good reason, fewer people are likely to click on websites thanks to AI.
But you don’t need to cry into the cup of tea you stuck at your recent SEO seminar.
SGE will give birth to a new and much bigger beast.
Organic Search Optimization (OSO).
The changing perspective of search
Time to brush up on marketing 101.
Brands grow by acquiring more customers. Not a huge shock, but they don’t grow with traffic and rankings.
So, as SEOs, we need to think tactically about how people become customers.
Simply put, we need to make businesses easy to understand and find.
Translating this into SEO language, we need to rank customers by their high purchase intent keywords. Rank them for category research search terms (thinking questions and comparison style search).
And remember, we can use informational search to reach out-of-market people and try to get their email addresses.
And that’s pretty much SEO.
How this is done is debatable, but these are the results brands want.
So how does this change with SGE/AI?
Your job is to build networks… giant networks
The role of SEO is to capture and feed demand. Minimal demand generation can be done through SEO.
But research is evolving. Now we have Google about to add insights that will rank TikTok videos and YouTube shorts.
We have news and discovery feeds that are getting better and better, and of course we’ll have SGE.
Research is not dying, it is evolving.
Now we need to think about multi-channel SEO.
Now we have to think beyond the first Google SERP.
Now we need to build large networks to capture the demand that marketing teams create.
And even better, it captures the demand that other marketing teams create, which is an amazing SEO benefit.
Reach, Great Reach (and Why You’ll Get Paid More)
It’s okay to spit out your dummy as an SEO and tell the world you’re not going to go to YouTube and do SEO there.
Or avoid TikTok and say, “No… that’s not for me.”
But if that’s your mindset, you won’t help build brands online because you won’t be able to give general tactical advice.
No one says you have to be behind the camera or making the videos themselves.
You also don’t need to tell people what to write to try to appear in the discovery channel.
But you need to expand your skill set to exist in the ever-evolving world of organic search.
SEO “Prospects” will be a great opportunity for growth.
In practical terms, your work is now much sexier.
Finally, you’ll receive invitations to social team events, where you’ll ask them to make videos for you.
Go from curating written content to short videos, long videos, PR and even thought leadership/news content.
Yes, SEO will be much bigger.
Yes, SEO will help businesses capture more demand.
And yes, this will help SEO become a bigger industry (which usually means you’ll get paid more).
The problem is that SEO will need new leaders.
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The social team will not do keyword research
It’s tempting to think that the social team will pick up the Insights tab. After all, Google will get the content from social platforms.
But they have enough work, creating demand-generating content and ads that keep brands on the minds of their audiences.
Asking them to start using search tools to find out keywords that rank in Google, that should be the job of SEOs.
And learning how to optimize those videos for search engine discovery… yes, this is for you too.
You’ve spent years learning and mastering keyword research. You know how Google’s algorithms work.
Since you’ve been soliciting written content for years, soliciting shorts will be part of your role.
And for this reason, you will need to become an omnichannel SEO.
Omnichannel SEO is why organic search optimization seems like a much more accurate job title.
But don’t change the title of your paper…yet
My last role was called ‘head of organics’. Today I am the SEO Director.
Essentially, both were SEO.
SEO is a name that has been around for a long time, and it is our category.
While the focus will shift to use organic search thinking across platforms, the name will be difficult to alter from SEO.
After all, we are still talking about search engine optimization.
So OSO is more of a mindset.
It’s a growth mindset.
The thing is, no one is going to give us that extra market share.
SEOs must demand this responsibility.
We need to get excited about the huge potential of ranking through search, not just in the first SERP.
SGE, Discovery, Perspectives, News, YouTube, TikTok, Reels, Watch.
The list will grow and the list will expand.
Organic search is growing.
And organic search specialists will thrive…but only if you choose to.
How to start your organic search optimization career
This has been a preachy article. I make no apologies for that. We have to grow as a sector.
But I want people to leave with practical knowledge.
If you are interested in meeting this demand directly, you need to enhance your skills.
To get started, go to search and explore tabs.
Press the tabs and see what comes out.
Explore the overall results and learn how this content ranks and why it ranks.
Now, you will find a crossover. Some of the content that ranks in the News Feed ranks in the “All” SERP.
Some content that ranks organically in the SERP also captures the first segment of people also asking.
Now, go to TikTok and do the same searches.
What comes up in searches?
Do they have a large following? A good video? Are they using text in their videos?
And repeat this with YouTube.
You won’t just see an opportunity.
You will begin to expand your SEO skill set.
And now, I hope you get a little more excited about the power of organic search optimization.
The potential is incredible.
AI is not killing SEO; makes it more powerful.
Think breadth of search, not depth.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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