SEO is not dead — it just got more demanding
The end of cheap tricks and the return to real relevance.
We hear the same prophecy every year: "SEO is dead". With the arrival of ChatGPT, Perplexity and Search Generative Experience (SGE), the chorus has grown.
The reality is harsher: SEO is not dead, but easy SEO has disappeared. Tactics of stuffing pages with keywords, buying low-quality links and creating superficial content to "answer questions" have stopped working.
The New Currency: Authority and Experience
Modern search engines (and the LLMs that power them) are becoming semantically aware. They don't just look for the exact word; they look for the meaning and the origin of the information.
If your site is just an aggregation of information that already exists on Wikipedia or Reddit, AI will replace it. Why click if the answer can be synthesized?
How to survive?
- Strong Opinion: AI is neutral. Your advantage is having a point of view, a thesis, a human and idiosyncratic voice.
- Proprietary Data: Publish research, case studies and numbers that only you possess.
- Structure: Help machines understand your site. Schema markup, clean sitemaps and logical hierarchy are more vital than ever.
Traffic will decrease in volume, but increase in quality. Prepare for a world with fewer visits, but where each visit is worth more.