If you’ve paid any attention to SEO over the last two decades, you’ve undoubtably heard someone ask the most notorious SEO question of all: “Is SEO dead?” Time and time again this question crops up – and always during times of sweeping changes that bring about turmoil and uncertainty in the organic search landscape.
Organic SEO: The Early Years
Follow me on a journey back in time to the very start of it all – the early 2000s, the wild west of the web. A world where keyword stuffing, shady backlinks, and meta tag magic ruled. One where, if you knew how to jam the right keywords into your page 200 times (likely hidden by white text on a white page), you could manipulate Google’s simpler algorithm and game the system to rank well in search results. Ultimately, Google started catching up – updates like “Florida” (2003) that cracked down on spammy sites laid the groundwork for much stricter checks for potential abuse. As deeper relevance and authority began replacing rote repetition, people began to wonder aloud for the first time: “Is SEO dead?”
Enter the 2010s, which ushered in content marketing, long-tail keywords, and the mobile revolution. Google’s algorithm had matured, pushing marketers to shift from quantity to quality. Sites that delivered value through helpful content like blogs, guides, and optimized landing pages started to notice significant gains. Responsive design allowed for a singular, cohesive site experience across desktop and mobile. And then came the "RankBrain” (2015) update, Google’s first major leap into machine learning. Suddenly, the algorithm wasn’t just paying attention to keywords – it was trying to understand what users actually meant. With the stability of past optimization efforts in question again, “Is SEO dead?” seemed to appear across headlines for nearly every industry insider once more.
Organic SEO: Today
In the 2020s, SEO has transitioned to a hybrid of technical precision and intuitive content creation. Updates like Google’s "BERT" (2019) and the introduction of Core Web Vitals have shifted attention toward user intent, relevance, site speeds, and the on-page experience.
Search behavior has also shifted: Featured Snippets, “People Also Ask” sections, and zero-click results altered what success in the search engine results page (SERP) looked like in the early 2020s. Suddenly, as Google rolled out its Search Generative Experience (SGE) in 2023, placing generative AI search results right there in the SERP, ranking #1 wasn’t always the win it used to be. Not just another update, the introduction of AI and Google’s SGE in Search has completely redefined the landscape – reshaping and changing what a search result could be.
For the first time, the notorious question of “Is SEO dead?”, along with its close relatives “Is SEO really dead?” and “Is SEO dead yet?” started to carry a bit more weight.
So Really, Is SEO Dead?
We’re here to tell you that actually, no, SEO is still not dead. It has, however, undergone a dramatic transformation – an AI evolution, in true fashion. Entire new possibilities have spawned, such as AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), defining new methodologies for optimizing. So no, while SEO is not dead, it’s true that SEO in its current form is barely recognizable when compared with the landscape just a few short years ago.
The Role of AI in Today’s Search
While 2023 marked the year Google first began incorporating AI into organic search, 2024 cemented its place in the SERP. With the rollout of SGE, generative AI results show up right at the top of the SERP – front and center, often well above ads and organic results, and likely several full-screen scrolls above that blog post you spent five whole weeks perfecting.
SGE pulls in snippets of content, compiles and rewrites them on the fly, and presents an easy-to-digest, conversational summary to the user, often with multiple citations. As of early 2024, Google’s SGE had rolled out to millions of users and searches, showing up in over 91.4% of all search queries (Authoritas, March 2024). In fact, AI generated results appear the majority of the time, even in categories with the lowest coverage – including Insurance (52%), Finance (71%), Professional Services (83%), and Health & Wellness (87%).
When viewed through this lens, it’s easy to see how tried and true “blue links” now account for a smaller (and shrinking!) piece of the search results pie.
It's not just Google: Microsoft Bing’s Copilot, You.com, and Perplexity.ai are all building AI-powered, conversational-style (aka chat) engines that prioritize dynamic, custom-tailored answers over a traditional set of link results. These tools don’t just summarize – they synthesize, infer, and restructure information scraped from content across the web, often without a clear path back to the source. Is it helpful to searchers? Perhaps, as long as the information is concise and truly accurate. Does it drive traffic back to the source? Not always, though time will tell if that shifts.
What Is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, focuses on optimizing content – not to rank organically, but to be referenced in AI-generated search results. Think of those Featured Snippets you grew accustomed to seeing at the top of the SERP. Now take those bite-sized segments, and refine and shape that into quotable, summarized, embedded, and synthesized content for an AI-generated answer. Congrats on your successful AEO!
Traditional SEO focused on achieving high rankings in a basic list of organic links, tied to a core set of keywords and phrases. With AEO, it’s not just about keywords anymore – it’s about readability, context, and quotability, ultimately focused on becoming the source material for the next answer itself. It’s forward-thinking progress in search, and it’s SEOs next evolution.
Why does this matter? Because in AI search, the answer often is the final product. One recent study shows around 80% of users rely on “zero-click” results ~40% of the time (Bain, December 2024). That’s a potential drop of approximately 15% to 25% in organic web traffic, consisting of users who might never click a page at all. So while your content still technically fuels the AI result, the value exchanged between you and the searcher, and the visibility of your brand, has been fundamentally changed.
SEO vs. AEO: Key Differences to Know About
So, what’s different in a practical sense?
- Organic SEO is still not going anywhere anytime soon. It plays a role in powering the web, but visibility is changing. Your blog post might now live in the shadows of an AI snapshot – even if it’s quoted directly.
- AEO is pushing SEOs to rethink how they structure content. Conversational tone matters. Clear, direct responses matter. Schema, structure, and semantic clarity? Those really matter.
- The Search Box isn’t a small box anymore; it’s a conversation. Queries are becoming more natural, long-form, and multi-faceted. AI tools are responding in kind – and this time with comprehensive answers, not just canned links.
Put simply: SEO still matters, but it’s no longer the only game in town.
How AI Is Reshaping Search Behavior
Let’s start with the obvious: people aren’t using Search the same way anymore. You can point the finger at TikTok, Google’s redesign, or even the robots — whatever the cause, user search behaviors have changed.
With AI now summarizing results before the first click, users are spending less time scrolling down the page and more time interacting with AI-generated answers at the top. According to recent industry data, in more than 50% of queries where SGE is present, users are skipping the organic search results ("blue links") entirely.
Searchers are also getting more conversational. Instead of searching for “best hiking boots waterproof,” users are asking, “What are the best waterproof hiking boots for winter trails?” And guess what? AI excels at answering that. Follow-up queries are rising too — users are leaning into the suggestion-based flow of AI search, which typically poses additional follow-up questions like a Sherlock Holmes in a ChatGPT costume.
We’re also seeing a rise in multi-modal searches, which includes voice, images, even video as input for queries. The old formula of optimizing for “top X” keywords just isn’t enough. Content now has to be flexible — ready to inform, answer, and engage across formats.
Content Recommendations in SEO vs. AEO: What Content Ranks Where?
Let’s take a moment to demystify the split, and identify the type(s) of content most likely to surface in each.
- Organic Search (SEO): Still favors long-form content, including deep-dive editorial, evergreen guides, and solid technical execution. Focusing on design, development, and digital marketing for ecommerce brands and businesses, we here at Hidden Gears have observed that collection pages and product pages have seen a major glow-up, gaining significant traction and added visibility in organic search results. This is especially true when paired with strong backlinks and a website with solid UX/UI.
- AI-Generated Search (AEO): Rewards skimmable, structured, and semantically rich content — think tables, charts, FAQs, how-tos, and definitions. These are often featured front and center in AI answer models, so include this type of content when writing and optimizing for AEO.
- The Overlap (both): How-to guides, listicles, and structured content – things like recipes, etc. that include markup / schema – often hit both SEO and AEO targets when content covers a variety of features. If it’s well-structured and helpful, you’ve got a shot at being quoted, or appearing in the SERP – and in the case of hybrid formats, the possibility of both.
So now that we know where content is likely to show up, the question remains: what content should ecommerce brands optimize for, and how?
Content Recommendations in SEO vs. AEO: Creating Content That (Still) Works
With all these radical shifts, we're happy to report that some things haven’t changed – great content still wins. However, what defines “great” content, as well as what defines a "win", has gotten more nuanced.
Below, we highlight some key factors worth focusing on when building content for each.
- For SEO:
- Internal linking: Still helps with crawlability and authority.
- Don’t skip trust signals: Author bios, external links, social proof, updating dated content – all still impactful.
- Optimize for both humans and crawlers: You’re writing for two these days, and they're not so good with sharing, so make sure your content resonates with both.
- For AEO:
- Use simplified, clear language: Both AIs and humans love it when you tell it like it is.
- Write like you’re answering a question: Make it concise, make it conversational.
- Structure matters: Yes, really – both semantically, and with markup / schema. Short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and semantic HTML all help.
- For both:
- Stay current: AI typically goes after the most recent, fresh, and relevant content, so give it what it craves if you want to stay on top.
- Embed authority (and empathy): If you sound confident, and human, you win.
- Format for quotable content snippets: Your content may not be clicked, but it will be read (by AI, at least).
The biggest takeaway? You’re no longer just writing to achieve new rankings in organic search results. If your content is surfacing in SGE and AI generated results, that content is being used to inform a machine that then turns around and informs the searcher – reducing visibility to the source (you) in the process.
The pivot here is to focus on maximizing opportunities to showcase your brand, optimizing your content and assets with brand mentions and imagery. That way, regardless of where your content appears – be it in AI Snapshots at the top of the SERP, or at the top of organic search results – you’ll be putting your best foot forward while furthering brand recognition, cementing your brand's authority through your content.
SEO is still alive for sure, but it’s got a whole new look: complete with a makeover, new ‘do, and a new attitude. With a makeover of this caliber, you certainly wouldn’t call it dead – though it might look so radically different, you’d swear it was someone else.
Stay tuned for Part II of our SEO vs. AEO series, where we cover AI-generated answers & SGE’s impact on ad placements and performance – as well as dish out some of our biggest predictions for the future of AI and organic search.
Key Acronyms & Terms to Know
- AEO: Answer Engine Optimization
- AI: stands for “Artificial Intelligence”
- AIO: stands for “AI Overviews”
- AI Snapshots: Google's branded term for short form AI-generated summaries
- “Blue links”: An older term for organic Search results, traditionally displayed as blue underlined links in the SERP
- LLMs: Large Language Models (e.g., OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Google’s Gemini, Claude)
- NLP: Natural Language Processing
- SEO: Search Engine Optimization
- SERP: Search Engine Results Page
- SGE: Search Generative Experience – Google’s AI-powered Search
- “Zero-click results”: results that display the answer right in the SERP, negating the need to click