What Future Awaits SEO in 2025?

As with every new year, many SEO experts engage in the tradition of making predictions about organic search. Do we have a crystal ball? Of course not, but our experience, knowledge and all the recent studies allow us to foresee certain SEO trends emerging in 2025.

With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in online search habits, evolving user expectations, and new challenges facing Google, the coming years are likely to be marked by significant upheavals in SEO. So, get ready to adjust your strategies! Here are four main SEO changes to anticipate.

1. The Rise of AI in Online Search

What is the impact of artificial intelligence on SEO? This is a burning question for nearly all organizations! There is indeed cause for concern as ChatGPT has been on the scene for over two years now, revolutionizing the way we search for information.

A study by SimilarWeb shows that ChatGPT's traffic has jumped by 112% since September 2023, but it has not yet managed to dethrone the giant Google.

The real question now is: how quickly will this generative AI technology be adopted by the general public? All signs point to conversational agents powered by large language models (LLMs) gradually making their way onto every mobile device. Consequently, user search behavior is inevitably going to evolve, especially for informative and complex queries, where AI can provide quicker and more direct answers than the traditional results offered by Google. And therein lies the real challenge: what will become of the organic traffic to our websites?

Whether it's ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews, all these AI tools try to reassure us by including links to the sources they use. While we can hardly expect clicks to follow, we can nevertheless be comforted by the increased visibility this may bring... but we still need to be able to measure this visibility! That's why so many SEO experts are eagerly awaiting for the first tools on the market that can help them with this issue.

2. The End of Google's Monopoly?

For over 20 years, Google has been the benchmark for search engines, but several recent threats could end this dominance. Gartner predicts that traffic from traditional search engines could decrease by 25% by 2026 due to chatbots and AI-based virtual agents.

In the United States, especially among younger generations, Google is already no longer the first reference when it comes to finding information. Indeed, searches on social networks like YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or TikTok are on the rise. Amazon can also be considered the leader in retail search. Users are increasingly favoring spaces that are tailored to their habits and specific needs.

Moreover, Google's dominant model could be severely challenged by antitrust lawsuits against the company in Europe and the United States. To adapt to these new realities, Google will be forced to revise its strategy. Therefore, we can expect that the result pages, already often criticized for their lack of relevance and for the zero-click trend, will become even more volatile in the coming years.

3. The Need to Strengthen Brand Authority

Given the upheavals caused by AI in online search and the looming threats over Google, companies must anticipate a potential loss of SEO traffic. The main challenge for brands will now be to multiply points of contact with the user across all platforms where they are present.

Since LLM tools feed on mentions made on the Web, particularly in the media world, it becomes crucial to enhance your brand's online presence and make it a reference in its field without focusing solely on acquiring backlinks for SEO purposes.

Working on a brand's authority, reliability, and expertise is becoming an increasingly important criterion to be featured prominently in responses given by ChatGPT and similar AI solutions. Practically, this trend will involve improving the company's presentation (especially the "About Us" page) so that generative AI tools can clearly identify the brand and its activity. Trust and credibility granted to the brand must also be highlighted through certifications, testimonials, reviews, case studies, FAQs, location, contact information, etc. All of this, marked up with structured data using Schema.org to help search engines understand and leverage the types of content offered.

While discussing content, it's important to remember that the goal is not to produce more of it, but rather to focus on creating exclusive and more relevant content, in the right format, for the right target, at the right place and time. The time savings offered by generative AI tools for producing such content should be used for qualitative personalization, showcasing your company's expertise.

4. The End of SEO?

Should SEO specialists start considering early retirement or a career change? It's a thought… but in fact, SEO professionals still have a brave future ahead of them, provided they no longer focus solely on Google. SEO now involves a broader effort of visibility and credibility in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by generative AI tools.

If not already done, it's high time to diversify by developing expertise across all platforms where search plays a key role in the visibility of a brand. Technical and writing skills alone are no longer enough: it is now necessary to double down on ingenuity to demonstrate, time and again (and even more so!), the value of SEO. Moreover, as Neil Patel suggests, perhaps we should consider renaming Search Engine Optimization to terms like Search Everywhere Optimization, Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO), or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

The Future of SEO: A Matter of Adaptation

As artificial intelligence reshapes the parameters of online search, businesses and SEO specialists alike must adapt quickly and effectively to the new market realities. While the AI era does not spell the end of SEO as a specialty, it does herald the beginning of a profound transformation in strategies to generate visibility and interaction.

Now more than ever, the key to success lies in the ability to anticipate changes, innovate, and remain relevant in an ever-evolving digital landscape.