“Google risks becoming irrelevant. Gen Z, for example, no longer uses it as their only source…”, Alice told us
Collapsing clicks, traffic that evaporates, visibility increasingly reserved for the “big players”. And meanwhile Google — the same Google that yesterday asked us for authenticity, experience and quality content — now condenses everything into an AI-generated answer. Without citing, without clicking, without giving anything back.
What is going on?
We are in the middle of a transformation that is rewriting the rules without explaining them. AI Overviews, zero-click, hidden metrics, language models devouring content without crediting the people who created it.
Anyone who works in SEO knows it: the field is shrinking, the certainties are gone, the noise keeps growing.
But how do you build a strategy in a landscape where control keeps slipping out of your hands?
To find out, in this new episode of SEO Confidential we interviewed Alice Rowan, a website copywriter and SEO consultant with over ten years of experience.
I have been following her on LinkedIn for a while: her candid, no-frills approach won me over from her very first post.
What follows is a dense, necessary conversation. A journey through the contradictions of today’s digital landscape: from the illusion of a meritocratic web to the daily fight to stay visible, through sustainable strategies, the growing role of brand and the most important challenge of all: winning back the reader’s trust.
Because yes, traffic can drop. But trust — the kind that comes from clear, consistent, authentic content — remains the only real capital worth defending.
“Traffic without conversions is an empty number: only good for vanity metrics”
In 2022 Google pushed us to invest in content “written by people, for people”. Then it quietly removed the “by people” part, right as it was preparing AI Overviews. Isn’t that proof that “helpful content” just means “content to be used for free”, cutting out the people who create it?
I don’t think this is proof of that particular point, but rather a reflection of generative AI as a whole. I like to think that Google’s initial push for people-written content was sincere. We have to remember that Google is a company first and a service second. Its race to integrate AI everywhere is driven more by pressure from shareholders worried about the competition than by any real desire to make users’ lives easier.
I do agree, though, that this cuts out the people who create the content. All to reduce the time spent off-platform and the competition from other LLMs.
You wrote that Google keeps asking creators for ever more “helpful”, high-quality content, while filling the SERPs with AI Overviews whose hallucination rates reach as high as 39%, as in Gemini’s case. Isn’t that a contradiction that punishes precisely the people who work with rigour, expertise and verified data? How can we talk about quality while relying on a system that gets it wrong almost 4 times out of 10?
It’s an inherent contradiction that is incredibly demoralising for people working in SEO, for those simply trying to run a business, and for end users too.
Quality still matters. SEO isn’t our only marketing channel — it’s just one part of a much wider ecosystem. So even if it may be hypocritical of them to champion quality as a priority, we still have a duty to treat our audience with respect. We have email marketing, social media, websites, events and all sorts of other marketing tactics where our content plays a big role.
SEO can be part of that strategy, and quality is typically rewarded in the SERPs, but I believe we can no longer rely on SEO as an isolated channel.
Content creators are increasingly becoming invisible labour feeding artificial intelligence. If Google profits from what we produce while taking away our visibility, is SEO still a marketing tool… or has it become just a fight not to disappear inside a system that exploits us? And if Google no longer sends traffic, is it still worth being there?
It’s not just content writers. Photographers, illustrators, artists and creatives of every kind are seeing their work fed into generative AI and LLMs to be distorted at will. The lack of intellectual property protection before — or even in response to — the global rollout of LLMs is genuinely worrying.
SEO is still part of marketing and still drives traffic, but as I said above, I think it needs to be folded back into a broader marketing ecosystem rather than treated as an entity of its own. Many businesses fall into the trap of relying too heavily on SEO. We live in an era of algorithmic content distribution, so you cannot depend on a single platform or channel consistently.
What we can do is build slowly. Focus our content marketing efforts on bringing people into the marketing funnel, where we’re not competing with algorithms for views or readers. And I think website copy is going to become more and more important.
Alice, Google asks us for transparency, but with AI Overviews it plays its cards close to its chest. We don’t know which queries trigger an AI answer, nor how much traffic we’re losing. How can you build a strategy in a system that hides the fundamental metrics from us?
We do know some things. We know that AI Overviews are far more likely, at least for now, on informational searches. So if an SEO strategy leans, say, 80-90% on informational searches, we need to make some adjustments.
The HCUs really emphasised the importance of detailed, thoughtful informational content. However, the data from my own website and my clients’ sites shows that while traffic for informational searches is declining, traffic for commercial searches is growing (not at the same rate, so don’t get too excited). I think a great way to prepare for this shift is to give some of our informational content (some, not all) a more commercial angle. Especially in service-based industries.
In service industries, it can work well to dedicate a blog post to answering a frequently asked question about your work. It helps to start with a general overview: include research, definitions where needed, and broader context. Then you can go into detail, explaining how that question connects directly to your business or describing your own approach.
It’s not something to do for every single blog post, but it can be worth including because it’s more likely to appear for semantic terms related to the service, letting your audience learn more about the topic while showcasing your expertise.
For years we were told: show first-hand experience, live what you write about. But AI Overviews do the opposite: they summarise content written by others, with no experience of their own. Isn’t that a glaring contradiction of the E-E-A-T principles?
Yes, it is. John Mueller and the Google team have long maintained that E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, even though it appears in Google’s helpful content guidelines.
That said, I’ve always believed E-E-A-T matters more for the quality of your content than for your SEO. Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness are all important factors for conversion and for building trust. Especially in industries with longer sales cycles (SaaS, B2B services, big-ticket investments, etc.), people need to be able to trust you. And that is a fundamental part of connecting with them.
So yes, it’s a contradiction as far as the SERPs are concerned, but it’s not a principle we should give up on any time soon.
There’s a lot of talk today about “building a strong brand”. But for small publishers, niche blogs or specialist e-commerce sites, it’s getting harder and harder. Aren’t we at risk of reducing the web to a shop window for a handful of well-known brands?
What you’re describing is essentially the classic manifestation of monopoly capitalism. And unfortunately it’s in Google’s commercial interest to encourage it. The harder visibility becomes, the more growing businesses will spend on advertising. Big companies will do it anyway, because advertising is simply a natural part of their budget.
I’ll sound like a broken record, but brand building isn’t just an SEO discipline. Honestly, I think all of this is teaching us not to prioritise SEO. It’s still important and still deserves investment, but we can’t rely on it alone for consistent traffic or for building a brand.
Working with different clients, I’ve noticed a recurring problem across many industries: the big players, along with the weight of their historical presence, keep dominating the search results, squeezing out the smaller ones. But that’s nothing new. Google is filling its results pages with more and more elements: AI Overviews, “People Also Ask” boxes, forums, discussions, repeated Local Packs. All of this is reducing organic visibility across the board.
So now small publishers aren’t just competing with the big players in their industry, but with the SERP layouts themselves. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but trying everything and seeing what sticks is not a valid strategy.
Google once promised us: you create value, I’ll bring you users. But with zero-click answers, traffic stops before it arrives. If search is no longer a channel that generates returns, who will sustain the production of quality content in the future?
If your content is bland, people won’t be interested and they won’t come back, regardless of the channel where they find you. Worse, they’ll forget you. The quality of your content is increasingly becoming a conversion tool for your services and a way to keep your business in the game while someone is out there looking for solutions.
As I said, SEO shouldn’t be the only driver behind creating high-quality content. Businesses that lean too heavily on SEO and will do anything to chase it will suffer, because they won’t be able to build long-term customer loyalty.
There is a very real possibility that Google is laying the groundwork for its own obsolescence, but it won’t happen overnight. So we need to plan carefully and start working on strategies that can survive when that moment comes. That means focusing on quality.
We implemented structured data, FAQ markup, reviews, how-tos. And now it’s precisely that information being used to build AI answers. Aren’t we handing Google the weapons to make us redundant?
I know not everyone sees it this way, but I genuinely believe it’s Google that risks becoming redundant. Sure, we’re down here fighting for market share, but what we’re witnessing is the classic slow decline of big tech companies.
They start by providing a service until they become a reference point in their industry, then they try to balance profits with customer needs, then they prioritise profits over customer needs, until the service becomes unusable and people start leaving. We’ve been stuck in the Stockholm syndrome phase for a while, but I truly believe things are starting to shift.
Just look at how Gen Z uses Google compared to previous generations to see that this shift is bound to accelerate over time. Today there are countless channels for finding information, and more and more people are dropping the habit of using Google as their only source.
We should also remember that other search engines exist. There are much smaller ones like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia (my favourite). But there’s also Bing, which is the default search engine in many corporate offices. None of them clutter the SERPs as invasively as Google does — at least for now…
Some informational content today does drive commercial conversions. But is that an exception or the rule? Many businesses only see a collapse. Can we really base a strategy on dynamics we don’t control?
SEO has always been tied to dynamics we don’t control. It’s a field in constant evolution, and our job as SEOs is to keep up.
Every piece of content you publish has the chance to lead to something if it’s well written and provides useful information. This article of mine, for example, isn’t optimised for conversion nor particularly optimised for search, but it takes a specific stance, has substance and provides useful information. It was cited in two major SEO newsletters less than a week after publication, and here I am now giving this interview.
All of that drives more traffic to my site and, in turn, more visibility in the SERPs because, at least for now, Google considers my website a more trustworthy source. And, of course, it helps build the brand. It’s all part of one big system.
Was it intentional? No. Because SEO has always been about dynamics we don’t control. That doesn’t mean we’re completely powerless, but it’s important to be realistic about what we want our content to achieve. Traffic that doesn’t contribute to our business goals remains an empty number: only good for vanity metrics.
But then, does every piece of content have to drive a conversion to be worthwhile? Anyone who works on reputation, authority and brand building knows these are goals you build over time.
Today, moreover, we need to convey trustworthiness not only to people but also to language models and artificial intelligence, which must recognise us as a credible brand. But how do you actually measure that journey? And isn’t it limiting to reduce everything to conversion alone?
I don’t think every piece of content necessarily has to convert. That’s not realistic. But we do have the opportunity to capitalise on the attention we receive. When we’re getting less attention and fewer visits to our websites, how do we make the most of the traffic we do have?
There are many ways to strengthen brand loyalty, increase recognition and drive conversion through your website. It often all starts with a piece of content found via Google or another channel. From there, brand identity and tone of voice come into play — and they’re not just about how we write, but about how we build a relationship with the people reading us.
You need to genuinely engage, striking the right balance between clarity and depth. If we manage that, whoever lands on the site may decide to stay, explore and find out more about us.
This is where website copy is becoming increasingly essential for marketing. A chance to connect with a stranger, earn their trust and make them feel seen. All well-written copy leaves the audience with a positive feeling. Happiness, gratification, care, excitement, hope, relaxation. Your product or service is there to solve a problem, and the content you write should relate directly to the problems you’re solving.
It’s not that every piece of content has to convert. But in service-based industries in particular, all content should have the potential to lead to something more.
For many businesses the problem isn’t theoretical — it’s immediate. Traffic is dropping today, costs are here today. Are there short-term tactics (some would say “dirty” ones) to defend visibility and conversions right now?
I don’t believe in “dirty” tactics. Yes, the problem is immediate, and yes, it’s scary.
The SERPs have always been chaotic, and creating helpful content probably increases your chances of appearing in AI Overviews, which often draw on the first page of organic results.
The problem is that Google doesn’t really value the links to the sites it pulls information from: it’s like writing a book using your research but crediting it in tiny footnotes. That’s why I’m not convinced that betting heavily on AIOs is really an effective strategy.
The true, honest answer about what the immediate future holds for SEO is that we don’t know. We don’t have enough information about AI Overviews and AI Mode to make informed short-term decisions. It’s important to remember that AI SEO specialists don’t exist — at least not yet. All we can do is try, test and make sense of the data as it emerges.
Know that as an industry we are working and researching. But an SEO team won’t be able to fix the situation of rising impressions and falling clicks. That’s a platform problem beyond our control. All we can do is recommend better practices for the future, keep focusing on quality and increase the conversion of the traffic we are getting.
We’re going through a period of major transition, and that will inevitably bring some growing pains. So be patient and empathetic with the people fighting an uphill battle to give you the visibility you want in the search engines.
Building trust amid the chaos: your relationship with your audience matters more than ever
We can no longer wait for things to go back to the way they were. Because they won’t.
Organic traffic is shrinking, clicks are falling, visibility is shifting towards a few big players and AI-generated answers. If you live off content, leads and sales, this is a concrete, everyday problem. But standing still in nostalgia is not an option.
Today it’s no longer enough to be visible. You need to become trustworthy and recognisable, even in the eyes of artificial intelligences. Because more and more often it’s not people who find our content directly, but chatbots, voice assistants and AI-powered answer systems — true AI agents, the new intermediaries between us and our audience.
Generative models, voice assistants, AI agents read the web differently from us. They don’t click, they don’t scroll, they don’t “browse”. They extract, synthesise, select.
And it’s them we need to talk to. We must build content designed not only for the human reader, but engineered to be read, interpreted and cited by AIs.
That means taking care of the language, of course. But also the structure. It means using consistent markup, structured data, semantically organised content. It means helping the models understand who we are, what we offer and why we matter.
Today’s SEO is also this: making our site machine-readable so we can stay visible to human beings. Because, more and more often, our audience’s choices will pass through an AI interface. And if it doesn’t find us there, it won’t find us at all.
But it’s not just a technical matter. It’s an editorial challenge too.
We need to get back to building relationships, credibility, identity. Inside and outside the SERPs.
Through newsletters, communities, content built to last and to stand out, even in a landscape where everything seems to blur into sameness.
Yes, conversions matter. Yes, results have to come.
But today visibility no longer comes down to your position in the rankings alone: it comes down to algorithmic recognition, narrative consistency, and the credibility we manage to convey to those who read and to those who mediate information.
We can no longer rely on a single platform.
We must build cross-channel value, a recognisable presence, strong signals that speak to whoever decides whether to show us or skip us.
The game isn’t over. But it’s being played on a new field.
With different rules. With different counterparts. With higher expectations.
It’s up to us to answer, before others do it in our place.
