The Complete Guide to SEO – Part II

AI Technologies and SEO Optimisation: From ChatGPT to SGE

The development of artificial intelligence has had a major impact on SEO practices in recent years. In 2024–2025, marketers significantly increased their use of AI tools to save time on many optimisation tasks. Today, AI helps generate content ideas, write and edit text, analyse keywords, process competitor data, and perform many other tasks.

For example, tools such as SurferSEO, Frase, and ChatGPT-based plugins can provide recommendations on article structure, suggest relevant keywords, or quickly generate initial drafts. However, it is important to remember that AI is a double-edged sword for SEO: it can be highly useful, but it also creates new challenges.

One of the main concerns is the widespread growth of AI-generated content. It is now possible to create automatically generated articles within minutes, which means that the internet could become flooded with generic content assembled from information already available on other websites.

If everyone begins using AI to write blog posts automatically, the amount of repetitive and uniform information online is likely to increase rapidly. As a result, competition for content that provides genuine and distinctive value will become even stronger.

Even leading AI-content platforms acknowledge that human creativity cannot be replaced. For example, Jasper, previously known as Jarvis, continued hiring professional copywriters to produce content for its own blog even after receiving significant investment.

Google is also actively responding to the growth of AI-generated content. The search engine is working to identify and filter low-value AI-written material so that users receive genuinely useful results.

One widely discussed controversy demonstrated why this is necessary: Sports Illustrated was found to have published AI-generated articles under the names of fictional “authors”. The practice was quickly exposed. Incidents of this kind encourage Google to strengthen its algorithms so that they can identify artificial content and prioritise trustworthy material created by real authors.

The influence of AI is evident not only in content production but also in the operation of search engines themselves. In 2023, Google tested the Search Generative Experience, or SGE, which displayed short AI-generated summaries for certain queries directly within search results.

For example, if a user asks a complex question such as “Which is better for a holiday with young children and a dog—Bryce Canyon or Arches National Park?”, SGE may provide a concise response comparing the advantages of each location.

This is an important development, but it has also created concerns about declining organic traffic. If Google provides the answer directly, will users still click on links to individual websites?

The answer remains unclear. Some studies have indicated that AI Overviews, or SGE-style features, have reduced clicks on traditional organic results for certain types of queries, particularly informational and Your Money or Your Life topics.

On the other hand, Google states that SGE includes links to its sources and encourages users to explore the information in greater detail on the original websites.

Long-term forecasts also suggest that the fundamental principles of SEO optimisation will remain unchanged. Websites that produce the strongest content for their audience and earn authoritative backlinks will continue to achieve leading positions. That same high-quality content is also likely to be included among the sources used in AI-generated search responses.

A comparison can be made with the growth of voice search several years ago. Many expected Voice Search to transform SEO completely. In practice, the same websites and content continued to appear in voice-based results; only the format of the queries changed.

SEO professionals should therefore view AI as an additional tool within their existing toolkit, rather than as the sole basis of their work.

This also involves analysing user behaviour. User signals are becoming increasingly important to success in modern SEO optimisation. Google’s ranking systems attempt to assess how satisfied users are with the result they receive.

For example, if a user opens your page and leaves immediately, this may indicate that the result did not satisfy their needs. Conversely, if the user spends time on the page, interacts with its elements, or reads the content, these behaviours may indicate a more positive experience.

Recent Google documentation has also shown that the company uses sophisticated systems to evaluate user satisfaction.

Key recommendation: Focus on ensuring that your website genuinely satisfies the user’s needs. If a page fully addresses the user’s search intent and provides a strong experience, Google is more likely to recognise its value.

For example, the top-ranking Google result for the keyword phrase “QR code scanner” may contain almost no written content and instead provide only a functional QR scanner. Formally, it appears to be a page “without content”, but it fully satisfies the user’s intent: the visitor opens the page, uses the scanner, and completes the intended task.

This example demonstrates that functionality and successful task completion can sometimes be more valuable than a large amount of text. Understand the real needs of your audience and satisfy them as quickly and conveniently as possible.

Latest Recommendations from Leading SEO Experts

Leading professionals in the international SEO industry continuously monitor changes and share their experience. Below are the main recommendations from three prominent experts—Brian Dean, Neil Patel, and Lily Ray—which are particularly relevant in 2025.

Brian Dean—the founder of Backlinko and a leading SEO blogger—frequently emphasises two areas: unique content and backlink quality. Brian Dean’s team notes that in 2025, content supported by first-hand experience will stand out from competitors because this is something AI generators cannot genuinely reproduce.

According to this approach, detailed and practical content based on the author’s personal experience has become considerably more valuable because it satisfies users’ demand for in-depth and credible information.

Brian Dean also continues to recommend the Skyscraper Technique: create the strongest available resource on a particular topic and then actively promote it to earn backlinks from authoritative websites.

He also advises focusing closely on search intent. Content should provide a precise answer to the question or need that motivated the user’s search.

Neil Patel—a leading global digital marketer and co-founder of NP Digital—focuses on data-driven SEO strategies. According to Neil Patel’s blog, the disclosure of internal Google documents reinforced the importance of links, website authority, user interactions, content, and user experience as the foundations of search rankings.

His recommendation is to strengthen the fundamental elements of search engine optimisation: create link-worthy content, invest in brand authority, and improve the website experience across every relevant area.

Neil Patel also highlights an emerging trend known as ultra long-tail keywords: highly detailed search phrases containing seven or more words.

Patel recommends creating content around long-tail queries, including queries written as full questions. Of the billions of searches performed on Google each day, a significant proportion are question-based, which represents a substantial content opportunity.

To discover ideas for these topics, Patel recommends tools such as AnswerThePublic and Ubersuggest, which can identify frequently asked questions and long-tail search patterns.

Lily Ray—a recognised SEO strategist and specialist in E-E-A-T—warns that a website’s long-term history and compliance record are becoming increasingly important.

According to Ray, when a website has previously been negatively affected by a Google algorithm update or a Manual Action, it may become more difficult for that website to recover and compete with domains that have maintained a stronger history.

For this reason, Lily Ray consistently recommends avoiding risky SEO tactics. If your website has already been affected by an update, the first priority should be identifying and correcting the issues that caused the decline.

Adding more AI-generated content or launching additional spam-based projects in this situation may only make the problem worse.

In other words, prevention is better than recovery. It is preferable to follow appropriate standards from the beginning by publishing trustworthy content, using ethical White Hat SEO methods, and maintaining strong technical performance. This reduces the risk of facing Google penalties in the first place.