We are living in very intense times with organic search experiencing an incredible shift in its fundamentals. It’s no longer just about keywords and backlinks. It is no longer about how to rank on Google.
The future of SEO – pardon, today’s SEO – is being defined by four converging forces: artificial intelligence, voice search, visual discovery, and privacy.
As someone who has spent over a decade driving SEO growth for companies like Eventbrite, TripAdvisor, EF, and Hostelworld – and now leading Marketing at Busbud – I’ve seen firsthand how quickly the search landscape evolves.
I explored these changes in depth in my book SEO As A Distribution Game, but in this article, I want to share how these four forces are reshaping the field and what a truly holistic SEO strategy must look like going forward.
Many are claiming that SEO is dead. Or that it is not SEO anymore. They are coming up with new names, such as GEO, SXO, and many others. Let’s call it Organic Search for a moment.
People are still searching, and they are still in need of finding relevant information. The way they are searching, the places where they are searching, and the type of answers those people expect are evolving. This is the new complexity of the optimization. How can companies be everywhere, answering everything? Well, they can’t. No one can.
We must understand where our target audience is. Personalization – to a certain degree – will be critical. You must understand your users so you can be the one they search for. Brand awareness is becoming critical due to its power to create communities and trust.
Forces Shaping the Future of SEO Strategies
1. AI’s Transformative Impact on Search & SEO
Artificial intelligence is disrupting search and how people are searching; at the same time, reinventing it. Search engines, particularly Google, are increasingly powered by AI models that understand context, intent, and nuance. Features like AI Overviews are rapidly becoming the norm, reshaping how content is surfaced and consumed. But we also have Perplexity, Gemini, ChatGPT, and so many other chatbots that today already function as search engines.
The feeling of missing some of the new trends is real. So let me try to summarise and simplify things for the time being:
- Generative AI is Exploding: Traffic from generative AI is growing 165x faster than traditional organic search, even though it only represents a fraction of the entire referral traffic. But it’s not just quantity: conversion rates from AI-assisted search are often higher, as users arrive more qualified, according to WebFX.
- AI Overviews Everywhere: In May 2025, Digiday reported that AI Overviews appeared in 13% of desktop searches in the U.S. Even after a slight decline in June, their dominance is unquestionable.
- New Search Behavior: Users are shifting from short keywords (4.2-word average on Google) to detailed, conversational prompts (23-word average on ChatGPT), fundamentally changing content strategies.
- Platform Disruption: 8% of people now use ChatGPT as their main search engine, a stark increase from 1% a year earlier.
SEO strategies must now prioritize content that answers complex, intent-driven questions while embracing structured data and conversational tone.
2. The Rise of Conversational Search: Voice & AI Integration
Let’s face it: voice search today is still painful. Whether you’re using Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant, the experience is often frustrating. But the direction is clear: we’re heading toward a voice-first web.
As natural language processing improves, voice will become a more fluid, intelligent way to interact with search engines. Businesses that start optimizing now will have a serious edge when voice search finally lives up to its promise.
Google’s business model is about links, but Amazon has a different approach. Disruption in the status quo will come from those who have nothing to lose.
Current Realities & Future Potential:
- Voice Assistants Outnumber People: Over 8.4 billion voice assistants are in use globally. That’s more devices than humans.
- Rising Adoption: 32% of consumers already use voice search daily, and 71% prefer it over typing.
- Local Matters: 58% use voice to find nearby businesses. Local SEO must now consider how voice queries are phrased.
- Voice Commerce on the Rise: Projected to reach $100 billion by 2026, according to AFFMaven.
What’s holding it back? Poor UX. Try asking Alexa for the best Thai restaurant near you, and you’ll see how shallow voice intelligence still is. But this is likely to change fast. As NLP and device integration improve, expect a voice search renaissance.
3. Visual Search: From Discovery to Decision
We live in a visual-first world. TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and all these platforms are shaping how people discover, engage with, and ultimately buy products and services. Search is no longer text-only.
Visual search, powered by AI and machine learning, is already revolutionizing ecommerce. And the emergence of AR and VR is adding even more depth to the experience.
Trends That Matter:
- Massive Market Growth: The global visual search market is projected to hit $151.60 billion by 2032, growing at a 17.5% CAGR (data from Data Bridge).
- Retail Revolution: Image-based discovery already accounts for 62.1% of visual search revenue. Consumers expect to search with a photo – not a phrase.
- Pinterest’s Power: According to Adobe, 73% of users say Pinterest delivers better results than Google when it comes to product discovery.
- Platform Investment: Google Lens, Amazon StyleSnap, Pinterest’s visual tagging, all these tools are being prioritized as core user features.
Brands that ignore visual search will be invisible in this new reality. Optimizing for visual content (alt text, structured data, image quality, schema markup) is no longer optional. The biggest challenge for the Companies is to understand how to prioritise. In this field, disruptive minds will always have an initial advantage.
4. Privacy: The Cornerstone of Trust and SEO
In a post-GDPR and post-CCPA world, privacy is both a compliance issue and a competitive advantage. Users want control. Search engines prioritize secure, transparent websites.
Key Takeaways:
- Regulatory Push: GDPR and CCPA have forced sites to prioritize clear data collection and consent policies.
- Goodbye Third-Party Cookies: SEO now depends more on first-party data strategies (email signups, lead magnets) and less on retargeting and invasive trackers.
- Trust Signals: HTTPS, transparent cookie banners, and clear privacy policies aren’t optional anymore.
- Google’s Direction: The search engine increasingly rewards sites that demonstrate trustworthiness and transparency.
This means SEO professionals must work hand-in-hand with legal, product, and UX teams to ensure privacy-first design without sacrificing performance.
This also raises huge challenges about traffic attribution – a critical piece to measure ROI. Creating your own community, ensuring your users are logged in on your own platform, is more important than ever before. Without data that helps you to understand your audience and to understand the impact of your investments across different channels, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
A Holistic SEO Strategy: Where It All Comes Together
So how do you build an SEO strategy that wins in this environment?
Start Here:
- Map Intent to Format: Use long-tail queries for AI answers, concise content for featured snippets, and image-rich content for visual discovery.
- Create for Conversations: Write for people and for robots. Use natural language. Address pain points. Build trust.
- Invest in Content Architecture: Structured data, schema markup, and internal linking are more critical than ever.
- Respect the User: Design around privacy. Make opt-ins clear and voluntary. Don’t just check the compliance box, embrace it.
- Be disruptive: In this new phase, while the world is adapting to a new reality, being the first is an advantage. Don’t do the right thing just because of challenges in prioritization, might play against you in the medium and long-run.
Holistic SEO is about integrating all of these pillars and avoiding a simple list of tactics; it’s a mindset. You’re building an ecosystem where discovery, conversion, trust, and experience are all tightly woven.
