Expert Predictions for SEO in 2025

 

The Rise of AI-Driven SEO Strategies

 

AI has already made waves across industries, and it’s pretty clear that it will (and has already started to) completely transform SEO strategies.

Machine learning algorithms will enhance keyword research and content optimisation by analysing user intent, making it easier for businesses to align their content with audience needs. AI-driven tools will predict trends, providing insights into consumer behaviour that help marketers create content that is more relevant and appealing than ever before.

In addition, automated systems will improve site audits, allowing teams to quickly identify and rectify issues that could affect rankings. And, as AI continues to evolve, it will facilitate more personalised user experiences, ultimately revolutionising how brands engage with their audiences online.

 

An Evolving User Experience: SEO Beyond Keywords

 

A common thought is that UX is going to become a pivotal component of SEO strategies. Search engines are increasingly prioritising sites that deliver seamless, engaging experiences, reflecting users’ preferences for speed, mobile optimisation and intuitive navigation.

Signals like page load time, interactivity and visual stability (Core Web Vitals) will significantly influence rankings. Content creators are going to need to start focusing not only on keywords but also on delivering valuable, easily digestible information – more quality than mere strategy.

As competition grows, investing in UX will be essential for attracting and retaining visitors, thereby enhancing a website’s authority and search visibility in a crowded digital landscape.

 

 

Experts Share Their Predictions for SEO in 2025

 

We spoke to a group of experts in the SEO landscape to get their insights and predictions for what’s to come in the SEO industry in 2025.

 

Our Experts

 

• Emma Russell: Founder of Oxford-Comma.Digital
• Izzy Rylance: SEO Lead at Rumpus
• Chad Klingensmith: Senior SEO Strategist at RIO SEO
• Max Singh: SEO Manager at The Bigger Boat
• Petra Smith: Founder at Squirrels&Bears
• Greg Bortkiewicz: Senior Account Manager and Digital Lead at Magenta Associates
• Nicola Hughes: Head of SEO at TAL Agency
• Steve Chambers: Group SEO Director, KINESSO UK&I
• Tristan Van Den Berg: Account Manager at SPA Communications Ltd
• Tom Jeffery: Senior SEO and Content Manager at Screaming Frog
• Matthew Robinson: Senior PR and Digital Strategist at Definition
• Emma Kendrick Cox: Executive Creative Director at Irvine Partners
• Lee Wilson: Service Operations Director at Vertical Leap

Emma Russell, Founder of Oxford-Comma.Digital

 

 

“The adoption of AI platforms like GPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity continues to grow. As these tools provide direct and instant answers, traffic to purely informational content is declining—a trend we’re already seeing. However, this type of content remains crucial for building authority and trust, particularly as a reliable source for AI to reference in its overviews.

Brands need to diversify their content strategies, focusing on formats that go beyond basic, informational content. For example:

Interactive Tools: Calculators or planners engage users and provide personalised value. For instance, a retirement savings calculator informs and involves users in decision-making.

Community Content: Forums, customer reviews, and social proof sections showcase real-world applications of your expertise. These formats are increasingly appearing higher in search results, offering new opportunities for visibility.

Adapting to AI-powered search isn’t optional anymore. By shifting towards engaging and interactive content, brands can strengthen their authority and maintain relevance in an AI-driven search landscape.  Those who act early will be better positioned to succeed.”

 

Matthew Robinson, Senior PR and Digital Strategist, Definition

 

 

“The increasing role of AI in search engines is reshaping PR and reputation management strategies. New developments like Google’s AI Overviews can now answer sophisticated conversational queries about brands – and it does this by pulling information from a diverse range of online sources. This goes beyond owned content to include earned media, third-party listings, reviews, and even social forums like Reddit. This shift requires a more holistic approach from PR and SEO professionals.

It’s no longer enough to focus solely on great website content. Instead, brands must consider their entire digital footprint and ensure consistent messaging across all platforms. The stakes are high in this new landscape. An inaccurate or misleading AI overview could give potential customers the wrong first impression, potentially undermining carefully crafted brand and comms strategies.

Both PR and SEO teams need to think more strategically about where their brands appear across the digital ecosystem and how they’re represented. In essence, reputation management now requires a comprehensive, cross-platform strategy to effectively navigate an AI-driven search environment.”

 

Izzy Rylance, SEO Lead at Rumpus

 

 

“As we start to see more and more AI-generated content, achieving SEO success in 2025 will rely heavily on obtaining high-quality, authoritative backlinks. Search engines will keep focusing on websites that showcase Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) – and backlinks from credible sources are a key signal of these attributes.

We will see a growing emphasis on content that is human-centric, engaging audiences and providing real value. This means producing content that addresses genuine questions, solves problems and offers insights, rather than just optimising for keywords.

SEO professionals in 2025 need to diversify link-building strategies and utilise digital PR as a strategic tool. This way, content value can be enhanced through high-quality backlinks and brand mentions.”

 

Chad Klingensmith, Senior SEO Strategist at RIO SEO

 

 

“As tools like ChatGPT search look likely to dominate consumer search trends, businesses must ensure they are staying relevant and reflect changes in hours, services or promotions. Alongside adapting SEO strategy for real-time search, brands should structure content to support semantic search by including question-based headers and content that anticipates follow-up queries. Using long-tail keywords and ensuring that pages are optimised to answer nuanced, specific questions will be key in 2025.

Search engines have made it clearer than ever that clickbait is out and quality content is in. And they’ve improved their systems to recognise this, weeding out spammy or ill-intentioned content. Quality content will rank in 2025 and beyond. Businesses should focus on creating content that benefits their readers rather than search engines. Google and other popular search engines are only getting smarter.”

 

Max Singh, SEO Manager at The Bigger Boat

 

“A shift in the search landscape could reshape SEO strategies

If the US Justice Department forces Google to sell Chrome, it could disrupt the search monopoly, potentially driving users to alternative search engines and reshaping market share. While this shift won’t happen overnight, the ripple effects could be significant for SEO.

User behaviour may diversify, requiring brands to optimise for multiple platforms rather than focusing solely on Google. That said, content quality will remain central to success – great content transcends platforms and will be valued by any search engine. It’s one to watch closely, as the impact on digital strategies could be transformative.”

Petra Smith, Founder at Squirrels&Bears

 

 

“With the increasing impact of social SEO, optimising for in-app social media discovery and local searches will tap into a vast pool of discoverability and engagement in 2025.

Answering niche questions and creating content that addresses specific user queries not only increases visibility but create trust if they are directly relevant to user intent.

While optimisation on social should follow the same principles as website SEO, it is important to understand the nuances and optimise for discovery through trending sounds, location tags, and popular hashtags – as these will all increase visibility. This is especially effective for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where algorithmic discovery reigns supreme.

Leveraging keywords will become a norm, going way beyond simple hashtags. Successful SEO will require optimised captions, alt text, and bios with keywords tailored to platform-specific searches – all boosting your chances of appearing in in-app search results and reaching the right audience.”

 

Greg Bortkiewicz, Senior Account Manager and Digital Lead at Magenta Associates

 

 

“We’re going to see a shift from SEO to GEO – generative engine optimisation. GEO is the process of optimising your website for AI-driven search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. A lot of the fundamentals of GEO are the same as SEO, such as helpful content, good core web vitals and backlinks from authoritative websites.

GEO has a greater focus on providing contextual answers that AI will be able to use to provide comprehensive written responses to user queries. Marketers don’t need to make wholesale changes to their existing SEO strategies, but they should certainly integrate GEO best practice and pay close attention to traffic from AI search engines when carrying out monthly analysis. More and more people will be using AI search engines and companies that haven’t optimised for them risk being left behind.”

 

Nicola Hughes, Head of SEO at TAL Agency

 

 

“OpenAI entered the search market with a bang in 2024, redefining how users approach queries. As people increasingly turn to AI to answer their questions, 2025 will see an acceleration in how users interact with AI-driven search engines. Brands will need to move beyond traditional keywords and focus on AI-driven intent and context. Those who optimise for conversational search and anticipate user needs will stand out.

“We’re also seeing a big change in Google as it shifts from being a driver of traffic to a keeper of traffic. Its emphasis on in-SERP features, like organic product grids, personalised AI shopping results, an e-commerce style landing page for commercial queries (currently only in the US) and interactive carousels, requires businesses – especially e-comms – to adapt. Success will come to those who strategically claim real estate within Google’s ecosystem.”

 

Steve Chambers, Group SEO Director, KINESSO UK&I

 

 

“Navigating the future: SEO strategies for Google’s AI-Driven Era

In 2025, Google’s AI Overviews are set to become a cornerstone of SEO, transforming how users engage with search results and redefining content strategies for businesses. Powered by advanced AI models like MUM (Multitask Unified Model), these AI overviews will deliver concise, context-rich summaries directly within the search results pages. Their purpose is to offer users instant, precise answers to complex queries, incorporating data from multiple sources into unified responses.

As Google’s AI Overviews take centre stage, searchers will increasingly trust and rely on these summaries, driving a significant rise in zero-click searches where answers are delivered without users needing to visit websites. While organic traffic will remain a critical metric, the rise of AI Overviews will require businesses to expand how they measure performance.

Metrics like impressions, brand mentions, and share of voice within AI-generated summaries will gain importance as complementary indicators of success. Optimising for these overviews will ensure that brands not only maintain but also enhance their organic traffic through heightened visibility within search results.”

 

Tristan Van Den Berg, Account Manager at SPA Communications Ltd

 

 

“In 2025, the face of SEO is likely to seriously evolve with the generative AI tool ChatGPT, among others, and the development of LLMs. These platforms are increasingly becoming the first port of call for users seeking highly refined and direct answers, shifting the focus from traditional search engines to conversational and contextual search.

Businesses will need to adapt to this new way of ensuring visibility within the LLM-generated results. This means quality, structured content that meets the intent of conversational queries, a focus on authoritative and well-linked pages, and easily digestible content by AI models.

Geotargeting will also be important again when people do hyper-targeted Local searches. Therefore, companies must invest in worthy local SEO programs, including creating geo-specific terminologies and optimising users’ “near me ” searches.

It’s all about adaptability and precision for me,” says 2025.”

 

In 2025, SEO will evolve with AI overviews dominating both informational and some commercial queries, meaning position 1 might not be the ultimate target. With AI-generated summaries increasingly influencing visibility, already affecting up to 30 percent of queries in some sectors, brands must focus on securing attribution within these overviews.

To stay competitive, sites will need to do a checklist comparison of competitors attributed and subsequent SEO tests to achieve attribution.

Link relevance will carry more weight, along with building brand awareness, while small-scale sites and publishers unable to build that could suffer.

Over-optimisation in metadata and content strategy will backfire, as sustained growth will favour those committed to a keyword strategy aligned to their brand experience and value proposition.

Finally, the best advice is, after addressing technical SEO, the focus should shift to high-quality, user-focused content for long-term success.

 

Emma Kendrick Cox, Executive Creative Director at Irvine Partners

 

 

 

Lee Wilson, Service Operations Director at Vertical Leap

 

 

“2025 is the year we’ll see credible SEO expansion commercially into all platform optimisation.

Traditional search in Google will remain an active thread and focus for SEO, but it will be complemented by many additional ‘engines’ where audiences are increasingly active.

Consider every relevant search and discovery engine as relatively untapped organic opportunity for businesses of all sizes.

This will accelerate brand growth and impact through varying content types, enhanced creativity, user understanding, and the genuine imparting of value within rich and changing digital communities.

The opportunity presented by increased engine optimisation in SEO is a fast moving and ever-evolving playing field where barriers to entry are lower, and established entities are fewer.

This will drive success by resonating with your audience wherever they prefer to be most active and are more naturally engaged.”