Fractional Futures

Where SEO Is Heading in 2025 & Beyond

• Paul Mills • Season 4 • Episode 3

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Fractional Futures is the essential podcast for CEOs, investors, and senior marketing executives looking to unlock the power of fractional marketing leadership.
 
Hosted by Paul Mills, Founder at VCMO, and with special guests, we'll share expert insights, provide actionable strategies and explore real-world success stories to help you leverage fractional marketing leadership for maximum impact.

In this episode

In this episode of Fractional Futures, Paul Mills and Ryan Jones discuss the evolving landscape of SEO in the context of AI advancements. They explore how AI is reshaping search strategies, the importance of digital PR, and the need for marketers to adapt to a multi-channel approach. The conversation emphasizes the significance of audience research over traditional keyword strategies and the necessity of maintaining brand presence across various platforms to ensure visibility and engagement in a rapidly changing digital environment.

Special Guest

Ryan Jones, Marketing Manager, SEOTesting.com

Special Offer: Listeners of the Fractional Futures Podcast can take advantage of an extended trial to SEOTesting, giving you a 45-day free trial instead of the standard 14-day trial. You can add up to 30 Google Search Console properties with your trial account and you'll have unlimited access to every single one of SEOTesting's featured for that time including testing, site annotations, and their range of pre-built reports designed to make Google Search Console data easier to use. 

Simply click this link for the extended trial.

Key Takeaways

  • AI is changing the way marketers approach SEO strategies.
  • Focus is shifting from top-of-funnel to mid and end-funnel queries.
  • Digital PR and brand building are becoming more important.
  • Structured data will still play a crucial role in SEO.
  • Content needs to be distributed across multiple channels.
  • Audience research is becoming more critical than keyword research.
  • Impressions will become a key metric for measuring reach.
  • Marketers need to adapt to a multi-channel approach.
  • Refreshing older content can be more effective than creating new content.
  • Brand presence across the web is essential for visibility.

Sound bites

"AI is changing the way marketers approach SEO strategies."

"Structured data will still play a crucial role in SEO."

"Marketers need to adapt to a multi-channel approach."

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Fractional Marketing Leadership | Marketing Transformed.

Paul Mills (00:35.339)

I'm your host and today we're looking at what the future of SEO looks like in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. With AI changing the way people search and with user expectations continuing to rise, how should marketing leaders prepare their search strategies for what's coming next? To help us make sense of it all, I'm once again joined by Ryan Jones, Marketing Manager at SEO Testing. Ryan's been right at the coalface of technical SEO, experimentation and SEO strategy and he's here to share what trends we should be paying attention to as we march through 2025 and beyond. Hi, Ryan, welcome to the show. How are you today?

 

Ryan Jones (01:14.188)

Yeah, all good. Thank you. Thank you for having me back on.

 

Paul Mills (01:16.685)

Good stuff, what have you been up to since the last episode? Have you been busy?

 

Ryan Jones (01:19.702)

Yeah, yeah, pretty busy on both personally and professionally. So personally, I play for a charity football team. So we've had a few games in the last few weeks. So my legs are a bit achy now. I think it's all catching up with me. But all good fun and raising money for good causes.

 

Paul Mills (01:35.931)

Fantastic stuff. And you're off to Zagreb tomorrow. Is that a Google conference or an SEO conference?

 

Ryan Jones (01:41.964)

Yeah, the Zagreb SEO Summit. So I'm doing a workshop there on SEO testing and experimentation. So yeah, just spent the last couple of weeks getting my slides ready for that.

 

Paul Mills (01:52.291)

Fantastic stuff and yeah, pack sun cream because I think it's gonna be quite warm out there So it's only hotter than the UK at the moment. So so So should we just jump straight into the first topic? Good stuff. So I want to begin with one of most significant shifts we're starting to see right now and that's AI and I think if you're listening if you've done any Google search recently You've probably noticed that the first search result you get is an AI overview

 

Ryan Jones (01:57.772)

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Yeah, let's do it.

 

Paul Mills (02:19.787)

Now Google's AI mode is already live. It went live in May a couple of weeks ago. And it's starting to impact how every type of marketer approaches their search strategy. So Ryan, what does AI mean for the traditional playbook? And how should marketers think about optimization, especially when search is becoming less keyword driven and more hyper-personalized?

 

Ryan Jones (02:43.414)

Yeah, I think it means that we are going to see less of a focus placed on the very top of the funnel purely because, I mean, we've already started to see it with AI overviews, but AI mode will take that to a whole new level once people start using that more and more. But what we're going to see is people will have their top of the funnel queries answered just straight away via Google's AI overview, AI mode. We're already starting to see that now. So there's going to be less focus placed on that end of the funnel, but.

 

I think the mid funnel and end funnels won't change too much, but we will need to place a bigger focus on getting our brands mentioned in other places across the web, especially places where Google might find information related to that. So it's probably going to become less of a SEO type role.

 

I think there's more focus going to be placed on digital PR and general brand building, that kind of thing. Social media is becoming more more important every day. I think that's still going to carry on. I think the basic principles of SEO will still stand, create good content, make sure Google can read and understand your site and that kind of thing. I don't think that will ever change. But there's certain practices that we do nowadays that will become more important than they already are.

 

Paul Mills (04:08.894)

And what is the role of structured data in all this? Obviously, you mentioned that we need to think about the different channels, social media, obviously. But how do we structure our content across all those multiple channels and also keep it relevant for the traditional website?

 

Ryan Jones (04:27.586)

Yeah, think, I think so structured data is going to be almost its own thing. think, I mean, I could be wrong on this. So if anyone listening wants to call me out and, and correct me then that's absolutely fine. But I think the way I understand it is structured data at the minute is used. So Google's search engine bots can read and understand our content a little bit better, find different bits that are on the page that previously they might not have been able to fully understand like videos and that kind of thing.

 

I think the way AI overviews and their sort of LLM powered search is working there. They're more able to understand sort of natural language and understand how that all fits together. But it's still going to be important purely because when we're thinking from a structured data point of view, we are then of course going to be thinking about how we can naturally structure that data as well. We're going to be thinking about where's best to put a video on the page or

 

should we use an accordion here or should we have all the text just clear to see on the page? So I don't think that side of things is going to change too much. think it's, been a best practice for a while now. I think it will still continue to be a best practice, but yeah, in terms of how Google reads its content, I think that might change a little bit as AI mode expands.

 

Paul Mills (05:46.044)

And do you think the same applies to entity-based search as well?

 

Ryan Jones (05:49.014)

Yes, yeah, I do. I think again, it's one of those ones that's been sort of brought to the front more recently purely because of, especially we saw it with the initial release of AI overviews, people really started to take that into account in order to be featured in these AI overviews. And I think that will just continue to happen. Yeah.

 

Paul Mills (06:07.631)

And do you think AI mode, it's only just come through and it's not just another typical Google algorithm update. It's kind of a big thing, isn't it? It's kind of a paradigm shift. Do you think future algorithm updates will be kind of cut, know, split in half? Maybe there'll be the algorithm update and then there'll be an AI update or do you think that Google will put the two together?

 

Ryan Jones (06:35.352)

think From my side, I think it kind of depends on how Google wants to approach this continued rollout of AI mode. I think as it stands at the minute when we can still do a sort of more traditional Google search and see sort of, we might not see 10 blue links anymore per search, but when we can still see these traditional blue links on a search engine results page, I think we'll still have these more traditional core updates.

 

And then there may well be a separate update as language models expand and become a bit better to help AI mode process different queries and stuff. But if Google do decide in the future to make AI mode the sort of standard practice for a Google search, then we might see, I mean, this is all just conjecture, but we certainly might see core updates become less frequent, less impactful, maybe even stop altogether, depending on how Google wants to approach their rollout of AI mode.

 

Paul Mills (07:30.179)

And do you think, again, it's all very early days at the moment, but for marketers or for businesses that are using AI to build their websites and their content, obviously, if they're just going in blind using AI to generate the content and just uploading it blind effectively, presumably AI mode, it will actually pick out or be able to identify the websites that have been built purely

 

with AI versus websites that have got more authenticity attached to them. Do you think people building sites purely through AI will get penalized?

 

Ryan Jones (08:10.446)

Maybe not penalized as such, but I mean, we're seeing that kind of stuff already. A couple of years ago, when chat GPT and that kind of thing started to become mainstream and a bit more useful for creating content, we certainly did see an explosion of it's called programmatic SEO, programmatic SEO, in a sense of we'll use AI to just publish hundreds of articles across different topics, all leading into the sort of website topic and that kind of thing.

 

And that did work for a while. did see sites that would have sort of these organic traffic explosions in the sense that this content was being ranked and people would start clicking on it. But I think Google, even before the full scale launch of AI mode, I think Google have become smart enough now to aware, to know when this content is purely AI generated. And more to the point when it's not necessarily all that useful to the user, when it's just sort of mass text on a page with a few...

 

AI generated images and that kind of thing that might not necessarily be as helpful to the user as a proper well-researched guide and that kind of thing with videos and proper images and step-by-step stuff and that kind of thing. So I think they are starting to get a little bit more wise to it and I think they will continue that crackdown as time goes on.

 

Paul Mills (09:30.455)

Good stuff. And I think that that moves us nicely into the next topic. And that's how Google's evolving ranking signals and strategies for 2025, how they're going to move forward. So you've mentioned there how Google itself is evolving the way it ranks content. Now, I guess for people listening and they may not know what AI mode is, if not quite up to speed, this isn't just another algorithm update. It's a fundamental shift on

 

how consumers discover your brand each stage of the search journey. I suppose in a way, AI mode is turning search from a public directory into a deeply personalized assistant, I guess. And if you're not ready for that shift, your brand could be, you know, it could slowly disappear from the search journey without anyone noticing, not even you. So search is kind of no longer about keywords or long form content. It's becoming more about people.

 

And AI mode, it brings us one-to-one hyper-personalized content. It's pulling data from Gmail. It's pulling data from Google Calendar, Maps, YouTube, your past search history, shopping receipts, fitness devices, and a whole load of more other entities to build a super personalized profile of you. And it's going to draw content that fits your preferences, habits, and intent. So Ryan, hopefully I've kind of got that or summarized that in the right way. With that in mind.

 

How can marketing leaders adapt their strategies to meet these shifting signals, especially when user experience and brand trust are becoming critical ranking factors?

 

Ryan Jones (11:08.354)

Yeah, I think you're right in the sense that, I mean, search is becoming more hyper-personalized and that kind of thing. We've seen that already, but yeah, one of the big things from Google's latest IO event was the or the sort of announcement of personal context, which is, will eventually come to AI mode if you choose to turn it on. And yeah, that's what will draw stuff from your Gmail, calendar, or past searches, all that kind of thing, and create that sort of personal experience. I think the important caveat is to, as

 

To my knowledge anyway, I think you can have that enabled or not. So you might get a more standardized version if you don't have that enabled. But even with that search is becoming more personalized. I think the shift that needs to happen is, I still think there will be a place for long form content, but I don't think it will be a place where someone will land on one of your guides, read the entire thing and then go to some next steps, whether that's sign up to a trial or requesting a call or that kind of thing.

 

I think what we might see is Google using parts of these long form guides to form their answers in AI mode and AI overviews. and that kind of thing. And that's where we're going to need to really draw some useful value to users and that kind of thing. And hopefully pull through and resonate that. So when people are searching for something that's more relevant to exactly what you do.

 

They might then see your brand name through the increased brand presence that the AI mode brings and then think, okay, I've read something from them before, I'm sure. So I'm going to go to that website via a more direct search and that kind of thing. and then that's where these conversions can start to happen.

 

Paul Mills (12:51.843)

And in terms of multi-channel, I've started seeing a tactic that I often use, particularly with some of my clients, is publishing an article on the website, the company website, and then having an alternative version of that article on something like LinkedIn as a long form article, and making sure that you have the right SEO title, meta descriptions on LinkedIn to make that rank. And quite often, or not,

 

the LinkedIn article ranks way above the website article. And so that certainly seems like a good hack to have. But I'm sure when the masses start doing that or having the same content but mirrored on not just LinkedIn, maybe it's going to be on Insta or maybe it's going to be on YouTube, maybe it's going to be on everything. Do you see or do you predict that there will be

 

multiple versions of the same content piece across multiple channels. So all of a sudden the content engine has to kind of massively extend just so that you can find the same content in all places. Do you think that will happen or do you still think or do you think there will be just key channels where the content works best?

 

Ryan Jones (14:04.642)

No, I think that is already happening and will happen more and more. think it was Ross Simmons who originally published the sort of, I mean, he literally did publish the book on it, his, I think it's called Content Distribution 101 or something like that. I'll be able to do some research on it, so it's in the show notes, but he's written a whole book on using one piece of content and then distributing it across

 

almost every channel that your business utilizes. So like a long form blog post might then become two to three podcast episodes with you discussing it with a colleague or a special guest and something like that. It might then become shorts to use on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, that kind of thing. Then a long form video. Then it might become a Reddit discussion and that kind of thing. and that's...

 

almost like a follow on from what you were describing as obviously publishing a blog post and then having it on LinkedIn pulse and that kind of thing. because Google, one of the things that we're seeing with the rollout of AI search, whether that's through Google or chat GPT or another engine is they, they, they do tend to focus more on these bigger brands. We saw Google's deal with Reddit that was pulling through more Reddit discussions and that kind of thing. then Google heavily favoring LinkedIn. and that kind of thing. I think that will continue to happen,

 

hence why it will be important to make sure that whatever content we're putting out is then being distributed across all channels that are useful to a business.

 

Paul Mills (15:35.371)

And that makes me think that for companies, particularly B2B companies in the services sector, content is going to be even more vitally important as part of your go-to-market strategy. Because if you're not producing content that is getting found across not just one channel, but multiple channels, you're going to struggle to gain traction in the market. I guess companies will have to think quite, you know,

 

strong about what marketing investment they need to put into the business to make sure they can get found. It's becoming increasingly important, isn't it?

 

Ryan Jones (16:13.004)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the shifts we'll see, which is already starting to happen, but will happen more and more, is the shift from keyword research to audience research. So with that comes researching where your target audience spends their time, what platforms do they visit more often than others. There's good tools that you can use with that, SparkToro being the obvious one that was founded by Rand Fishkin and his business partner.

 

That's just a way for you to, so you can describe your target audience or look for what your target audience might search and then their data will pull through. Okay. This audience is spending more time on LinkedIn and YouTube. And then from there, you can create content that works for those platforms, publish that and, you can take content that you already have and reformat it. So it suits those platforms. And that's where that's in my mind where SEO and marketing is going to go. It's still obviously going to

 

exist because people will always go back to Google and that kind of thing. but that's one of the things that's becoming more more important.

 

Paul Mills (17:18.531)

And it's interesting because a lot of marketers, particularly when you look on LinkedIn, some of these content creators, they talk about impressions being vanity metrics. it sounds like that's probably going to flip on its head soon when actual impressions is going to be a critical KPI to track because actually it gives you that reach of market. And also then how effectively are those impressions converting down to engagement metrics, I presume?

 

Ryan Jones (17:45.356)

Yeah, and we're doing that already in our internal marketing meetings. We've already mentioned that. I mean, we've seen the traditional sort of B2B online business growth pattern in the sense that we had this period of growth where Google was still surfacing sort of 10 blue links and before the release of AI overviews, we had some nice traffic growth, but now we're starting to see that decline across that top of the funnel content that we were so good at producing beforehand. So those discussions for us have already happened internally of treating impressions.

 

more important, reducing the importance that we place on clicks, but then also countering in where are people seeing us? Like, so where are they visiting our website from originally? So looking at referral traffic and that kind of thing, or where are they coming through on social? How many people are seeing us on social media and that kind of thing. And, and this, this is a bit of an old practice, but it's one that's become more important for us is using those

 

sort of traditional style UTM links so we can more accurately track where people are first seeing our content and then clicking through to it.

 

Paul Mills (18:51.927)

Fantastic. I guess that leads nicely into the final topic of this episode is how to future-proof your SEO strategy for business growth. So With so much happening across search platforms, different content formats, user behavior changing.

 

What should businesses be doing now to stay visible and competitive in the years ahead? So, So Ryan, what does it look like to build a search strategy that isn't just reactive, but it's resilient and forward looking?

 

Ryan Jones (19:24.568)

Yeah, it sounds counterintuitive to say, but I think the first step is to place less focus on Google and more traditional search engines. purely to sort of, I think the best way of explaining it is your audience is going to spend less time on Google or they might spend more time on Google, but have their queries answered by AI mode and that kind of thing. and therefore that will influence them to spend time in other platforms.

 

So research where your audience do spend their time, whether that's YouTube, whether that's podcasts, whether that's Reddit and that kind of thing. And from there, you can build a content strategy that suits those platforms. like for us being at B2B SaaS, we know that our audience spends more time traditionally on YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, ChatGPT. So we're...

 

building content strategies that will work for those platforms specifically. We're repurposing all content that will go on YouTube and we're being active on Reddit threads and that kind of thing. and making sure that we're being active where our target audience are. And I think the discussion needs to sort of be reframed a little bit from, whereas SEO's traditional role was sort of Google, being that kind of thing.

 

SEO is now going to have a bigger influence across the board because the work that we're going to do will then impact being seen on social, being seen through digital PR, being seen through all these other metrics, all these other ways. So I think that's the conversation that needs to happen within business marketing teams, SEO teams, and higher up as well to understand that the role of SEO is going to shift. Where is it going to shift for your business that is sort of dictated by your audience and that kind of thing, but making sure

 

you have that conversation and you can start building a strategy that will work.

 

Paul Mills (21:20.931)

And presumably, if you're the business, if you're a marketer, listening to this, if you've got very limited content, if your content strategy is not very broad, if you're not using video, if you're not using voice, if you haven't got interactive content to engage with, you're going to get left behind pretty quickly, aren't you? So think pretty much everyone's going to be forced down this multi-channel, multi-platform approach to getting your content out there. It's not just...

 

You put an advert in a magazine or on the TV or radio and that's where people find you. It's become basically a very fragmented engagement space now, hasn't it?

 

Ryan Jones (21:58.636)

Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to what I was just saying about SEO starting to have a hand in more platforms and in more ways is I think the traditional SEO approach, it will still work to some extent, but I don't think it's going to be as impactful as it ever was. So what needs to happen is me who's predominantly in SEO, I'm now having to learn how to edit videos into shorts and how to create this long form video content and

 

Do I go on more podcasts and things like that to get the brand out there rather than spend time creating long form blog posts whilst then still trying to balance that activity is still pretty important. So it's not just a case of one specific task will work really well and the others can kind of be left to the side or in the background. It's now going to be a sort of process of

 

figuring out what kind of things your audience is gonna search via AI mode, via LLMs like ChatGPT and stuff, and then working out what these platforms are going to surface and then working to surface or working to produce better versions of that content that's already out there.

 

Paul Mills (23:12.341)

And I guess my final question for you is, from your technical expertise, what three things should marketers be doing different now for their search strategies going forward? What would the top three things be that they need to change?

 

Ryan Jones (23:31.266)

Yeah. So I think number one is focus less on producing new content, but more on redistributing and refreshing older content that's already got some authority to it. So those old blog posts that used to perform really well can still perform really well, but you'll need to format them into YouTube videos and that kind of thing. And that's where AI tools can come in handy as well, like with creating shorts and helping to create videos and that kind of thing. I think the second one is to place a bigger focus on

 

brand search and getting brand out there. So doing more stuff through digital PR, doing more stuff through even traditional PR for some businesses, making sure that you get your brand mentioned in other places across the web. And then yet going back to what I was saying earlier is, is if you're not doing it already to have that discussion with your leaders, with peers and that kind of thing, and have that discussion around what's

 

what your audience are going to search and making sure that you're in a position to start producing that content for the things that are going to work.

 

Paul Mills (24:35.715)

Good tips there. think, yeah, if you're not doing that, start doing it because you will get left behind. I think that brings us to the end of this episode and the conclusion of this mini-series on SEO. I'd like to say a huge thank you to Ryan for sharing such valuable insights across all three episodes. His guidance has given us really practical and forward-thinking take on one of the most important areas of SEO marketing. So Ryan, thank you for that. Would you like to say...

 

a few words and remind our listeners about the special extended trial that SEO Testing has kindly offered?

 

Ryan Jones (25:11.246)

Yeah, so SEO is still going to be important even in the age of AI search. So if you're looking for a tool that will help you establish whether changes that you've made to your website have been positive for SEO or negative, then you can give SEO Testing a trial. And for listeners of Fractional Futures, we're giving away 45 day trial, which is more than our standard 14 day free trial.

 

Paul Mills (25:35.821)

Fantastic stuff and links to that trial will be on the show notes. So do give that a look. I think to conclude, I'll start that again. So to conclude this episode, if there's one thing to take away from this series is that.

 

SEO isn't standing still and neither should we as marketers. So whether you're a business or a marketing leader or maybe part of a growing marketing team, now really is a time to experiment with your SEO, adapt it and think long-term about your wider strategy. So thank you for tuning in and if you've enjoyed this, start like your tongue tied already.

 

Thanks for tuning in and if you've enjoyed this series, don't forget to subscribe, share the episode to your network or leave some comments below. I'll be back soon with more guests, more challenges and more real world marketing insights to help you move the growth dial forwards. Thank you.

 

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Paul Mills

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Ryan Jones

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