The Future of SEO in a Post-ChatGPT World -- The SEM Daily: 5.8.23

what will change and how to adapt.

This is SEM: your daily SEO inspiration, where I curate/summarize one valuable item related to SEO and send it your way M-F.

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Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Searcheye and is a thought exercise on what the future of SEO looks like in a post-GPT world, by Ryan Law of Animalz.co.

Here are the main points summarized from the article (by me, not a fucking AI):

1. publishing frequencies and content lengths will increase since it's possible to publish infinity pieces of content with AI generators

2. "Companies will be less discerning and more willing to tackle any keyword with a passing relevance to their product."

3. programmatic SEO will dominate the content landscape (specifically because scraping content will become democratized).

4. links will become even more important.

5. "getting the right answer from the wrong person isn't good enough" —- authorship will continue to be an important factor.

6. "Information Gain" (how much new and never-berfore-seen info does this article contribute) will be prioritized.

7. Zero-click searches will likely incrase with Google and Bing using AI to synthesize info answer questions.

I’m going to quote the next section because it is pretty solid. “What should you do in the face of all these revelations,” basically:

• Build team strength in areas beyond just “writing.” Content writing is a small portion of a great content marketer's total skill set. Build a team with chops in higher-leverage areas: data analysis, content distribution, industry research, technical SEO, and editorial. Hire marketing generalists willing to experiment.

• Develop your own flavor of “information gain.” Bring original information to your content in a way that aligns with your team’s strengths: build a network of SMEs, start a yearly benchmark report, or get comfortable sharing your team’s personal experiences and insights.

• Diversify beyond search. Imagine a worst-case scenario where traffic from SEO disappears: how would you build your business? For many companies, the answer lies in social content, community, and media marketing, so it’s worth launching exploratory efforts.

A great article with lots of interesting thoughts and “further reading” links—read the whole thing here.

Coming up: my take on this whole thing. But first, a word from our sponsor:

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My Take

Oof. Buddy.

Have a seat and catch your breath.

If you’re an SEO or rely on a lot of SEO traffic that article is a swift kick to your future success. I get it.

I think people will mostly adapt to these changes the same way we (as an industry) adapted from pasting white KW-rich text on a white background at the bottom of of a piece of content, it’ll just happen MUCH faster.

Also, we’ll adapt the same way we are currently adapting to it being wildly more competitive to operate a niche site in the face of

1. Google’s absolute traffic gift to sites like Forbes and The Miami Times or whatever shitty newspaper is letting people write “Best Testosterone Booster” sponsored posts for $3,000 and spamming the absolute ass off it with links and winning #1 rankings for months on end, and

2. An infinite series of Mike Tyson-like uppercuts to your face in the form of what feels like monthly updates where the search landscape is rapidly changing.

You’ll adapt. It’ll suck. Your organic traffic will be lower and lower each month, but it’ll be enough to get by until you finally sell that last cutting board reviews niche site and take a job delivering heavy water bottles to local businesses—you should have gotten out of this game sooner. You should have spent more time with your kids. But here you are, being outranked by 17 sponsored posts and four AI-answer carousels.

Living that #SEOLife.

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Until tomorrow…

Sean Markey
sem@hey.com

PS — LMK what you thought of this quick SEO email. Good? Bad? More depressing than the weight of an entire Class O star? I’d love to hear from you (and thank you to those of you who read and have responded already!)

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