The SEO Focus Shift: Thriving in a Search and AI Discovery World

Author:
Joe Collins

The search world has never been short on drama. Every new Google core update, every shiny AI tool, every LinkedIn hot take about “the death of SEO” gets the rumor mill spinning.

And yet, here we are. SEO isn’t dead. It’s not even limping. But it is shifting in ways we can’t ignore.

The truth? SEO is still the same game at its core: being the best, most trusted answer to the questions your audience is asking. What’s different now is the environment we’re playing in. With AI-driven discovery growing alongside traditional search, our mission hasn’t changed, but our priorities have.

At Cadence SEO, we see this as an opportunity. The fundamentals that have always mattered still matter. What’s changed is where and how we put our energy so we can win both in Google’s rankings and in the results generated by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT’s GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini.

Here’s how we’re thinking about the new SEO priority list in the AI era.

EEAT as a Critical SEO Requirement in AI Search

For years, EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) was something you aimed for as part of a healthy SEO program. Now it’s the foundation. Search engines and AI models alike prefer content from credible, authoritative sources. That means every page you publish should clearly show who you are, why you’re credible, and how you back up your claims. These signals have to be obvious, not buried.

If EEAT isn’t baked into your strategy from the start, you’re competing with a disadvantage you can’t make up for with keywords or clever headlines. It’s no longer a “nice-to-have”. It’s the ticket to ride.

Shifting SEO Focus from Top-of-Funnel to Bottom-of-Funnel

For a long time, SEO success was about winning the broadest audience possible. Get in front of people early, bring them into your funnel, and let your site do the rest.

That’s just not the case anymore. UX isn’t any less important than it’s ever been (because nobody wants to buy from a site that’s hard to use). Still, in the very near future, AI will own much of the top-of-funnel (TOFU) landscape, answering quick questions directly and keeping searchers from ever clicking through.

That’s why bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) optimization matters more than ever. Building topical authority across your niche and targeting high-intent searchers (i.e., people ready to compare, evaluate, and buy) is how SEO now drives real revenue growth. The goal is fewer clicks, but better ones that actually convert.

SEO for AI Search Engines Requires Intent-First Content

SEO used to revolve around picking the right keywords and hitting them hard. Searcher intent was a nice bonus, but if you could guess it from long-tail phrasing, that was good enough. Now, keyword targeting without intent alignment is a losing play. LLMs and modern search algorithms are focused on understanding what the searcher really wants and rewarding content that delivers on that.

At Cadence, we’ve been focusing on keyword “themes” for years. There are a thousand ways to search for the same solution, and AI is only expanding that list. Winning means creating content that nails the intent, not just the term.

Using AI in SEO as a Tool, Not a Strategy

In the last year, AI has been used to crank out mountains of low-quality content, trying to cover every possible niche and hoping something ranks. That’s not a strategy, it’s noise.

AI-assisted content creation can be a huge advantage, but only when you pair it with human expertise, thoughtful topic selection, and careful editing. The real win is using AI to speed up production and make your process more efficient, not to replace the thinking, research, and nuance that make content worth ranking.

AI can help you write, but it can’t tell you what’s worth writing. And you probably still need a human reviewing what AI spits out, because as we all know – AI can go a little crazy sometimes.

In the SEO “long long ago”, it made sense to create for one channel at a time. You’d write a blog for search, a post for LinkedIn, and a script for YouTube, and each would live in its own little content silo. Like it or not, AI doesn’t see silos. It scrapes, parses, and blends information from everywhere, pulling it together into answers it serves up to users, and it does it faster than ever before.

That’s why content repurposing is both efficient and strategic now. One strong, high-value piece can be adapted into videos, infographics, social posts, email segments, and more. The more ways you package it, the more visible it becomes to both search engines and LLMs (and the more time you can spend making other, equally-meaningful content).

SEO Backlink Strategy for AI and Search Engines

The old backlink playbook was all about quantity. Get as many as possible, even if they weren’t great quality (not that we took that approach at Cadence, but it’s pretty well-documented for SEO in general).

In the new AI Era, quality outweighs quantity by a mile. Search engines and AI models are paying a lot more attention to the authority of the sites linking to you. A handful of trusted, high-authority backlinks will almost always beat hundreds of low-value mentions.

Volume still counts for a lot, and good SEOs will still build quantity over time. But quality always needs to come first.

Expanding SEO Beyond Google for AI Discovery

For decades, Google was the only real priority for the majority of SEOs. We paid such close attention to Google that we might as well have been working for them, not with them. And yes, watching Google algorithm changes is still critical. They’re still the largest driver of organic site traffic by a long shot, but the search landscape is widening fast.

AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude are becoming primary search engines for millions of people. That means SEO isn’t just about ranking in Google anymore. It’s about ensuring your brand appears across all the platforms your audience might use to find answers.

A Google search is just one of many important stops on an evolving discovery journey now, and winning means optimizing for multiple ecosystems. And since we know Google’s rankings are a significant part of how the newest AI models get their results, there’s a synergy in this updated approach.

The Bigger Picture of SEO in the AI Era

If this sounds like a reinvention of SEO, it’s not. It’s more like a refocus: sharpening our attention on the priorities that matter most in a world where AI and search are overlapping. We still follow the same core truths we always have:

The fundamentals still run the show
Clarity, relevance, and credibility always win
The best answer earns the click (or the mention in an AI-generated response, in this case)

What’s changing is the weight of those truths. EEAT has moved from “recommended” to “essential,” and BOFU is where the money is. Intent beats exact-match keywords, and content has to be multi-channel. Link quality trumps quantity. Google is part of a much bigger picture we all need to pay more attention to.

Why Businesses Should Adapt SEO for AI Search

LLMs like GPT-5 don’t store infinite knowledge. They pull, evaluate, and synthesize the best available info from the best available sources. Generally, that means the sources that already rank and already look credible.

If your brand’s content isn’t easy to find, easy to understand, and loaded with authority signals, you risk being invisible not just in Google, but in the AI answers people are now using to make decisions. SEO has always been about being the trusted, go-to resource. In the AI era, that hasn’t changed at all; it’s just more important, more competitive, and more multi-channel than ever.

Work With Cadence SEO to Win in AI and Search

At Cadence, we’re not chasing trends just for the sake of it (and we never have). We’re helping businesses thrive in a discovery landscape that includes both search engines and AI platforms.
That means:

Building authority that search engines and LLMs can’t ignore
Creating multi-channel, repurposable content that works harder for you
Targeting high-intent audiences for better leads and more revenue
Optimizing for visibility in Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and beyond

We want our clients to be trusted resources for Google and LLMs, to be seen everywhere people look for answers, and to uncover more growth opportunities than ever before.

If you’re ready to drive more traffic, more conversions, and more long-term success in the AI era, we’re here to help you own your space in search, no matter how search evolves. Book your free consultation today. Let’s turn AI and SEO into the most powerful growth engine your business has ever had.