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LLMs Aren’t Taking Over SEO

The rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews has sparked heated conversations about the future of SEO. With AI now capable of summarizing results,…

Christy Olsen Written by Christy Olsen octubre 8, 2025 5 min read
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llms are not taking over seo
The rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews has sparked heated conversations about the future of SEO. With AI now capable of summarizing results, answering complex questions, and providing conversational search experiences, many business owners and marketers ask: Is SEO dead? The short answer is no. LLMs aren’t taking over SEO. Instead, they’re forcing it to evolve. SEO’s fundamentals, visibility, credibility, and authority remain essential. However, the strategies behind them are shifting to align with how LLMs process and present information. SEO and LLMs Have Similar (or even the same) goals SEO and LLMS both want to provide the best answer, summary, website, brand, or product to their users.  They want to provide exactly what their searcher is looking for, so that the searcher keeps coming back to their solution for “search” again and again.  They aim to provide the best answer for their users, so they keep getting people to their engine.

Just like SEO, LLMs rely heavily on Content (the key is to get them to rely on YOUR content and cite you…).

An LLM doesn’t create knowledge independently. It pulls from existing data. Your website (HOPEFULLY!!!).  Neither does Google.  Google and AI tools (LLM tools) do not have anything of their own; they scrape, compile, display, and aggregate the interwebs.  Search engines were historically not liable for their results, but with LLMS, that is different.  There have been some notable court cases, though, that challenge who “is responsible for the content.” Recently, the UK, for example, ruled against Google’s AI overviews and said they are, in fact, responsible for the answers because they no longer “send people” off the website to find it.  https://www.wired.com/story/a-court-has-ruled-that-google-is-liable-for-false-statements-generated-by-ai-overviews/ LLMs Can’t Replace Human Strategy (Dangit, I guess I still have to go to work…) LLMs are powerful but lack creativity, industry expertise, and adaptability. A seasoned SEO professional understands more than just algorithms. They understand business goals, customer psychology, and shifting market dynamics. LLMs can generate content drafts, but can’t:
    • Develop a full-funnel SEO strategy aligned with business objectives.
    • Create original thought leadership rooted in lived experience.
    • Adjust to algorithm updates and competitive pressures in real time.
Humans bring nuance and strategy to SEO that machines simply can’t replicate. AI may accelerate workflows, but it doesn’t replace expertise.

Credibility and Trust Signals are STILL the Most Important

LLMs are designed to prioritize credible, trustworthy sources. They’re likelier to pull answers from websites with strong authority, evident expertise, and established reputations. Which you get by:
    • Building backlinks from respected industry outlets.
    • Producing content with expert bylines and credentials.
    • Collecting favorable reviews, testimonials, and certifications.
    • Using structured data to signal authority.
All of this makes credibility-driven SEO practices even more critical. SEO in the LLM era isn’t about gaming search engines; it’s about proving you’re the most reliable source in your niche. That’s something an algorithm alone can’t manufacture.

SEO is Expanding and Changing – But Search is Not Ending

Rather than fading out, SEO is broadening into new forms of optimization that align with LLM behavior. Businesses are adopting strategies such as
    • Entity Optimization, which focuses on topics and relationships between ideas, not just keywords.
    • Content Chunking: Breaking down content into digestible, answer-ready sections that LLMs can cite.
    • Conversational Content: Creating FAQ-style and natural-language content mimics how users ask questions.
    • Freshness and Updates: Keep content current since LLMs favor up-to-date information.
These strategies aren’t departures from SEO; they’re evolutions. They show how SEO adapts to new technologies rather than being replaced by them.

Search Engines Still Power LLMs

I challenge you to do a search in chatgpt, and then do a similar search in Google, the results are usually very very similar when it comes to who is mentioned, what brands are there and who is linked.  Why is this?  It isn’t because “they are scraping Google,” it IS because they rely on many of the same “rules”. You need clear, indexable copy, strong “authority signals,” and your content laid out and marked up in a way a “bot” can crawl, categorize, and render.  l.

SEO is Dead (Again, and Again… Oh Look, It Just Died Again)

SEO has been declared dead many times before. When social media rose, voice search gained traction, and now, with AI, it has proven adaptable time and again. That’s because SEO isn’t tied to one platform or trend. It’s tied to a universal business need: helping people find, trust, and engage with your content online. SEO will exist in some form as long as people search for information. LLMs may change the search interface, but don’t erase the need for discoverability, authority, and strategic content. They amplify it.

LLMS is transforming SEO – Slowly

LLMS is transforming how people interact with the internet, which, in turn, transforms search.  If the way people search changes, the way search engines and llms display information also changes.  What we do has always been dynamic.  We always have done research to determine how and where your audience is searching, determine what they are searching for, and what their decision making process is, and then helping our clients meet their audience where they are, answer their questions where they are at, and help build trust and authority so that when the decision is ready to be made, our cleint is in the consideration set.  That is “SEO” that is “GEO” and frankly it’s just marketing.  Search Marketing.
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