“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Mark Twain’s famous line feels tailor-made for SEO, the marketing tool that has been declared dead more times than anyone can count, yet continues to reinvent itself with remarkable resilience.

Once again, the industry is announcing the demise of SEO. The rise of AI, generative search, and conversational assistants has led some of our peers to proclaim that traditional search optimization has no place in the new digital landscape. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, SEO has never been more vital, because the very technologies that were meant to replace it are, in fact, powered by it.

Let’s be clear: AI didn’t kill SEO. It optimized its resurrection. 

As our Director of Digital Marketing, James Gibson, puts it: “The idea that SEO is dead because of AI is just false. AI relies on search engines to find information across the web.”

That’s right. Most of the time, an AI assistant delivers a recommendation, answers a question, or drafts a response by running a live search on the traditional search engines we’ve been using for decades. To answer a query, AI models rely on data, and that data comes from websites crafted with SEO discoverability, clarity, and authority in mind.

These systems are built on the scaffolding of SEO. They depend on the structured, relevant, and context-rich content that search professionals have been fine-tuning for decades. In essence, AI is not bypassing SEO; it’s standing on its shoulders. The AI tools many believe would render SEO obsolete are, in fact, powered by it.

“AI systems use Google, Bing, and others to complete their searches,” explains James. “If you’re not optimizing your content, you’re not just missing out on traditional search visibility — you’re hurting your visibility in AI as well. SEO has become a prerequisite for AI discovery.”

What’s changed is not whether SEO matters, but how it works. Search is no longer a static list of links but a dynamic, intelligent ecosystem where relevance is interpreted through language models rather than algorithms alone. The mission, however, remains the same: to connect human intent with meaningful information. The methods may evolve—from keywords to entities, from backlinks to trust signals—but the objective endures.

The rules of visibility have evolved, too. AI is looking for signals of authenticity, human experience, and originality. “There’s a much greater emphasis on helping AI recognize that a human being wrote content,” James adds. “AI doesn’t want to fuel its knowledge base with recycled, machine-generated material—it’s looking for genuine human insight.”

In practical terms, this means marketers need to write content that feels alive— grounded in real-world experience and infused with human insight. James recommends weaving in anecdotes and personal touches, phrases like “from my experience” or “in one of our projects”, to signal that people, not machines, genuinely author the content. “Those details build credibility,” he says. “They add the trust factor that AI systems are looking for.”

In the old SEO world, you could game search engines. Clever keyword usage, backlink tricks, and SEO hacks could push mediocre products in front of millions. But AI changes that equation altogether.

“Now, your purchasing decisions are being filtered through an AI system that’s done more research on a product or service than any human could,” Gibson explains. “The results users see are pre-filtered by the AI systems to give the user the best answer, with their best interests in mind- not your business’s interest.”

That’s a seismic shift in marketing power. Brands can no longer manipulate rankings because AI can see through the hype. If your product isn’t great, no amount of marketing polish will convince an algorithm otherwise.

“If you have negative reviews or product issues you’ve tried to mask with messaging, that’s not going to work anymore,” James says. “AI is smarter than that.”

Take a simple example: someone asks ChatGPT for “the best snack options.” Ten years ago, results were driven by ad spend and SEO tactics. Today, AI evaluates the actual nutrition facts. If a snack markets itself as healthy but has more sugar than a candy bar, it’s not making the list.

“Marketing can’t change the nutrition facts,” James notes. “AI defines ‘best’ based on what’s best for the user—not what’s best for the brand.”

This new landscape is forcing uncomfortable but necessary conversations inside companies. It’s no longer enough to fix perception problems with marketing spin; brands must fix the root issues with their products and services.

“If you know your customer sentiment isn’t great, don’t ask marketing to fix it,” James says. “Ask your product and service teams to fix it. Then marketing can communicate the improvements, but the action has to come first.”

So no, SEO isn’t dead — it’s evolving into something more honest, more transparent, and more human.

SEO has always adapted to the technology of its time, from mobile-first indexing to voice search to now AI-driven discovery. Each shift challenges practitioners to refine their craft, to think beyond the algorithm and focus on the user.

Search optimization today isn’t just about ranking higher on Google; it’s about being discoverable in a world where AI is the new gatekeeper. And AI is brutally fair. It rewards authenticity, quality, and trust— and penalizes manipulation and deceit.

Manipulative advertising might be dead, but SEO isn’t just alive—it’s thriving and more indispensable than ever. And as long as humans seek answers and machines strive to interpret them, SEO will remain at the very heart of digital discovery.

The reports of its death, as ever, have been greatly exaggerated.

If your SEO strategy could use a resurrection, we’re here to help. Let’s boost your visibility back to life.