SEO used to die every 2 months. Now it’s every 2 minutes. It will never die, because people will never stop needing answers.
It’s like music. Record players died by cassette tapes. Cassettes died by CDs. CDs died by MP3s, etc. But music never died.
SEO is music, as the core principal of it is helping sell something. Selling something will never die.
Content sites might be impacted, but ecommerce is less likely, because you can’t buy things from ChatGPT (for now). But even content sites, ChatGPT at least in it’s current state, references other existing content and repurposes to create it’s own content, but does not birth ideas.
Marketers are bias.
The real world isn’t adopting it nearly as fast as people think. It’s been adopted a lot, yes. And it will continue to grow, yes. But it’s nearly insignificant on its impact on traditional search/SEO.
Most of the searches in AI is “make me text/image” and is not transactional. The post below, in summary, shows that ChatGPT doesn’t even has as many users as Bing. It’s single digits in comparison to Google. And out of that single digit percentage, only 30% is transactional.
Its traffic is also still peanuts compared to Google. And the king of search isn’t going anywhere. In fact, Google search use GREW BY 21.64% last year.
“I’ve seen wild speculation that Google’s market share is down 5-10% since ChatGPT’s launch, and heard anecdotes across my feeds from people claiming that they never use Google and have entirely switched to AI tools.
But, there’s been no comprehensive, well-structured analysis to show the AI tools’ share of search, nor any data to back up the claims of Google’s supposed search decline.”
~Rand Fishkin
(Founder of one of the most successful SEO software companies, and now a data/traffic/trends analyst.)
ChatGPT is going to kill SEO copywriting.
No, it’s not.
If anything, this is an opportunity to differentiate yourself. While so many are regurgitating unoriginal ideas, you can start building your brand. Because, loyal audiences to unique brands and compelling story tellers will last forever.
AI tools like this are not new. There have been countless others before it. A tool called Jasper was all the rage like ChatGPT is now, just a few months ago.
Is it cool? Yes.
Is it better than the ones before it? Yes.
Will it replace SEO? No.
Why?
- Someone needs to input the prompts into ChatGPT
- Someone needs to revise the results
- Someone needs to fact check any claims or data figures
I love the romanticism around AI’s potential, and continue to try every new program as it comes along. However, if you’re writing for the customer first and not just to shortcut/spam/”SEO”-only, it takes longer to stage, draft, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, trash AI than to do it right the first time with manual research, context, and value added output with humans.
And there is currently no precedence to who even owns the output. Chances are, it’s not you. You didn’t create the output. You used a tool. So, you don’t own it.
All the while, my business continues to grow.
ChatGPT came out Nov 30, 2022, I’ve nearly DOUBLED REVENUE since then.
Let’s calculate how:
- Some days I post three or four times in a day. Other weeks I’ll go days without posting at all.
- If I average it out, let’s call it 1.5 posts per day.
- Multiply 1.5 posts per day X 457 days since ChatGPT launched = 685.5 posts.
- Multiply 685.5 posts by how many times I’ve used ChatGPT to write posts, and the answer is…
- ZERO.
I’ve never used ChatGPT to write. Yet, leads from my content have doubled in that same time period without increasing my social content volume.
Authentic, human quality > AI quantity.
Including a $400,000 year client and sent a wire for $121,000 deposit paid in full.
Do you think Google will just roll over? Plus, Google is TOO integrated. Android, YouTube, Maps, Gmail.
They may lose some marketshare, but it would take a conglomerate we’ve never seen before, built up over years/decades to unseat Google. I do agree it will evolve though to be more “People searching AI, AI searching Google/web.” BUT, guess what. Everything tested so far shows traditional SEO is how you optimize for AI.
How to Rank in ChatGPT
AI has changed how people search for information. Whether someone asks ChatGPT a question or uses Google’s AI features, they’re getting answers pulled from what AI systems consider authoritative sources. This case study shows how to show up in ChatGPT.
Short answer:
- AI optimization is literally SEO. It’s just another search engine.
- It weighs site structure, content, and credibility.
- Only difference is it weighs external credibility more than traditional search engines.
