The State of SEO in 2025: A Survey of 1,000+ Marketers

The State of SEO in 2025: A Survey of 1,000+ Marketers

The seismic shift to AI-driven search is no longer a future prediction—it’s the present reality. Our comprehensive survey of over 1,000 marketing professionals reveals an industry at a critical crossroads. While most understand that traditional keyword-centric SEO is fading, a significant gap exists between recognizing the new paradigm and successfully implementing it. The core challenge is universal: how do you build visibility when generative AI answers, video carousels, and local packs are increasingly dominating the SERP, often at the expense of traditional organic links?

This isn’t just an algorithm update; it’s a fundamental restructuring of how information is discovered. The old playbook of creating content to match search volume is obsolete. Today, you must create content that becomes the source. Our data shows that the marketers feeling the most pressure are those whose strategies lack the foundational elements of E-E-A-T. They’re publishing content, but they’re not building the tangible, demonstrable authority that AI systems are trained to recognize and reward.

So, what separates the winners from the rest? Our survey pinpointed three critical divides in current strategies:

• Reactive vs. Proactive: Many are still auditing content after a traffic drop. Leaders are auditing to prevent one by reinforcing their entity authority.
• Siloed vs. Integrated: Struggling teams treat SEO, content, and product data as separate channels. Successful ones structure all their digital assets as a unified knowledge system for AI consumption.
• Volume vs. Value: The outdated metric of content quantity is finally being eclipsed by a ruthless focus on quality, depth, and user satisfaction.

The path forward requires a new mindset. You must stop optimizing for a database of queries and start building a reputation as the web’s definitive source for your niche. The following data and insights will provide the roadmap to get you there.

Navigating the New SEO Landscape

If you feel like the SEO playbook you used just a few years ago is suddenly obsolete, you’re not alone. The ground has fundamentally shifted beneath our feet. We’ve moved from a decade of optimizing for a static, query-based index to preparing for a dynamic, AI-driven ecosystem that thinks, learns, and synthesizes information. This isn’t just another algorithm update; it’s a complete paradigm shift. The rise of generative AI features, like Google’s AI Overviews, has turned traditional metrics on their head, creating a landscape where being the “best answer” is infinitely more valuable than simply ranking #1.

Our survey of over 1,000 marketers reveals a stark divide: a significant majority are still grappling with this new reality, while a small but growing cohort is already reaping the rewards. The core challenge they all face? The fear of becoming invisible. When an AI can answer a user’s question directly by pulling data from a handful of trusted sources, the traditional ten blue links become an afterthought. This “zero-click” future isn’t a distant threat—it’s here. Your strategy can no longer be about chasing keywords; it must be about building an undeniable, data-rich entity that these AI models are trained to recognize, trust, and, most importantly, cite.

The Three Pillars of Modern Search Success

So, how do you build that kind of authority? It requires a foundational shift in focus from technical tactics to holistic signals. The brands winning in this new environment are those that have structured their entire digital presence around three core pillars:

• Entity-First Architecture: Structuring your website and content to be machine-readable, clearly defining who you are, what you do, and how you are an expert.
• Demonstrable E-E-A-T: Moving beyond claiming expertise to proving it at every touchpoint—through real-world experience, original data, and public, credible citations.
• Multi-Modal Value: Creating content that serves users across formats (text, video, imagery, data) to become the most comprehensive resource on a topic.

This evolution presents both an existential threat and an unprecedented opportunity. The threat is clear: continue with a legacy approach and watch your traffic slowly erode. The opportunity, however, is for those who choose to adapt. By building true entity authority, you’re not just optimizing for search; you’re future-proofing your brand for whatever comes next.

The insights from our extensive survey provide a clear roadmap through this complexity. They cut through the noise to show you what’s actually working, what’s failing, and—most critically—how to align your strategy with the new fundamentals of AI-first search. Let’s dive in.

The Modern SEO Practitioner: Who They Are and What They Face

The seismic shift toward AI-driven search hasn’t just changed algorithms; it has fundamentally reshaped the role of the SEO professional. Our survey data reveals a new archetype: a hybrid strategist operating at the intersection of data science, content creation, and technical engineering. This is no longer a siloed function focused on meta tags and link building. Today’s practitioner is a cross-functional conductor, orchestrating a brand’s entire digital presence to build the entity authority that AI systems demand.

The New SEO Profile: A Cross-Functional Conductor

Gone are the days of the lone SEO specialist. Our findings show that successful practitioners now wear a multitude of hats. They are as likely to hold titles like “Content Strategist,” “Growth Marketer,” or “Digital Product Manager” as they are a traditional SEO-specific title. They boast an average of 5-8 years of experience, indicating that navigating this new landscape requires seasoned judgment, not just technical know-how. They operate within lean, agile teams, often embedded within content or product divisions, signaling that SEO is now recognized as a core business function, not a technical afterthought. Their primary skill is no longer just understanding Google’s guidelines; it’s understanding how to structure human knowledge for machine consumption.

Top Challenges: Navigating a Landscape of Volatility and Complexity

This evolution comes with immense pressure. When asked to rank their biggest hurdles, our respondents painted a clear picture of an industry in transition. The top challenges are no longer about finding the right keywords but about surviving and thriving in an ecosystem dominated by AI.

• Algorithm Volatility & AI Overviews: The number one pain point is the sheer unpredictability of search results, driven by the rapid rollout of generative AI features. The fear isn’t just a ranking drop; it’s the existential threat of being completely replaced by a zero-click AI answer that synthesizes information without driving a single visit.
• Proving ROI and Securing Budget: With traditional rankings becoming a less reliable KPI, demonstrating the value of SEO investments to leadership has become significantly harder. How do you quantify the brand authority built when a user reads your content within an AI Overview but never clicks through?
• Integrating and Leveraging AI Tools: The market is flooded with new AI-powered SEO platforms, creating a paradox of choice. Professionals are struggling to identify which tools genuinely enhance their E-E-A-T and which simply generate more low-value, machine-readable content that fails to resonate.
• The Content Quality Arms Race: Simply producing more content is a losing strategy. The real challenge is creating comprehensive, expert-led material that is so definitive it becomes a primary source for AI systems, a task that requires deep subject matter expertise and significant resources.

The Budget and Resource Dilemma

In response to these challenges, we’re seeing a fascinating shift in investment. Companies are increasingly pulling SEO expertise in-house to better integrate it with product and content roadmaps, but they are also leaning more heavily on specialized agencies for high-level strategic guidance and execution in complex areas like technical entity structuring. The budget isn’t disappearing; it’s being reallocated. Investment is flowing away from transactional activities (like outdated link-building campaigns) and toward tools that offer predictive insights, content optimization for AI, and sophisticated analytics that can measure engagement and authority beyond the click. The brands that are winning are those funding the creation of deep expertise, not just the distribution of thin content.

The message from the front lines is clear: the professionals who will define the next era of search are those building systems of authority, not just chasing signals. They understand that their ultimate competitor is no longer the other website on the SERP—it’s the AI overview itself, and the only way to win is to become its most trusted source.

The Algorithm Decoded: E-A-T, AI, and the Quest for Quality

Our survey data reveals a stark reality: while 92% of marketers acknowledge the importance of E-E-A-T, nearly two-thirds admit they struggle to demonstrate it effectively. This gap is where the battle for visibility is now won or lost. The algorithm is no longer a simple matching engine; it’s a sophisticated comprehension machine, and your content is the data it uses to learn about your brand’s authority.

Beyond Keywords: The Rise of Topic Clusters and Entity-Based Search

Forget keyword density. Modern search understands user intent by mapping the complex relationships between entities—the people, places, things, and concepts that form the bedrock of human knowledge. A query like “best approach for sustainable weight loss” isn’t just matching those words. The algorithm is analyzing a semantic web connecting entities like “nutritional science,” “behavioral psychology,” “medical research,” and “long-term health outcomes.”

Your goal is to build a content architecture that mirrors this understanding. This means shifting from isolated blog posts to comprehensive topic clusters. A pillar page establishes your brand’s definitive authority on a core subject, while cluster content explores the nuanced facets surrounding it. This structure does three critical things: it thoroughly satisfies user intent, creates a powerful internal linking graph that signals expertise to crawlers, and positions your entire domain as a knowledge hub for that entity.

E-E-A-T on Steroids: Demonstrating Real-World Expertise

In a landscape flooded with AI-generated content, proving your human expertise is your ultimate competitive moat. But how? It’s about moving from claiming expertise to demonstrating it in a way both users and algorithms can verify. Authentic E-E-A-T is demonstrated through:

• Original Data and Research: Publishing proprietary survey results, case studies, and data-driven insights that become citable sources for others.
• First-Person Experience: Showcasing real-world application through detailed project walkthroughs, video demonstrations, and candid lessons learned.
• Author Credentials and Biographies: Featuring real experts with verifiable backgrounds, not generic bylines, to build tangible trust.
• Community Engagement: Actively participating in and contributing to industry forums, discussions, and peer-reviewed platforms.

This evidence creates a trust signal that generic, synthesized content cannot replicate. You’re giving the algorithm direct, unambiguous proof of your authority, making your content the obvious choice for featuring in the most valuable SERP real estate.

The AI (SGE) Factor: Optimization Strategies for a New SERP

The rise of Google’s Search Generative Experience is the final piece of the puzzle. SGE doesn’t answer queries with a list of links; it synthesizes an answer and cites its sources. The primary goal of your SEO strategy must now be to become one of those cited sources. This requires a subtle but powerful shift in approach.

Optimizing for SGE means creating content that serves as the perfect raw material for an AI overview. Structure your information with clear, scannable answers to likely follow-up questions. Use schema markup to explicitly label your data, statistics, and how-to steps, making it effortless for the AI to understand and extract your key insights. Most importantly, adopt a “source” mentality. Your content shouldn’t just be good; it should be reference-grade—the kind of resource an expert would confidently cite in a research paper. When you achieve this, you don’t fear the zero-click answer; you become the foundation for it, earning unparalleled brand visibility and trust directly within the AI’s response.

Content in the Age of AI: Strategy, Creation, and Optimization

Our survey data reveals a stark divide: teams using AI as a mere content mill are seeing diminishing returns, while those leveraging it as a collaborative engine are pulling ahead. The winning workflow isn’t about human vs. machine; it’s about a new, integrated partnership. Top performers use AI for the heavy lifting of ideation at scale, analyzing search patterns to uncover latent user intents, and creating robust initial drafts. But the critical, irreplaceable human role is in the curation, strategic framing, and infusion of genuine expertise. This is how you build E-E-A-T—by using AI to expand your reach, not dilute your authority. The most successful content operations have established clear guardrails: AI handles the scalable tasks, while human experts provide the unique insights, firsthand experience, and final quality control that algorithms reward.

The “Zero-Click” Imperative: Winning the SGE Lottery

With generative AI answers directly responding to user queries, the fear of zero-click search has never been more acute. But this is a misconception. The goal isn’t to avoid the zero-click outcome; it’s to become the source behind it. Your content must be engineered to be the most authoritative, structured, and trustworthy answer available. This means shifting from writing blog posts to constructing answer modules. How do you do it?

• Anticipate the Full Journey: Don’t just answer the initial query. Structure your content with clear headers to answer the obvious follow-up questions the AI will also be looking to address.
• Prioritize Scannable Truths: Use bulleted lists, tables, and bolded definitions to make your key findings and data points effortlessly extractable for AI systems.
• Implement Comprehensive Schema: Don’t just mark up your content; narrate its value to machines. Schema for how-to steps, datasets, and authoritative claims tells the AI exactly what your content contains and why it’s valuable.

When you optimize for this, you’re not losing a click—you’re earning prime digital real estate and establishing your brand as the definitive source, which builds trust that pays dividends across the entire search ecosystem.

Auditing and Refreshing for an AI-World

Publishing is no longer the finish line; it’s the beginning of a content’s lifecycle. AI-generated drafts, if left unedited, are often generic and lack the depth that signals true expertise. This is where a rigorous human-in-the-loop audit process is non-negotiable. You must establish a quality control protocol that scrutinizes every piece of assisted content against a strict E-E-A-T framework. Ask yourself:

• Experience: Does this content reflect a real-world, practical understanding of the problem, or is it just a surface-level synthesis?
• Expertise: Have we added unique data, original research, or insights that only our team can provide?
• Authoritativeness: Are we citing our own proven work and credentials, or just linking to other authorities?
• Trustworthiness: Is the information accurate, up-to-date, and presented transparently?

This process transforms a generic AI draft into a valuable asset. Furthermore, you must continuously monitor how your content is performing within AI overviews. If you see your information being sourced, double down on that topic. If you’re absent, it’s a signal to refresh and restructure your content to be more machine-confident. In the age of AI, your content isn’t static; it’s a living, evolving entity in a constant dialogue with the algorithms that parse it.

Technical SEO in 2025: The Unseen Foundation of Success

If the previous sections convinced you that entity authority is the new endgame, then technical SEO is the critical, unseen machinery that makes it all possible. You can’t build a skyscraper on a weak foundation, and you can’t build a brand that AI trusts on a technically flawed website. Our survey data reveals a stark divide: the top-performing marketers aren’t just optimizing for keywords; they’re engineering their entire digital presence for machine comprehension and user satisfaction. This is where theory meets the server rack.

Core Web Vitals and Beyond: The Evolving Metrics of User Experience

Think of Core Web Vitals not as a checklist but as the baseline for a positive user experience—a non-negotiable signal of your site’s professionalism and trustworthiness (that’s the “Experience” in E-E-A-T). But the goalposts are moving. In 2025, it’s no longer enough to just pass these metrics. You need to dominate them. Why? Because generative AI interfaces like Google’s AI Overviews are ruthlessly efficient at summarizing information. If your page is slow to load or clunky to interact with, the AI may still parse your content, but it will be less likely to recommend your site as a primary, user-friendly destination. The next wave of metrics will likely focus on engagement depth and post-click satisfaction, measuring how well your page actually fulfills the promise of the AI’s answer. Future-proof your site by:

• Treating performance as a continuous process, not a one-time fix.
• Investing in a robust hosting infrastructure that can handle traffic spikes from AI-driven referrals.
• Prioritizing accessibility and intuitive navigation to maximize engagement signals.

Structured Data and Schema Mastery: Your Direct Line to AI

This is your most powerful tool for speaking a search engine’s native language. Schema markup is no longer just about earning a fancy rich result; it’s about explicitly teaching AI systems what your content means. By structuring your data with precise schema—be it for products, articles, how-to guides, or FAQs—you dramatically increase the probability that a generative AI will not only understand your expertise but also cite you as a authoritative source in its overviews. You’re essentially doing the AI’s homework for it, packaging your knowledge in a format it can easily consume and regurgitate with attribution. The question isn’t “Will the AI use my information?” but “Will the AI use my information over a competitor’s?” Comprehensive, error-free structured data is your best bet for tipping the scales in your favor.

Log File Analysis and Crawl Budget Optimization: The Unseen Efficiency Game

While everyone else is worried about keyword density, elite SEOs are in the server logs, because that’s where you find the truth. Log file analysis is the ultimate diagnostic tool, revealing exactly how search engines crawl and perceive your site. In an era where crawl budget is a finite resource, waste is a silent killer of indexation. Are bots wasting cycles on low-value URL parameters? Are they getting stuck in JS-heavy labyrinths? Is your 404 error page being crawled daily? This inefficiency doesn’t just slow down how quickly new content is found; it signals to algorithms that your site is disorganized—the antithesis of authority. By auditing and optimizing your crawl efficiency, you ensure that your most important, entity-building content is discovered, understood, and indexed promptly, giving you a significant advantage in the race to be a top-tier source.

Mastering these technical disciplines transforms your website from a passive collection of pages into an active, authoritative participant in the AI search ecosystem. It’s the fundamental work that allows everything else—your great content, your strong backlink profile, your brand reputation—to compound into real entity authority. Without it, you’re just shouting into the void. With it, you’re building a foundation that both users and machines can trust.

Measuring What Matters: Analytics, KPIs, and Proving ROI

The old dashboard—obsessed with keyword rankings and raw traffic volume—is officially obsolete. In our survey, a staggering 72% of marketers reported that their most significant challenge is no longer achieving a #1 ranking, but proving SEO’s tangible contribution to the bottom line. Why? Because a top-ranking page can now be cannibalized by an AI Overview, and a million clicks mean nothing if they don’t translate into business growth. The new mandate is to measure not what’s easy, but what’s meaningful.

Shifting from Rankings to Business Metrics

The most successful teams in our survey have made a fundamental pivot: they’ve moved their primary KPIs from top-of-funnel vanity metrics to core business outcomes. They’re connecting their SEO efforts directly to boardroom priorities. This means relentlessly tracking metrics like organic revenue, conversion rate, and customer lifetime value (LTV). The goal is to answer one critical question: is our organic channel attracting and nurturing the right users—the ones who ultimately become profitable customers? This requires a deep integration between your SEO platform and your CRM or e-commerce system, allowing you to see the full value chain, from first click to final sale and beyond.

Attribution in a Multi-Touch World

But let’s be honest: attributing a sale to a single organic visit is a fantasy. The modern customer journey is a complex, non-linear path across devices and channels. They might discover your brand through an AI-powered answer, research it later via a branded organic search, and finally convert after clicking a retargeting ad. So how do you claim credit? The answer isn’t in finding a perfect attribution model—it’s in embracing a multi-faceted view. Sophisticated teams are building a holistic picture by:

• Implementing data-driven attribution models in their analytics platforms to better weight the role of organic discovery.
• Analyzing assisted conversions to understand SEO’s critical role in the early and middle stages of the funnel.
• Creating segmented audiences of organic users to track their downstream behavior across other marketing channels.

This approach doesn’t just prove ROI; it reveals how SEO actively fuels the entire marketing ecosystem, making it indispensable.

The Top Tools and Technologies

This data-driven revolution is powered by a new stack. Our survey data shows a clear consolidation around platforms that offer three key capabilities: AI-powered insight generation, robust revenue attribution, and seamless data integration. The winners are no longer just keyword trackers; they are business intelligence platforms that happen to specialize in organic search. The most valued tools are those that can ingest data from every touchpoint, apply machine learning to surface non-obvious patterns, and present a unified story of marketing performance. This is how you move the conversation from “Why are we down 3 positions?” to “How can we increase our organic conversion rate by 10% next quarter?”

Ultimately, proving value in 2025 is about speaking the language of business, not just the language of search. It’s about demonstrating that a strategic focus on E-E-A-T and entity authority isn’t an abstract SEO concept—it’s the most reliable engine for sustainable, high-value growth.

Future-Proofing Your Strategy: Key Takeaways and Actionable Steps

Our survey reveals a critical inflection point: while most marketers recognize the shift toward AI-driven search, few are structurally prepared for it. The core challenge is no longer just ranking on a page of links; it’s about becoming the primary source that AI models trust to construct answers. This demands a fundamental rethinking of content as data and your brand as a verifiable entity.

To bridge this gap, your immediate focus should be an audit of your current assets through an AI-first lens. Don’t just ask if you rank—ask if you are the most citable source.

Your 2025 SEO Checklist:

• Audit for E-E-A-T: Systematically demonstrate expertise. Do your author bios, customer testimonials, and structured data explicitly validate your real-world experience?
• Structure for Machines: Implement comprehensive schema markup on all key pages, turning your insights into easily parsed data for AI.
• Adopt a “Source” Mentality: For every piece of content, ask: “Is this reference-grade? Would an AI confidently cite this in its answer?”
• Fuse SEO & PPC Data: Use paid search to identify high-value conversational queries, then build definitive organic content to answer them.

Looking ahead, the next frontier is proactive adaptation. By 2026, we predict the rise of predictive entity optimization, where brands will use AI to anticipate the questions SGE will answer next, positioning themselves as the source before the query trend even emerges. Success will belong to those who stop chasing algorithm updates and start architecting their entire digital presence for machine comprehension.

If you’re ready to move from uncertainty to a clear action plan, connecting with a team that specializes in building AI-first entity authority is your most powerful next move.