SEO Isn’t Dead. It’s Just Evolving (and AI Needs It More Than Ever)

Every few years, someone declares SEO dead. And every few years, the internet proves them wrong.

The latest chapter? According to a PPC Land report, a company that let go of its SEO team and bet everything on AI-driven search. Two months later, their organic traffic was down 70% — and leadership was forced to confront what they’d really broken. 

That collapse wasn’t caused by AI itself. It was caused by a cascade of avoidable execution errors and by misunderstanding what “search” really means in 2025.

The “AI Will Replace SEO” Fallacy, Revisited

When Google introduced AI Overviews, some executives jumped to the conclusion that traditional SEO would become irrelevant. Why invest in optimizations when AI could just “summarize everything”?

In this case, the PPC Land article found that the CEO dismantled the SEO function and tried to rebuild it around AI-first traffic. But instead of a growth surge, the company saw a catastrophic decline. 

Here’s what reportedly went wrong:

• They changed the URLs of their top-performing pages without implementing 301 redirects. That’s like cutting down the road signs to your best content.

• They misread where their traffic came from. Despite the AI buzz, 98% of their users were still coming from Google.

• They blamed “AI disruption” for the drop, rather than recognizing the root cause: broken technical foundations.

In short, AI isn’t an enemy of SEO. It inherits SEO’s mechanics and best practices and punishes weak ones.

How AEO + GEO Fits In, and How to Build for Them

Now, even though SEO best practices are still relevant, you need to think beyond them to thrive in the age of AI-driven search. In fact, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) help bridge that gap.

What Are AEO & GEO?

• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring content so AI-powered answer engines (like Google AI Overviews, voice assistants, or chatbots) can extract clear, concise responses, ideally citing your content.

• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about positioning your content so it gets used as a source in generative AI summaries. When AI systems synthesize answers, GEO is how you become one of the sources that the engine “reads from.”

In practice, AEO and GEO don’t replace SEO; they layer on top of it, which is why SEO best practices are still necessary. They ask the question: not just “how do I rank?” but “how do I show up in AI-generated summaries and get cited?”

Industry coverage suggests that GEO is not purely speculative. In the PPC Land article linking to a four-layer framework (AEO, GEO, AIO, SXO), the author notes that brands that adopt these layered strategies see better alignment with AI-driven visibility demands. 

A recent  Search Engine Journal review of AEO/GEO tactics emphasizes that many “new” practices are essentially old SEO best practices reframed for AI: chunking, using structured markup, clarity in headings, and list/table formatting.

Practical Steps: How to Do AEO + GEO (While Holding SEO Strong)

Here’s a playbook to layer AI-aware visibility into your SEO foundation.

1. Maintain the SEO Bedrock

You must still ensure your site is crawlable, indexable, fast, and well-structured. Core Web Vitals, sitemaps, canonical tags, clean URLs, internal linking — these continue to matter for both human and machine visibility.

When the SEO team was dismissed in the case study, the absence of redirects and technical care was disastrous, according to PPC Land.

2. Chunk Your Content Intentionally

AI systems don’t always “read” entire pages; they parse sections or “chunks” to extract relevant answers. By structuring content into self-contained, snippet-friendly blocks (e.g., a question plus a short answer followed by supporting detail), you increase your chances of being excerpted. SEJ emphasizes this as a key overlap between techniques for AEO and GEO, reports Search Engine Journal.

This approach echoes Google’s passage ranking (where individual passages are evaluated for relevance, not just the page as a whole). 

3. Use FAQ / Q&A Blocks with Concise Answers (40–60 Words)

One of the best ways to win snippet-style AI citations is to embed FAQ or Q&A sections with short, focused answers. These sections become perfect fodder for AI systems seeking direct responses. (This strategy is cited explicitly in AEO/GEO discussions.) 

Make sure each question is a real user query, the answer is crisp, and your content elsewhere supports that answer with depth and context.

4. Schema & Structured Data

Schema markup remains critical for AEO, GEO, and SEO alike. Use structured data types such as FAQPage, HowTo, Article, and other relevant schemas so that AI systems and search engines can parse your content reliably. SEJ’s review flags this as a best practice consistent with AI optimization. 

5. Build Topical Hubs & Internal Citation Networks

For GEO in particular, it helps if your content is context-rich and interconnected. Create pillar pages (deep, comprehensive thematic guides) and supporting subpages that link credibly into it. This helps generative engines see relationships and relevance across your content.

Link to authoritative sources and primary data.  AI systems prefer drawing from well-cited, credible content. The academic study in generative search suggests that AI systems have a bias toward “earned media” and authoritative sourcing.

6. Monitor New AI KPIs

In addition to traditional SEO metrics (rankings, organic sessions, and conversions), start tracking:

• AI citation rate: how often your content is cited or used in AI summaries

• Inclusion share: how often your pages appear in generative results

• Snippet/answer win rate: how often you win featured answers

• Time to publish & update: frequency and freshness of content

• Evidence coverage / source integrity: how well your content backs statements with sources

These metrics help you evaluate whether your content is functioning in the AI visibility landscape.

Why This Matters for the Future

When we reject SEO outright in favor of AI hype, we end up abandoning the structure that enables visibility in both realms. The company in the PPC Land article didn’t lose traffic because AI conquered search; they lost it because they tore out the foundation.

By contrast, the modern playbook is to build up, not tear down. SEO ensures your content is discoverable. AEO ensures it can be understood and cited. GEO ensures it can be synthesized into AI-generated responses.

Viewed this way, AI-driven search isn’t a competitor; it’s an amplifier of content that already has structural, semantic, and contextual strength.

Our Take at Origin Story & What You Can Do Next

At Origin Story, we believe that visibility is as much about how well you’re seen by AI as how well you're perceived by humans. The future of search is hybrid: pages must be optimized for organic ranking, structured for AI interpretation, and positioned to be cited by generative systems.

If your leadership or team is hearing that “SEO is dead,” let this be the counterpoint: it’s evolving, and AI demands you get smarter, not faster.

Want to ensure your brand appears in both Google and AI-generated answers?