Will AI Kill SEO? 5 Reasons Why It Won’t And How to Adapt

With Google’s latest announcement of Google AI mode in response to the rise of generative answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, many SEO experts have started claiming that AI will replace SEO.

I think most of these people are missing the point we’re very far from seeing AI kill SEO completely. In fact, I’d rather say that SEO has never been more important than it is today.

1. AI Still Relies on Web Search

First of all, unlike what some think, most generative engines will not rely solely on their knowledge base (e.g., the knowledge they’ve acquired from the training data that has been obtained through crawling the internet). In order to stay relevant, they rely on tools, and the main one is access to web search.

Most of these AI agents use either Bing (for ChatGPT and Perplexity) or Google (for Gemini and other Google AI products) to get the most up-to-date content. So while some humans may stop interacting directly with the search interface, AI agents will continue to, and SEO rather than getting killed will evolve to target AI-driven traffic.

To stay relevant to those AI search engines, nailing technical SEO is crucial. Using the right JSON-LD schemas will help answer engines understand your content on a deeper level.

2. AI Makes the User Journey Shorter And Better

The beauty of generative engines is their ability to deeply understand the user’s query and intent. Queries will become more detailed, and AI search engines will be able to match them more accurately with the right content or product.

While the overall volume of clicks may decrease, the quality of clicks will improve. Don’t think of this as SEO being replaced it’s a paradigm shift. AI will help reduce bounce rate and increase conversion by skipping internal navigation and serving the user with direct, personalized answers, allowing you to build high-converting pages.

3. Backlinks Matter More Than Ever

A huge component of SEO is backlinks. You might think that if AI were to kill SEO, backlinks would become obsolete. Quite the opposite.

AI shines at search because it can summarize vast amounts of text quickly. That means it’s no longer about ranking in the top 5 results AI will scan and extract content from a much wider range of sources.

So why do backlinks matter? Because they increase your chances of showing up in more search results, making it more likely that AI crawls your page. Understanding AI agent behavior will be as important as understanding human behavior used to be.

4. AI Will Reward Brands That Control the Narrative

As mentioned above, AI can tap into a wider variety of sources and User Generated Content (UGC) platforms like Reddit or X.com are key among them.

That’s why brand reputation management will become critical. You'll need to debunk false claims quickly and provide context for AI agents in case they encounter negative feedback.

Controlling your brand’s narrative across backlinks and UGC will ensure that answer engines recommend your brand accurately, preserving your reputation.

5. AI Highlights the Best Content So Make It Count

Finally and perhaps most obviously AI is getting better at matching intent to content, and even highlighting the relevant parts for the user. This means only the best content will surface.

That’s good news. If you invest in quality, both users and AI will reward you. In a world flooded with automated low-quality AI content, it’s your chance to stand out by serving accurate, useful information.

Conclusion

AI is not going to replace or kill SEO anytime soon. Just like every change in search behavior, this shift will require adaptation. But SEO has always evolved and thrived. This time will be no different.