As we approach the end of 2024, the SEO landscape is already shifting, with even bigger changes on the horizon for next year.
With potential access to Google’s data, competitors could shake up the search landscape, requiring SEOs to rethink their strategies across multiple platforms.
At the same time, AI tools continue to evolve, offering both opportunities and risks – streamlining tasks but threatening to reduce creativity to a formulaic output.
The challenge for 2025? Balancing innovation with authenticity and automation with human insight.
What trends should guide your next steps? Let’s take a look.
1. Search alternatives and Google’s antitrust trial
If Google is forced to share its data as part of antitrust rulings, the SEO landscape may face dramatic changes.
This will allow Google’s competitors to use its search data and algorithms to build their search engines faster. Something that hides the potential to diversify the organic landscape significantly.
Building on this hypothetical future, while all competitors would start with the same foundational data, they could also innovate and introduce new methodologies.
For SEOs, this means we won’t just be developing a single strategy but potentially ten or twenty, ensuring our websites remain competitive across all these new platforms.
We are already experiencing some of this weight with the rise of AI tools – like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity and their plans to integrate search.
Making Google’s data available will also give SEO experts unprecedented transparency into the long-hidden Google algorithms.
We would gain deeper insights into ranking factors and user behavior, allowing us to optimize like never before by understanding exactly what works.
Unfortunately, this also means manipulating the algorithms will be easier, at least for the short term.
Something which may bring us back to the dark days of SEO, when it was easier to rank higher with a pile of complete rubbish.
To learn more about this trend and what it will mean for SEO, we may need to wait until later next year.
The current plan is for the U.S. DOJ to propose a more refined proposal in November and then Google to share its own in December. For now, we can only say, “Stay tuned!”
2. AI as a powerful (or terrible) assistant
With so many AI-powered tools available, it’s easy for SEOs to get lost in the sea of options.
While some of these tools can be helpful, there’s a real risk in relying too heavily on them.
If you and thousands like you, are all using the same tools trained on identical data, the outcome will be mediocrity at best.
Everyone’s strategy becomes the same, creating an environment where it’s hard to stand out. Maybe this is why Google has pushed so hard for the new “E” in E-E-A-T – putting the experience in focus.
Adding to this, many AI tools function as “black boxes.” You input data, but what happens in between is unclear.
Much like grabbing a candy from Harry Potter’s magical sweets – what you get could be great, or it could be a nasty surprise.
Without knowing how these tools reach their conclusions, you’re left with results you can’t fully trust.
Over-relying on AI can also hinder your critical thinking. A key strength of a great SEO expert is their ability to apply real-world experience, intuition and creativity to problem-solving.
AI tools still can’t replicate this. Your unique experiences set you apart from others.
One of the options to overcome some of these risks related to this trend is to consider training your own AI bot.
Ideally, you should build it from scratch on your own platform, where you don’t have the unknown risk of how your information is used.
But if this is a no-go option, tools like Google’s Gems and GPTs from ChatGPT will allow you to customize and fine-tune AI to your needs.
This will let you transform your AI assistant from a basic, generic tool into one that reflects the uniqueness of your brand, website and marketing strategy.
You can also train this tool on your CRM, Google Analytics data, customer reviews and more. The sky is the limit if you have eliminated the security concerns.
By having all these data in an easy-to-access way, you can better respond to Google’s emphasis on originality and establish E-E-A-T.
Dig deeper: AI can’t write this: 10 ways to AI-proof your content for years to come