Google declared their approach to artificial intelligence as “Bold but responsible.” The search engine giant has integrated their native AI program, Gemini, directly into the user experience. If you used Google to find this article, you likely encountered an AI-generated summary.
The integration of AI into search has caused concern. How can you maintain healthy traffic when Google provides answers to most questions directly on the search results page?
While AI has disrupted SEO, it’s not the catastrophic event many feared. The fundamental principles remain the same: create quality, informative content and consistently use relevant keywords.
This has always been the core strategy for optimization. For a detailed analysis, continue reading for in-depth SEO tips and trends for 2025.
SEO Tips and Trends for 2025: State of the Union
While marketers obsess over AI's impact on SEO, a recent data breach has provided more specific insight into what Google actually cares about when it comes to ranking pages. In May 2025, a bot leaked a massive internal SEO document on GitHub.
This document gave marketers a rare glimpse into Google’s internal thought process. The insights? Not exactly earth-shattering.
While the document is loaded with technical information, most of the insights can be summarized simply: Google will promote content that is helpful. When users consistently click on one of your articles and then remain on your page for a long enough time, Google will take that to be a good sign.
When people click your page but then bounce right out, Google will take that to be a bad sign. That’s neither new nor surprising information.
How to E-E-A-T
In 2021, the search engine rolled out its E-E-A-T standard. Experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
In an Orwellian type of phrasing, the platform insists that E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor, but also that it can influence ranking. While we don’t know exactly how Google weighs E-E-A-T, it seems to contribute to the platform’s Quality Evaluator Guidelines.
What makes this content good? How much value does it provide the reader? Does the article reflect the readers’ intentions? Does it hold their interest? These are the basic components of quality as Google sees it.
Content quality of course is a ranking factor.
In other words, E-E-A-T is not a core ranking factor, but it can influence one of the content quality indicators that they look at.
This information, though interesting, ultimately comes across as a whole lot of nothing new. Google wants content creators to produce high-quality articles. That has always been the standard.
Even the focus on authorship is not new. Google developed a program for tracking authorship statistics all the way back in 2011. That program was discontinued in 2014, but in an age of computer-generated information, it’s not surprising that the search engine is re-emphasizing the importance of authorship.
The goal is always to make sure people find what they are looking for. Authorship is one way to do that. Who wrote this article? Are they an expert? Content creators needn’t avoid writers who haven’t had their work featured in the New Yorker.
They might consider developing their own online presence so that there is more authority behind the things they publish. Not exactly a new idea.
The concept of authority plays out very naturally in practice. Look at the way Transitions Elite positions itself.
The business helps doctors deal with the complicated nuances of selling their medical practices. It was founded by a doctor who noticed that physicians don’t always understand the financial nuances of selling their practices.
That’s authority, established in the very first line of text. Why should we trust this person? They have first-hand experience with the concept. It’s as simple as that.
Other Consequences of AI
Gemini isn’t the only AI-related headache in the world of content development. Thanks to generative AI tools, it is now easier than ever to publish information online. What might have taken hours to write, edit, and publish manually could be done in minutes with AI tools.
Does the inclusion of generative AI-produced content within a web page hurt its search engine standings?
To this point, Google’s stance has been, “No, but….”
No, they won’t punish your website solely because it appears to contain content produced by AI. But, you still need to make sure that the information you publish meets quality standards in a way that generative AI often does not.
Like many SEO questions, the answer lies in taking a step back and considering user intent. People who want an AI-generated answer have tons of options. They could feed their question to ChatGPT. They could end their search with Google’s Gemini-powered AI summary.
If they bypassed all of that to get to your website, it was probably because they wanted human-supplied information that cuts a little deeper than AI.
There are a few SEO-specific problems with generating and publishing AI content.
- Duplication: If two people put the same prompt into a generative AI platform they will get very similar results. There may be variations in the wording, but there is the risk of duplication.
- Dull content: A hallmark of AI writing? It’s bland and lifeless. An overreliance on generative AI will result in boring content. Boring content will result in a high bounce rate. A high bounce rate will result in a bad SEO ranking.
- Generic: Obviously, anyone can access an AI answer to their question with ease. People turn to the internet as an alternative to the generic, surface-level response they would get from AI.
There are also accuracy concerns. We’ve all seen funny mistakes or strange responses produced by AI. In an early promotional video, Google published a clip of a man struggling with his camera. He asks Gemini what to do, and the AI gives him an incorrect answer.
Its response: jiggle the film out of the camera, would ruin all of the photos by exposing them to light. Obviously, content creators can also make factual errors with human-written content. Still, the potential for mistakes seems higher with AI.
People—including the ones behind promotional content at Google, apparently—take what generative platforms give them at face value.
Though it’s not quite fair to say that using generative AI to produce web content will harm SEO, it looks like improving upon its low bar could benefit your rankings.
Can AI be useful in SEO?
None of this is to say that artificial intelligence is undeserving of a seat at the table. Generative AI tools can be used to:
- Develop content strategies. Many people use generative AI platforms to source ideas. What should you be writing about? Plugging that question into ChatGPT might not produce a brilliant response in its own right, but you can receive better insights by tweaking your input. For example, once you have your topic, you might ask an AI platform what areas you should cover. While its response probably should not be the beginning and end of your planning strategy, it is a good way to get the ball rolling.
- Come up with and integrate keywords. AI platforms can also help you think more clearly in terms of how people are searching, and where you should use those phrases to be the most impactful.
- Improve human writing. Not everyone is a natural-born writer. AI programs can help edit your work. Grammarly, for example, has tools that can allow you to refine content for tone or clarity.
The key is discretion and supervision. You shouldn’t let ChatGPT take over your SEO strategy. Think of it as an unpaid assistant. While you should remain in the driver’s seat, using AI to accelerate workflows and improve efficiency can be a good addition to your SEO approach.
There are many good AI-powered content creation products that are specifically designed to help with your SEO strategy. StoryChief integrates AI into content creation the right way.
It has tools that will allow you to automatically perform SEO audits on your website, or convert blog posts into social media captions. Tools like StoryChief allow content creators to scale their SEO strategies up without eliminating the human touch necessary for good writing.
Conclusion
While artificial intelligence is changing and shaping SEO, it isn’t ending it. The Gemini summaries aren’t so different from snippets—and they are often less accurate. The AI bubble is not the first time a technology has emerged to cause panic. In 2010, experts declared that “the web is dead,” as people became more reliant on phone applications.
If the web is dead, it’s wearing it well nearly fifteen years later.
SEO tips and trends for 2025 can help you improve your strategy. However, it’s also important to remember that good search engine optimization is built on consistency. The white hat approach, tough though it might be, is what will keep your content evergreen.
SEO is undeniably being shaped by artificial intelligence, but the core concepts remain the same. Google’s E-E-A-T standard puts a finer point on a concept that has always been in play. You want good web traffic? Write good content.
SEO practices are always in flux. Google updates its standards as often as twice daily. The same way you never enter the same river twice, content creators never work with quite the same algorithm. Still, the basic content checklists remain mostly the same year in and year out.
Search engine algorithms have always existed to help users find information that most aligns with their intentions. Writing that content is more than half the battle. Content marketers looking to drive efficiency and improve their rankings should work on developing great content backed by efficient processes.
Check out StoryChief to find out how you can use AI in your SEO strategy the right way.
