SEO in 2025 is going to be insanely different than it’s ever been before. Based on my data, trend spotting, and experience, as I was planning this video, I realized that my 2025 predictions were so freaking weird I thought I was tripping. So just to make sure I was still sane, I decided to crowdsource what you, the community thought was going to happen next year. And what I found is that a lot of very smart people feel exactly the same. Sh*t’s getting weird.
In this video, I’ll share with you my top 12 predictions on how SEO is going to change. And most importantly, what you can do to prepare. We’re going to talk a lot about AI, the most important new ranking signals to focus on, the huge market gaps and opportunities that are open right now, antitrust lawsuits, the fatal small website publishers, and your mom.
But real quick, I want to let you know that my SEO agency, the search initiative has a thousand dollar off discount going on till the end of the month. To get a free audit, head on over to the search initiative.com and put your details into the form and we’ll let you know what we can do for you.
Now back to the video. All right, let’s get this party started discussing the ranking factors that you need to focus on in 2025, especially in comparison to previous years.
SEO Prediction #1: Turning Your Website into a Brand
SEO publications have been saying for years that you should focus on treating your website as a brand. That part isn’t new. What is new is that SEO professionals are proving with actual data that Google is indeed preferring brands these days. And more importantly, they’re also proving how Google is deciding if a website is a brand or another rinky dink SEO cash grab.
This correlation study showed that helpful content update winners had a larger ratio of brand search versus backlinks, which I agreed with. And many of you in the community agreed too. Now I’m not trying to downplay our benegeserate like observation skills, but it’s quite obvious. I mean, just look at the search result for best testosterone supplements. My ass used to rank number one for this keyword. Now it’s only mega brands like WebMD.
In my opinion, the main factor that Google uses to determine if a website is a brand or not is brand search volume. Are people actually searching for Matt Diggity? Matt Diggity Affiliate Lab Review and Matt Diggity Net Worth. Come on guys.
In fact, here’s the traffic graph for one of my affiliate sites that I sent. Don’t try this at home, fake bought traffic too. In fact, that’s the only thing we did. And bam, the August core update, traffic went up. I have a video coming out on how to do this, so make sure to subscribe.
That said, in my opinion, the best way to generate brand search volume is to go multi-channel with your traffic, which brings me to my next SEO prediction for 2025.
SEO Prediction #2: Traffic Diversity as a Ranking Factor
Traffic diversity gets cranked up as a ranking factor. SEO as a sole traffic source is becoming less reliable for certain types of websites. So it makes sense to diversify by getting traffic from places like video, email, social media, and PPC. And what many smart people have realized is that when you have activity on other channels, you actually get a better result with your SEO.
When the Yandex leak hit the internet, Yandex is the Russian search engine that’s very similar to Google. We found that if the percentage of traffic you get from search engines is too high, that can be viewed as a negative ranking factor.
My favorite place to diversify my traffic is YouTube. Clearly. If you need help getting started with YouTube, check out my Done For You video agency, Epic Video. I also love PPC, but only if you can generate profitable campaigns. PPC also has the bonus effect of generating brand search volume. And surprise, I also have an agency that can help you out with PPC, Diggity Media.
SEO Prediction #3: User Signals in Google’s Algorithm
My next SEO prediction is that Google will rely more on user signals in its algorithm. Google actually always has said that they don’t use click data. But oops, just kidding guys, the Google code leak actually had a specific module called navboost that was entirely focused on click signals.
The user signal I think they considered most is goal completion. When users click on your website, are they getting their goals met? Did you end their search journey? Or did they click back on their browser and Pogo stick down to the next result? A very bad user signal.
Some of you guys also think that shorter two to 3 minute long articles are preferred by today’s algorithm, a theory I can get behind.
SEO Prediction #4: Content and Links as Core Ranking Signals
Content and links remain the core ranking signals in SEO, but the value of content goes down and the value of links goes up. Google is getting absolutely flooded with AI content. According to this article from EarthWeb, 7.5 million blog posts are published per day. With everyone and their grandma now able to spam out content with the press of a button. To save money analyzing it all, Google will do what they’ve always done. Rely more heavily on links to decide whether content is good or not.
SEO Prediction #5: AI Search Engines Stealing Market Share
Now, moving on to the topic of AI, my next prediction is that AI search engines will start to significantly steal market share from Google. Like Channel Viewer Chris, my bet is also on search GPT. I mean, it’s just a better search experience. You get your question answered right away, instead of getting a list of places where you might find your answer, mostly Reddit I might add, and there’s no ads for now.
Plus, it’s run by OpenAI, whose adoption rate track record puts a p-ditty freak off to shame. To add, Google’s recent loss in the antitrust hearings makes them vulnerable to disruption. And if users start switching over to AI search engines, that brings me to my next prediction.
SEO Prediction #6: AISEO Becoming a Thing
AISEO is going to become a thing. That is optimizing your website to appear in AI search results. Now I’ll be the first to admit that so far, I’m a newbie at getting optimized for search GPT, but I’m running a lot of tests and so far it’s working. I’ll make a video on this when I’ve locked down the process so subscribe so you don’t miss it.
SEO Prediction #7: AI Overviews Fully Rolled Out
Next prediction, AI overviews will be completely rolled out by the end of 2025. In a knee-jerk reaction to the launch of chat GPT, Google came out hard AF with AI overviews in the search results, but they soon recalled the hell out of that move when people started noticing hallucinations like when you Google, I’m feeling depressed and they recommend you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, which would certainly solve the depression, but come on now.
That said, these embarrassing screw ups are getting fewer and farther between these days. So I’m guessing by Q2, Q3 2025, we’ll be back with AI answers being bukkake all over the internet. I mean, we wouldn’t want to send traffic to actual websites, would we?
Informational queries like, are strawberries good for you? How to set up a webcam or is SEO dead? These keywords are screwed. Any display ad, informational content sites that happen to live past the helpful content update purge. Yeah, those are unfortunately a ticking time bomb. So my suggestion for you is the following. Focus on bottom of the funnel keywords and massive CRO to get the most out of the search volume.
SEO Prediction #8: AI Content Performance
Next prediction, AI content continues to perform well and content scalability hits another level. Yes, last year, OpenAI said that it’s mathematically impossible for AI detectors to quote, “reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content.” But even if it were detectable, Google’s own search guidance about AI content says they’ll reward high quality content however it’s produced.
And as a result, people are printing sites with AI and spouting massive traffic boners despite what SEO Twitter wants to believe. But my SEO prediction, along with my buddy Niels, is that AI content generation will evolve into the following. Rather than create an article, you just add your website details. The software will figure out the best content that you could possibly rank for, write it for you, update old and stale content, and all you really need to do is set your daily spend. I know one company that’s already working on this, Surfer.
SEO Prediction #9: Reddit’s Traffic Decline
Next prediction is a two-parter. The good news, I think Reddit is gonna lose traffic. In 2023, Reddit got the biggest traffic boner ever to rise because Google gave them page one rankings for well, just about every keyword. But clever SEOs quickly found out that gaming Reddit by buying up votes is the easiest beep ever. Reddit, as a user experience, is dead now. And Google’s gonna have to take some SEO love away from their sweetheart.
The bad news, the other mega sites that rank for all the keywords that Reddit doesn’t rank for, I think are gonna get even more traffic. Google loves brands, Google loves backlinks. Sites like the New York Times has these like Diddy has baby oil. Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the Diddy jokes. Maybe.
SEO Prediction #10: Content Sites Struggling to Rank
Next prediction, content sites, particularly content focus websites that monetize with affiliate and display ads are unfortunately still gonna be extremely hard to rank. This all kicked off during the September 2023 helpful content update that seem to particularly go after these types of sites. Much to the detriment of Google’s actual search result quality, as a reaction, SEO Twitter rightfully protested the unfair devastation it had on small publishers.
It got Google’s attention. And in the August 2024 core updates release notes, they say that the update, quote, “takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months.” And they, quote, “aim to connect people with a range of high quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful original content.”
But were there big recoveries? Did things get better for content sites? Not really. I mean, my portfolio had a couple recoveries of 10 to 20%, but it was random AF. The site that I did the most work on barely moved. That said, there’s sites like HouseFresh that did a lot better. But this begs the question, did HouseFresh recover just because they were one of the loudest on social media? Honestly, who knows? But what I do know is that this algorithmic gesture for small publishers was cute, if anything.
SEO Prediction #11: Continued Profitability for Stubborn SEOs
Anyone can register a domain, get it hosted, install WordPress, and start reviewing products. Combine this with the uncapped income ceiling of the affiliate model, and you have a perfect storm of attracting hungry, motivated, and skilled SEOs making affiliate SEO competitive as hell.
But with Google currently cock-blocking the business model, what are these SEO killers going to do? Probably what I’ve been doing this whole year, diversifying into e-commerce and lead gen. It’s been freaking great. Compared to affiliate I’m not gonna lie this is easy right now it’s a gold rush so if you’re looking to diversify this is where I’d start and I’d start soon.
SEO Prediction #12: The Golden Age of SEO
Next prediction despite SEO getting harder and harder the folks that stick around will continue to make more and more money I’ve been doing SEO since 2009 and there’s this very predictable pattern that always happens people do their SEO rank websites get clients make money then Google drops an algorithmic bomb and many people get knocked on their assets.
A lot of these people quit SEO forever, but the people that stick around figure out the new way of doing things and there’s less competition now because so many people left. This is the SEO Golden Age and we’re about to enter another one.
That’s what he said. Thanks for watching. Make sure to subscribe to be part of the SEO Golden Age.
