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Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT have changed the way users search. In response, SEO experts focus on deepening content quality via a few best practices.
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As Google continues to experiment with new, AI-driven SERP features and generative AI expands the scope of what’s possible in search, understanding current SEO trends is essential for business owners who need to adapt while focusing on fundamentals.
The most-talked-about trends in SEO are all about creating better content, structuring content for AI search, broadening beyond Google, and expanding international reach. In this guide, you’ll learn five critical strategies: deepening content quality through EEAT, structuring around user questions, applying query fan-out thinking, expanding with multilingual optimization, and appearing across non-Google platforms.
EEAT—Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—is a framework Google uses to evaluate content quality. It’s also a self-evaluation tool you can use to understand if your content is truly useful for users, and therefore worthy of ranking in organic search results.
EEAT evaluates four key dimensions:
1. Experience. The creator’s first-hand familiarity with the topic they are writing about. For example, if a writer is recommending a specific skin cleanser, experience requires that they use the product and can demonstrate that’s the case.
2. Expertise. The creator’s depth of knowledge on the topic. For example, is the author a known, widely cited source, and do they have related credentials?
3. Authoritativeness. The site’s overall reputation. For example, does the site have a strong backlink profile and significant branded search?
4. Trustworthiness. The site’s security, accuracy, and transparency. For instance, if your site runs HTTPS, includes author bios, and clearly indicates where information was sourced.
Google uses this framework to determine if content is truly helpful and people-first, a term used by Google to determine if content is created for users, and not for the exclusive purpose of ranking on search results.
With more businesses competing for search visibility than ever, brands that want to stand out—and actually connect with users—should double down on EEAT. Focus on four key areas:
1. Use author pages. Include bylines on all articles or blog pages that link to comprehensive author profile pages. These author pages should outline the author’s credentials and experience covering a topic to build trust with users and Google.
2. Cite your sources. Link all sources in body copy or include a bibliography-style list of sources at the end of the piece to show readers and Google the breadth of information consulted.
3. Let readers know they can trust you. Have clear editorial standards or content integrity guidelines published on-site. This page can be linked at the beginning or end of each post and included in a site-wide footer.
4. Make it clear when content was published. Include a timestamp field at the top of all blog posts that clearly states when the piece was published (or when it was last updated).
When it comes to search rankings in an AI-driven answer engine, like Google’s AI Overviews or ChatGPT, EEAT matters even more. According to Google, its answer engine synthesizes summaries of many sources on the internet, drawing from helpful, satisfying “non-commodity content” that serves readers.
Off-site EEAT builds the broader brand authority that AI search engines prioritize when choosing sources. Build this through getting media coverage (and the associated backlink), guest posts on reputable and related sites, or by publishing the occasional press release for new products.
Answer engine optimization (AEO) looks at brand signals like branded search volume and web mentions or the number of reputable domains linking to your site. The more known your brand, the more likely you are to appear in a ChatGPT or AI Overview.
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Search is all about asking questions: People are curious about the who, what, where, when, and why for every topic under the sun. (The Google Trends dashboard reflects that these are the foundational queries for information gathering, especially “what.”)
Users might have questions about your brand and products. Answering those questions—with clear, concise, accurate information written in plain language—can build trust.
Structuring content around questions is key for AEO. People often interact with AI-powered search tools through conversation and long-tail questions. These hyperspecific, lengthy search queries have a lower search volume, but they often lead to higher conversion intent and lower competition. AI Overviews in general can lead to zero-click searches and a decline in search engine traffic, but they may also be better at matching search intent and can drive sales from product-related searches.
AI-powered search tools aim to provide conversational, complete answers to user queries in natural language. Google states that you’re on the right track to ranking in its AI experiences if you provide “unique and valuable content” that answers questions people are looking for.
Start with a broad search query in a tool like AlsoAsked to explode your question into its subtopics. Answer brand-aligned queries in a series of posts or articles.
For even better question-generation, talk to your (human!) users. Customer feedback forms are a goldmine for user queries. Reddit forums related to your product category, brand, or the problem you solve are also rich sources of insight.
Include a “Send us your question” callout in newsletters (via a form or collected by email). If you have a customer support team responding to users, export those tickets and categorize them by topic. Questions that come up repeatedly can be turned into content or added to your FAQ—plus, it could improve your site’s overall user experience.
Google’s AI Mode now answers questions by pulling from dozens of sources at once—which means your content needs to cover topics more thoroughly than ever. When Google launched AI Mode in 2025, it noted the feature would be powered by the query fan-out technique (QFOT)—an advanced information-retrieval method that explodes a single query into many related subqueries.
QFOT compresses the user’s search journey: Instead of offering results based on a single question, it literally fans out across the web to gather information from different sources. This involves processing related searches, intents, and content from sources like YouTube and Google Maps, all to generate a single comprehensive answer.
Thinking about QFOT forces sites to think more holistically about their output. When conducting keyword research, go deeper than search volume and user intent: Consider all facets of the topics a user might be interested in, and incorporate those angles into content. QFOT asks content creators to think more holistically about users’ needs and satisfy their interests better than any other site on the web.
Most merchants leave money on the table by only creating content in one language—especially critical in 2025 as AI search expands into more international markets. Multilingual SEO is the practice of translating website content into multiple languages to expand the reach of who can find your content on Google. The goal is to reach more people.
Creating content in multiple languages (or translating existing pages) helps expand your potential customer base. AI has enabled translation tools that cut down on costs. Alternatively, if it’s financially feasible, a skilled local expert can be hired for this work.
Use region- and language-specific keyword research to identify what customers in each region search for. Users will have distinct terms and cultural touchpoints when looking for information on a brand or product; reflect that distinction in on-page SEO.
On the technical front, consider dedicated hreflang tags and URL structures for each region (i.e., a separate domain, subdomain, or subfolder), so search algorithms understand which audience each page is intended to reach. For example, Glossier uses a subdomain to distinguish the UK version of its site (uk.glossier.com) which keeps everything on the same domain.
Good SEO goes beyond ranking on standard search engine results pages. TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, Reddit, and YouTube all have their own search engines. Appearing in these non-Google search results creates new pathways for potential customers to discover and engage with your brand.
Appearing across more platforms increases brand awareness, drives traffic, and ultimately converts more customers—especially when powered by a “search everywhere optimization” approach. Search everywhere optimization is an approach that prioritizes making content for discoverability on non-traditional search platforms (like TikTok and Reddit) alongside Google. (Everywhere doesn’t mean literally every platform: be discerning and focus on the brand-aligned platforms.)
While there’s plenty of overlap with traditional SEO—a focus on keyword strategy and high EEAT content that builds topic authority—the difference involves optimizing for the specific target audience on each platform. People search differently on TikTok and Reddit than they do on Google. That shifting intent can inform content strategy. You might create “how to” videos for TikTok that tap into current trends, or contribute expertise as a founder on Reddit, where credibility and community are core values. Consider hosting an Ask Me Anything on a subreddit related to your brand or core product, offering moderators access to your expertise in exchange for visibility.
Yes, search engine optimization is still relevant in 2025. AI-powered answer engines are growing, but search engines like Google still drive major traffic, and SEO’s core principles—like strong keyword strategy and authoritative, high-quality content—also apply to answer engine optimization (AEO). In fact, SEO and AEO strategies increasingly overlap, making SEO important for visibility across both search and AI platforms.
There are four pillars of an SEO strategy: on-page, off-page, technical, and local. On-page focuses on the content itself. Off-page SEO focuses on link-building and PR. Technical SEO involves making your website maximally user-friendly. Local SEO helps businesses earn traffic from location-specific queries.
AI is used in two distinct ways: to power Google’s search results features (specifically AI Overviews and AI Mode), and to do someSEO work or tasks. For example, AI can automate rote tasks or perform deeper data analysis. AI tools can also be useful for coming up with ideas for title tags and meta descriptions. SEO tools, too, are incorporating AI for personalized metrics, like Ahrefs’ Personal Keyword Difficulty assessment.
Recent developments in SEO center around the rise of AI search. The latest SEO trends include increased reliance on EEAT, search everywhere optimization (which focuses on SEO for platforms like TikTok and Reddit), and query fan-out (where information from multiple sub-queries is synthesized into the answer to a single query).
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