Google has updated its search ranking algorithm to “more strongly affect the sites that host explicit videos but don’t allow Googlebot to fetch those video files” which may lead to a “significant drop in ranking” for some of these sites. Google also updated its SafeSearch documentation with new best practices and details.
Google wrote, “Google Search is updating the ranking algorithms to more strongly affect the sites that host explicit videos but don’t allow Googlebot to fetch those video files.” “These sites may experience a significant drop in ranking, especially in Video mode,” Google added.
Google linked to this new section that explains this part more. It reads:

If you have content behind an age gate or other access restriction, be sure to allow Googlebot to crawl your content without triggering the age gate. You can do this by verifying Googlebot requests and serving the content without age gate.
If you don’t allow Googlebot to crawl without triggering the age gate, it may cause your site to rank poorly on Google Search. Google might not be able to fetch your content, including image or video bytes, and therefore not be able to effectively rank that page for relevant queries. Additionally, if you host some non-explicit content behind age-gate and Googlebot cannot see it, there is a higher chance that this content or even the whole site gets classified automatically as explicit, which will make it ineligible to appear when the SafeSearch filter is on.

Meanwhile, the new documentation is over here and it goes through how Google handles explicit content in Search results, how SafeSearch works and how Google handles sites with a significant amount of removals of violative sexually explicit content.
SafeSearch is designed to filter results that lead to visual depictions of:

• Explicit sexual content of any type, including pornography
• Nudity
• Photo-realistic sex toys
• Sex-oriented dating or escort services
• Violence or gore
• Links to pages containing explicit content

Google also has these new sections for best practices for explicit content:

• Prevent user-generated harmful content on your platform.
• Allow Google to fetch your video content files.
• Allow Googlebot to crawl without age gate.
• Group explicit pages in a separate domain or subdomain.
• Mark specific pages as explicit with metadata.

Then Google posted a new document on troubleshooting issues wtih explicit content in Google Search. It includes:

• Determine if SafeSearch is filtering your website
• Resolve common mistakes such as:
• Adding the adult rating meta tag to content that’s not sexually explicit
• Labeling videos that aren’t explicit as not family_friendly in your video sitemap
• Allowing all UGC comments without content moderation
• Restricting Googlebot with an age gate
• Not separating explicit pages from non-explicit pages

So if you see a ranking drop, espesially for your videos, and you run an adult oriented site, you may want to review these new guidelines and best practices.
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How to integrate SEO into your broader marketing strategy  Search Engine Land
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You are here: Influencer Marketing Hub » Digital Marketing » SEO Marketing Benchmark Report – Early Learnings in 2025
As we approach the end of Q1 in 2025, the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. With ongoing technological disruptions reshaping how we reach, engage, and convert audiences, marketers everywhere are grappling with one key challenge, what actually works today?
We’ve collected and validated more than 40 key findings, backed by data, real-world application, and expert analysis, that you can apply right now to refine your strategy and drive measurable results.
Rank Higher Instantly – Try Semrush Now!

As we are starting to drown in AI-generated content, how do we really optimize our digital marketing strategies? According to famous consultant Jakob Nielsen, You need alternative ways to connect with your customers.
The foundation of online success has traditionally rested on three pillars, ranked by importance as follows:
Looking ahead, while the three pillars will remain essential, the study search pillar will be replaced by a more streamlined AI pillar. The future order of importance will be:

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.
In 2023, a prominent content platform produced 130 blog posts within a two-week period, only to experience a 30% reduction in overall traffic, a decline from which it has yet to recover. Since then, we have seen many online websites, and users claim that Google Search Results has been destroyed by AI since 2022.
Similarly, an industrial supplier published 500 articles over the span of 30 days, resulting in a 50% traffic decrease and a loss of several top-ranking positions on the first page of search results.
We have seen and heard the horror stories, over and over again, the past few years. 
Does Human-written content perform better than AI?
The most rigorous empirical insights come from controlled experiments designed to isolate AI content generation as the sole variable. In a 2023 study, researchers created 10 test domains targeting an artificial keyword with no prior search history. 
Over three months of daily rank tracking, human-written content achieved an average position of 4.4 compared to 6.6 for AI content. A Mann-Whitney U test confirmed statistical significance (p < 0.05), demonstrating that search algorithms systematically preferred human-authored pages despite identical on-page SEO parameters. 
Post-hoc analysis identified three key quality differentials explaining this performance gap:
These findings align with Google’s 2024 Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which emphasize content demonstrating “first-hand expertise” over purely informational synthesis.
However, since then the empirical record demonstrates AI content’s evolution from clear underperformer (2023) to conditional contender (2025).

Pure automation fails, but AI-human partnerships now match manual content when combining:
A recent 2025 study highlights how AI, specifically ChatGPT, is increasingly being recognized for its efficacy in nuanced communication scenarios.
The study found that participants often struggled to distinguish between AI-generated and therapist-written responses, suggesting that AI is becoming more adept at replicating human-like communication. One key reason for this improvement is the AI’s ability to produce longer responses that include a higher frequency of nouns and adjectives, leading to greater contextualization and depth.
AI is getting better at writing and ranking content in 2025
Yes, AI content is ranking better than before. A Semrush 2025 study reveals that AI-generated content now has a comparable likelihood of ranking in top search positions as human-written content, showing significant improvement over previous years. Specifically, 57% of AI-generated content appeared in the top 10 search positions, compared to 58% of human content. This indicates that the gap in ranking potential between AI and human content has narrowed considerably.

SE Ranking’s 2025 experiment on its authoritative blog domain provides further evidence. Six AI-assisted articles targeting medium-competition keywords achieved:
This success appears contingent on domain authority, with the site’s existing backlink profile (DR 78) and topical authority in SEO enabling AI content to perform comparably to human pieces. The AI-generated “Taxonomy SEO” article gained 14 editorial backlinks within four months of publication, suggesting quality perception depends on contextual signals rather than the creation method alone.
Contrasting results emerged from SE Ranking’s parallel test launching 20 new domains with 2,000 AI-generated articles:
Notably, eight sites began ranking for 1,000+ keywords within 30 days, but median positions remained in the 20-30 range—substantially below the established domain’s performance. This bifurcation underscores Google’s evolving approach to evaluating content provenance through corpus-level authority signals.
When we look at more granular data, the difference in performance across the search positions is minimal. AI content performs just 2.1 percentage points lower than human content in the top position, 6.2 percentage points lower in the top 3, and 4.6 percentage points lower in the top 5. These numbers suggest that AI content is increasingly competitive, especially when compared to earlier studies, such as the 2023 research that showed a significant performance gap.

The study reveals that more than 81% of marketers say that AI content ranks, same, better or somewhat better than humanly written content. Thus, while AI content has certainly made substantial strides in closing the ranking gap, human-written content’s ability to demonstrate real-world expertise and authority is still a critical determinant in achieving top-tier rankings. AI’s role in SEO will likely continue to evolve, and while it may not yet surpass human-authored content in all aspects, it is undeniably becoming a more viable contender in the SEO landscape.
We should obviously not exclude the theoretical possibilities of the impact being driven by evolving prompt methodologies and not only advancement in LLM capabilities. 
How AI search models (like GPT or Perplexity) have changed the weighting of brand mentions over traditional backlinks in determining authority and search rankings.
In the context of AI-driven search engines, brand mentions have emerged as the new backlinks. While Google once (and sometimes still indicates it’s the case) prioritized backlinks as a primary indicator of authority, the paradigm is shifting toward conversations and mentions across the web. Brands no longer need links to show authority; AI now measures the context of mentions, much like humans do. We have never witnessed so much hype about “brand” as now.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of insights shared on social media, such as the ones from Britney Muller, are based on anecdotal observations, rather than solid, statistically-backed research.

As much as these insights fuel speculation, they lack empirical evidence. Therefore, in this month’s report, we’ve taken a more scientific approach to understand these shifts. This includes delving into studies from 2024, where researchers have rigorously analyzed the impact of AI on search ranking and brand authority, rather than relying on personal opinions and unverified findings.
We set out to uncover statistical proof regarding the growing importance of brand mentions over traditional backlinks in SEO. To guide this inquiry, we focused on studies and papers from 2024 that present empirical data regarding AI search models such as GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Perplexity.
We analyzed over 100 papers from an initial pool of 126 million academic papers to find those most relevant to our research question: “How are AI search models (like GPT and Perplexity) shifting the weight of brand mentions versus backlinks in determining authority and search rankings?”
We only included papers that met stringent criteria, such as having a clear AI search model focus, empirical evidence, and a documented research methodology. We specifically looked for studies that provided quantifiable insights into the role of brand mentions in search rankings.
Ma et al. (2024) found that AI search models, like Bing Chat, prioritize content that is readable, well-structured, and lower in perplexity (predictability). This finding suggests that AI models are emphasizing content quality over the quantity of backlinks, highlighting a shift toward a more contextual understanding of authority.
Pfrommer et al. (2024) analyzed how Perplexity.ai and other large language models (LLMs) prioritize product names, document content, and context position in their ranking algorithms. This study indicated that brand mentions (e.g., product names) play an important role in ranking, but the exact weighting compared to backlinks remains unclear.
The findings from Pfrommer et al. (2024) also showed significant variability in how LLMs prioritize different ranking factors, such as brand mentions and contextual position. This highlights the evolving and diverse nature of AI models in determining authority, making it difficult to pin down one universal approach to ranking.
Venkit et al. (2024) highlighted how AI-powered search engines are evolving beyond static keyword matching and instead focusing on content characteristics such as readability and structure. This shift may explain why brand mentions are gaining weight—AI is more focused on contextual signals from across the web, not just the number of backlinks. 

Aspect
Traditional Ranking Systems
AI-Based Ranking Systems
Source Selection
Relies heavily on backlinks and website structure as indicators of authority.
AI models like RAG technologies prioritize content similarities and context. Ma et al. (2024) found a greater similarity among websites cited by RAG technologies than those ranked by traditional engines.
Ranking Factors
Focuses primarily on backlinks and website structure.
AI models consider a broader range of factors, such as product name, document content, and context position (Pfrommer et al., 2024).
Content Evaluation
Content evaluation based on indirect signals (e.g., keywords, backlinks).
AI models evaluate content quality more directly, focusing on readability, formal structure, and lower perplexity levels (Ma et al., 2024).
Transparency
Generally more transparent in approach, especially regarding the role of backlinks.
AI models, such as GPT, operate in a less transparent manner, with decision-making often opaque (Ma et al., 2024).
Despite these compelling insights, no direct statistical evidence comparing the weighting of brand mentions versus backlinks in AI search rankings has been found in any of the reviewed studies. While some studies (like Pfrommer et al. (2024)) suggest that brand mentions and product names are factored into rankings, the quantitative comparison of how these signals measure up against backlinks remains an open question.
With AI-driven search engines focusing on semantic search, content quality is becoming increasingly important. Brands that provide valuable, insightful content, that resonates with users and gets authentically mentioned, will likely perform better than those focusing solely on backlink acquisition.
AI search models are placing greater emphasis on the context in which brands are mentioned. Being part of relevant conversations (whether on social media, forums, or podcasts) is becoming a critical factor in establishing authority and driving rankings. This is significantly different from how Google views authority. 

The lack of a unified approach across AI search models means that authority signals (such as brand mentions) may be more dynamic and context-dependent. This underscores the need for brands to engage in authentic dialogues and focus on consistently producing valuable content.
AI-powered SEO tools are becoming indispensable for brands seeking to optimize their digital presence in 2025. Tools that help identify semantic intent, track brand mentions, and analyze content quality are now essential for staying ahead in AI-driven search environments.
While the insights from recent studies are enlightening, it’s clear that more statistical data is needed to definitively determine how much brand mentions impact AI search rankings compared to backlinks. 
Emerging research suggests search engines employ transformer-based models to detect AI content through:
Reboot’s experiment found AI content contained 63% more passive voice constructs and 41% fewer unique semantic frames—patterns correlating with lower perceived expertise. Google’s Panda algorithm updates have increasingly penalized these linguistic markers since 2023.
While AI tools can technically satisfy Expertise and Authoritativeness through optimized terminology, they struggle with:
These limitations manifest in ranking plateaus, with AI content rarely achieving top-3 positions for competitive queries requiring demonstrated real-world experience.
Leading SEO practitioners report success with AI-human hybrid workflows:

A/B testing by Backlinko revealed that hybrid articles combining AI-generated outlines with human storytelling outperformed purely manual content by 14% in featured snippet acquisition.
To maximize AI content’s effectiveness, technical SEO remains critical:
SE Ranking’s experiment found that AI articles with manual schema implementation gained positions 19% faster than unoptimized counterparts.
Google’s 2024 “Genesis” update introduced:
These changes explain why SE Ranking’s new domains faced harsher scrutiny than established properties—a 43% wider quality variance was observed in fresh AI content.
Advances in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) are narrowing quality gaps:
As models better incorporate real-time data verification and expert review cycles, the 2023 Reboot experiment’s performance gap may diminish.
Empirical evidence demonstrates that AI-generated content can achieve search visibility, particularly when enhanced through human oversight and technical optimization. 
However, pure automation strategies face inherent limitations in experience validation and semantic depth. Organizations must adopt hybrid workflows combining AI efficiency with human expertise while rigorously monitoring evolving search quality metrics. As algorithms grow increasingly sophisticated at evaluating content provenance and purpose, success will belong to those leveraging AI as a collaborator rather than replacement for human creativity and insight.
Search engine optimization (SEO) in 2025 is more complex and competitive than ever. Google’s algorithms have evolved to reward high-quality, user-focused content while neutralizing manipulative tactics. In the following section, we will examine the latest findings and trends across all major SEO areas – from technical optimizations to content strategy, AI-generated content, backlinks, E-E-A-T, user engagement, and the interplay between on-page and off-page factors.
We will cite case studies, data, and expert insights to highlight what’s working best in 2025 and how SEO professionals and business owners can adapt. The goal is to provide actionable, evidence-backed guidance in a clear format for easy reference.
Technical SEO forms the foundation of search visibility. In 2025, a technically sound website is a necessity for ranking success. Search engines prioritize page experience and crawlability, making site performance and accessibility critical.
Google’s Core Web Vitals – metrics for loading performance (Largest Contentful Paint, LCP), interactivity (now Interaction to Next Paint, INP, replacing First Input Delay), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift, CLS) – remain an important focus area. Google confirmed that Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor “more than a tie-breaker” (i.e., not just trivial)​.
As John Mueller explained, page experience signals matter: “It is a ranking factor, and it’s more than a tie-breaker, but it also doesn’t replace relevance”. In practice, this means a fast, smooth site can give you an edge, especially when competing against pages with similarly relevant content.
However, recent data suggests that speed alone won’t rocket a site to the top. A 2024 study found minimal or no direct correlation between better Core Web Vitals scores and higher Google rankings​.
In fact, none of the speed metrics showed a strong correlation with rank position (LCP was singled out as a commonly problematic metric, but it did not predict higher ranking)​. Google itself has indicated page experience might serve as a tiebreaker among close-ranking competitors​. The takeaway? While a slow, poorly-performing site can hurt your SEO (and certainly your user experience), speeding up pages beyond a reasonable threshold may not directly boost rankings unless all else is equal.
Importantly, page speed and performance have a major impact on user behavior and conversions, which indirectly affect SEO success.
Case studies underscore this point: Walmart saw a 2% increase in conversions for every 1 second faster their pages loaded​. Mozilla cut 2.2 seconds from load time and increased download conversions by 15%​. Conversely, AliExpress found that an extra 2 seconds of load time increased cart abandonment by a whopping 87% (nearly doubling lost sales).
While this abandonment stat might vary by source, it aligns with general findings that users abandon slow sites quickly. In short, fast sites delight users – leading to longer sessions, lower bounce rates, and more conversions – even if the ranking algorithm doesn’t heavily reward speed by itself​.

For SEO practitioners, the message is clear: optimize Core Web Vitals to provide a good experience and reduce user frustration. A fast site may not shoot you to #1 on Google, but a slow site can definitely hold you back (and hurt your bottom line).
Google’s continued emphasis on Core Web Vitals can be seen in its updates. In 2024, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) officially replaced First Input Delay as the interactivity metric​. Sites are expected to optimize toward the new thresholds. While Core Web Vitals aren’t the top ranking factor, they contribute to the overall page experience signal – and Google has stated they can impact rankings on mobile and generally for tie-breaking situations​.
By 2025, Google’s mobile-first indexing will be fully in effect, meaning Google predominantly uses the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking.
Technical SEO efforts must ensure that the mobile site is as complete and crawlable as the desktop site. Responsive design, fast mobile load times, and avoiding mobile-specific errors (like blocked resources or intrusive interstitials) are key. A site that passes Core Web Vitals on desktop but fails on mobile could struggle in search results, since “Websites that load slowly or offer a poor mobile experience could struggle to rank”​.
Crawlability and indexability are fundamental technical concerns. If search engine bots cannot effectively crawl and index your pages, content quality won’t matter – it simply won’t be discovered. Best practices in 2025 include: maintaining a logical site architecture and internal linking structure that surfaces important pages, using XML sitemaps to guide crawlers, and ensuring the robots.txt is not accidentally blocking essential content​.
Regular technical audits help catch issues like broken links or crawl errors. As one guide notes, improving crawlability and indexability can directly increase organic traffic – if bots struggle to access pages, those pages remain invisible in search​.
JavaScript-heavy websites pose a special challenge. Many modern web apps rely on client-side rendering, which can confuse crawlers or delay indexing.
In 2025 there’s a strong push for server-side rendering (SSR) or dynamic rendering solutions for JS frameworks​. Ensuring that content is present in the HTML or rendered for Googlebot leads to better indexing. Sites that fail to address JS rendering issues might find their content not indexed or ranking poorly due to what is essentially a technical accessibility problem.
Basic technical best practices from past years remain crucial in 2025. HTTPS encryption is standard – sites without HTTPS are rare in rankings, as users (and browsers) flag them as “not secure.” SSL certificates not only protect user data but also are a lightweight ranking signal (HTTPS has been a ranking factor since 2014).
Additionally, structured data markup (schema) has become more prevalent. While adding schema markup (for products, reviews, FAQs, etc.) may not directly boost rankings, it can enhance your search snippets and yield rich results, which improves click-through rates. A well-structured snippet can indirectly improve your traffic even if your rank position stays the same.
Moreover, structured data helps search engines better understand the content and context of your pages​, feeding Google’s Knowledge Graph and enabling features like FAQ drop-downs or breadcrumbs in results.
Site security and user safety also factor into technical SEO. In 2024, Google continued cracking down on spam and malicious sites. Core updates and SpamBrain (Google’s AI-based spam detection system) work to filter out sites with malware, excessive spam, or deceptive behavior. While this might not affect most legitimate business sites, maintaining a clean, safe site (no hacked content, no spammy user-generated content) is part of technical SEO hygiene that protects your search presence.
Finally, technical SEO ties closely to user experience. For example, fixing layout shifts (CLS issues) not only appeases Core Web Vitals but also makes the page less frustrating for users (no jumping content). A technically optimized site “that is quick, responsive, and simple to use” keeps visitors engaged and lowers bounce rates​. Google’s algorithm updates increasingly reflect user experience considerations, so technical SEO and UX are blending.
In 2025, technical SEO matters more than ever – it’s the bedrock that allows your amazing content and backlinks to shine​. As Search Engine Land puts it,
“Technical SEO will be more important than ever. Optimizing your site to make it easier for search engine bots to crawl and understand is key.”​ 
Websites that neglect technical fundamentals risk being left behind, no matter how great their content might be.

Key Technical Takeaways:
Ensure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, easily crawlable, and secure. Use tools (Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, crawling software) to uncover and fix technical issues regularly. While perfect scores aren’t necessary, removing technical barriers helps search engines and users alike. A strong technical foundation supports all other SEO efforts, from content to link building.
Content remains the cornerstone of SEO success. The adage “content is king” holds true in 2025, with some modern twists. High-quality, relevant content is consistently cited as one of the most influential factors in rankings. But what constitutes “high-quality content” has evolved. Google’s algorithms – bolstered by AI like RankBrain and BERT – have become better at understanding context, intent, and user satisfaction.
This means SEO content can’t just repeat a keyword a dozen times; it needs to comprehensively address the topic and meet the searcher’s needs.
One of the most significant winners in SEO lately has been UGC sites. 
The SEO landscape in 2025 reveals a field in flux, where AI and machine learning are fundamentally reshaping search results. While AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews are providing users with more direct answers, they also present challenges related to transparency, content relevance, and the prioritization of forums and UGC.
The continuing shift towards AI in SEO requires content creators and marketers to rethink traditional strategies and adapt to an evolving algorithm landscape that increasingly rewards authenticity, authority, and user engagement over traditional SEO tactics.
One of the clearest trends has been Google’s favoring of user-generated content (UGC) such as forums and Q&A sites. Following a 2023 initiative to surface “hidden gems” from forums​, Google greatly boosted these in 2024, and that momentum carried into 2025. Examples:

The discussion forum Reddit.com experienced explosive growth in search visibility. In 2024, Reddit’s Visibility Index (an SEO metric) nearly tripled, soaring by +1,274 points (from 667.8 to 1942.3)​. This ~190% increase made Reddit the #1 absolute winner in Sistrix’s 2024 index rankings. By prioritizing firsthand experiences and diverse discussions for many queries, Google propelled Reddit threads to the top of SERPs.
Reddit now dominates results for countless “what is…”, product recommendation, and niche interest searches. This success is directly tied to Google introducing features like the “What People Are Saying” carousel, which highlights forum discussions for relevant keywords​.
In practice, community-driven answers proved extremely “helpful” to users, so Google rewarded them.
Another Q&A platform, Quora.com, also saw major gains. In 2024 Quora’s visibility in Google US search grew from 248 to 326 (VI points)​ – a substantial rise. Like Reddit, Quora benefits from a vast long-tail of Q&A content created by users. Google’s Helpful Content system began treating these user-generated answers as valuable resources, often ranking Quora answers alongside or above traditional blog content. By early 2025, Quora remained a consistent winner, frequently appearing in the top 10 for queries seeking explanatory or opinion-based answers.
Brainly.com, an education-focused Q&A community for students, is another success story. A case study showed Brainly achieved 522% year-over-year organic traffic growth by late 2024​. This dramatic increase is attributed to its strategy of allowing students to ask and answer millions of questions.
With proper SEO optimization (ensuring questions are indexable and have relevant title tags, etc.), Brainly captured massive search traffic from students (and parents) googling homework help. Essentially, Brainly scaled the Wikipedia/Yahoo Answers model for the education niche – and Google rewarded this user-driven, extensive content library with high rankings.
Why Forums/UGC Won:

These community sites succeeded by providing fresh, experience-based content that directly addresses user queries. They cover innumerable niche topics (long-tail keywords) that mainstream publishers might ignore. Google’s 2024 updates explicitly aimed to “elevate forums and user-generated content” in search, considering them valuable for certain info needs. The success cases above took advantage of this shift: by 2025, having a strong user community and UGC content became an SEO asset. No traditional SEO trick here – just large-scale content creation by users and careful indexing – but it aligned perfectly with Google’s evolving algorithms.
In recent years, Google rolled out and refined its Helpful Content Update (HCU) (now an ongoing helpful content system). This system, integrated into core algorithms by 2024, is designed to identify and demote content that is written “primarily for search engines rather than for people.”
Thin, unoriginal, or unsatisfying pages – often created just to rank for a keyword – have been increasingly filtered out of top results​. Conversely, content that is helpful, reliable, and people-first is being rewarded. Google’s own guidelines emphasize creating content that demonstrates expertise and satisfies the user’s query, rather than content that merely panders to the algorithm.
One concrete change reinforcing content quality is the addition of “Experience” to the E-A-T concept (more on E-E-A-T later). Google and its army of human quality raters look for evidence that content is produced by someone with first-hand experience or deep knowledge on the topic. In practice, pages that provide original insights, thorough analysis, and genuine value stand out.
A 2024 analysis of Google’s ranking factors by Semrush underscores that text relevance and depth are paramount. The study used BERT-based models to evaluate how closely a page’s content matched the context of top-ranking pages for a query​. The finding: the semantic relevance and comprehensiveness of content strongly correlates with higher rankings.
In plain terms, content that fully answers the query and covers the topic in context tends to rank better. This goes beyond sprinkling keywords – it means covering subtopics, related questions, and providing the information the searcher likely wants. “Topical coverage is more important than focusing on individual keywords,” the study concluded. Google’s NLP algorithms can evaluate content breadth and richness, rewarding pages that demonstrate authority on the subject.
With the Helpful Content system, Google also penalizes sites with large amounts of unhelpful content. An entire domain can be dragged down if a significant portion of its content is deemed low-value. This was evident in the September 2023 Helpful Content Update, after which many sites (especially those churning out AI-generated or aggregated content) struggled to recover.
Google even confirmed in August 2024 that small or independent sites with useful, original content had been disproportionately hit by previous updates, and the August 2024 core update aimed to “connect people with a range of high-quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content”.
Early results showed some recovery for those sites. This highlights that unique, user-centered content can compete with (and Google wants it to compete with) big brands, as long as it truly satisfies user needs.
Best practices for content in 2025 include:

Another important aspect of content optimization is format and readability. In 2025, successful content often means a mix of text, visuals (where possible), and logical structuring:
Given the rise of AI content (discussed in the next section), originality and authenticity in content are more prized than ever. Google and users are looking for signals of trust in your content. This includes:

Case studies of content optimization success are abound. One notable example is how major health websites responded to Google’s emphasis on E-A-T after the 2018 “Medic” update. Sites like Healthline implemented rigorous content review processes, having medical professionals review and fact-check health articles and adding “Medically reviewed by X, MD” labels.
This focus on depth and credibility helped Healthline overtake older sites like WebMD for many queries. In one anecdote from 2024, even a site like WebMD found that straying from their core content (publishing off-topic articles) led to backlash – e.g., a WebMD article about recycling tires (hardly a medical topic) managed to rank on page one due to WebMD’s authority, but it was widely criticized and taken down​
Some e-commerce businesses invested heavily in content marketing and saw SEO success. A great example is Flyhomes.com, a real estate home-buying platform (though not a traditional retailer, it’s e-commerce-like in lead generation). 
Flyhomes grew its organic traffic by an astonishing 10,737% in just 3 months through a robust content strategy​. They created valuable content (like home-buying guides, market trend articles, and neighborhood insights) that attracted traffic at scale. 

This content funnel brought users to their site, many of whom converted into leads for their real estate services. While this is more lead-gen than direct sales, it underlines a key e-com strategy: using content SEO (blogs, guides, tools) to drive customers to your platform. Similarly, many D2C brands that built rich blogs or video libraries found increased search success.
In 2025, e-commerce sites that thrive on Google tend to either have massive, user-driven content (marketplaces) or highly focused content in their niche. eBay’s broad UGC and Flyhomes’ informative content show two paths to win. Meanwhile, the rise of niche retailers in SERPs indicates that even without huge domain authority, a site can climb rankings by being the most relevant answer for a specific product query.
E-commerce winners invested in SEO-friendly content (detailed descriptions, reviews, guides) rather than just throwing up product pages. They often also improved technical aspects like page speed and mobile friendliness, which contribute to better page experience scores (especially since Google’s page experience update is now part of the ranking system​.
The year 2025 finds us in the midst of an AI content revolution. Tools like GPT-4 (and beyond) have empowered marketers to generate content at scale. Naturally, this raised a burning question in SEO: Does AI-generated content help or hurt your rankings? 
Google’s stance has evolved. Initially, automatically generated content was broadly against guidelines if it was intended to manipulate search rankings. But by early 2023, Google clarified that “appropriate use of AI or automation” is not against its rules – as long as the content is helpful and of good quality​​. In other words, Google does not ban AI content outright; it penalizes poor content, not its creator.
Google’s Helpful Content system doesn’t have a bias for or against AI; it evaluates the end result. If AI content comes out as fluff, unoriginal, or misleading, it will be deemed unhelpful and could be demoted. But if AI is used to produce useful, accurate, and original content, that content can rank just as well as human-written text.
Like we just saw with the Flyhomes content strategy which was programmatic, if you are actually solving a problem for the user, AI can be used at scale:
Source: flyhomes.com
They truly solved a problem for the user and delivered an on-page experience beyond the usual experience delivered by competitors:

Another case is Bankrate, a financial publisher, that deployed AI to assist in writing explainer articles. 
These articles were clearly labeled as AI-generated and then reviewed by editors. The result?
Bankrate’s AI-assisted content ranks competitively for high-value keywords in finance. One AI-generated article on “What is contribution margin?” ranked #14 on Google, outranking content from high-authority sites like Mailchimp. Another on “financial liquidity” ranked #3, right up with the top results. 
Source: bankrate.com
These pieces even carry an AI content disclaimer, proving that Google will rank AI content that meets its quality standards​.
It’s important to note that Bankrate didn’t just hit “publish” on raw AI output. The content was crafted using AI and then edited and fact-checked by humans to ensure accuracy and readability. This hybrid approach (“AI + human in the loop”) appears to be an effective strategy in 2025. The AI handles the heavy lifting of drafting, while human editors refine tone, add unique insights, and correct any errors. The result can be content that is both efficient to produce and high in quality.
Not all AI content efforts have been smooth. There have been well-publicized failures, such as an experiment by a major tech site that published AI-written articles that turned out to have factual errors, prompting corrections and a temporary halt to the program.
The risk with AI content is that it can sometimes fabricate information (AI “hallucinations”) or produce bland, generic text that doesn’t stand out. Google’s algorithms – and users – are getting better at detecting these issues.
For example, in 2024 Google’s March core update aggressively targeted “unhelpful content”, which likely included a lot of mass-produced AI text that didn’t provide value​. Some sites that had leaned too heavily on unedited AI saw significant portions of their content deindexed literally overnight​. This was a wake-up call: mass-generating pages with AI without regard to quality can destroy your SEO.
To safely leverage AI, follow these guidelines:

As noted with Bankrate, AI content can rank well. Another scenario is the proliferation of AI-generated niche sites. Some webmasters have tried building entire sites with AI content. The results have been mixed: a few reported initial traffic surges (often by pumping out hundreds of pages and building links to them), but many got hit by the 2023–2024 helpful content crackdowns.
In a Reddit case study, one user running an “automated AI content site” observed a huge traffic jump in early 2024 due to strong backlinks they built, but noted that the March 2024 update aimed at AI spam did not hurt them – possibly because they had maintained decent content quality and authority (though this is anecdotal)​. This suggests that even an AI-heavy site can survive if its content is kept to a high standard and it gains some authority signals. But it’s a fine line: other similar sites without those quality signals saw dramatic drops.
Major content platforms like CNET experimented with AI-written articles (with human oversight). They found that while the content mostly passed muster, it still contained enough minor inaccuracies that it became a reputational issue. This underscores that trust and accuracy are paramount – especially in YMYL (Your Money Your Life) niches like finance or health. If AI introduces incorrect info that isn’t caught, the damage to user trust (and by extension E-E-A-T) can be significant.
Google has tools and algorithms (including possibly SpamBrain and other AI detectors) that can identify patterns of auto-generated text. They don’t outright ban AI content, but if the content provides no real value or is mass-produced across a site, Google may algorithmically devalue those pages.
On the flip side, AI can help scale content production in a positive way: for example, by producing variants of product descriptions tailored to different user intents, or generating summary sections for long articles. This frees up human writers to focus on more creative or complex tasks.
Industry leaders have mostly converged on the advice that AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement for human SEOs. As one article put it,
“AI-driven solutions are here to stay… They allow creators to optimize their strategy while reducing production costs and turnaround times. Don’t be afraid of Google penalties. Leverage AI tools… but do it ethically and ensure you edit and add a human touch.”​.
This captures the balanced approach: use AI for efficiency but maintain editorial control.
AI content’s effectiveness is tightly linked with E-E-A-T factors. Google has “further refined its ability to assess AI-generated content, ensuring it meets E-E-A-T standards” in 2025​. So an AI article on a medical topic that lacks expert review or cites might not rank well compared to a human-doctor-reviewed article on the same topic. But if you combine AI with expert input, you can satisfy E-E-A-T and scale content.
Human input for accuracy, relevance, and trust is more essential than ever when AI is involved​.

In summary, AI-generated content can be highly effective for SEO when used wisely. It can expedite content creation and even help produce quality content at scale, as evidenced by Bankrate’s success and others. The caveat is that quality control is non-negotiable. You must ensure AI content is accurate, original, and truly useful.
Treat AI as one tool in your SEO arsenal – one that still needs a human hand to guide it. If you do that, you can reap the benefits of AI (faster content, lower costs) without falling afoul of Google’s quality standards.
Backlinks – hyperlinks from other websites pointing to your site – have long been a core pillar of Google’s ranking algorithm. In 2025, despite all the advancements in semantic analysis and AI, backlinks remain as crucial as ever for SEO.
Multiple studies and industry experts confirm that links continue to be one of the top-ranking factors (particularly the number and quality of referring domains)​. However, how backlinks contribute to SEO has seen some refinement: Google is better at evaluating link quality and ignoring spam, making quality over quantity the guiding principle for link building.
Google’s original PageRank algorithm treated links as “votes” for content. While the algorithm has evolved, that basic premise stands. The authority and trust passed via links can significantly boost a page’s ranking potential.
According to Backlinko’s analysis of 11.8 million Google search results, the number of referring domains to a page is one of the most important ranking correlates​. In fact, the #1 result on Google has 3.8 times more backlinks than results #2–#10 on average​​. This famous statistic, reproduced in numerous SEO studies, highlights how top-ranking pages tend to have an abundance of links from other sites.
Furthermore, the data shows a clear positive correlation between the total number of backlinks to a site and its organic traffic​. Simply put, pages with more (quality) links generally rank higher and attract more search traffic.
It’s not just raw link counts; domain authority – a concept encompassing the overall link strength of a website – matters too. High-authority websites (think major news sites, .edu domains, well-known brands) have such strong backlink profiles that new pages on those sites often rank quickly, even with few direct links.
For example, when Forbes or Wikipedia publishes a new page, it can rank on the first page due to the domain’s link equity​. One SEO study noted that “only one in twenty pages has traffic without backlinks” – meaning 95% of high-traffic pages have earned backlinks​. 
Those few that rank without links are usually on extremely authoritative domains or target very low-competition queries. This demonstrates that for most websites, backlinks to your individual pages (“deep links”) are necessary to rank unless your site itself is extremely authoritative already​.
Google has become very sophisticated at assessing link quality. Not all backlinks are equal. A single link from a highly reputable, relevant site can outweigh 100 links from low-quality or irrelevant sites.
Google’s algorithms (Penguin and subsequent link spam updates) actively discount or ignore “unnatural” links, such as those from link schemes, spammy directories, or PBNs (private blog networks). In late 2022, Google rolled out the December 2022 Link Spam Update, leveraging its SpamBrain AI to detect sites buying or selling links at scale​. This update doesn’t necessarily penalize sites with bad links – instead, it neutralizes those links so they pass no value​. 
The effect is that manipulative link building is less effective than it used to be, and in some cases, a site might see a rankings drop simply because the low-quality links propping it up got ignored.
Effective link building in 2025 focuses on obtaining editorial, organic links from relevant websites:

The emphasis should be on earning links through merit. Google’s philosophy is that backlinks you don’t create yourself are the strongest endorsement. That said, proactive strategies to put your content in front of people (so they know to link to it) are often needed; “build it and they will link” isn’t always sufficient.
As mentioned, having a high-authority domain (lots of strong backlinks site-wide) confers a significant SEO advantage. It creates a positive feedback loop: high rankings lead to more exposure and often more people linking to you, which further cements your authority.
This dynamic, often referred to as the “authority moat”, can make it hard for newcomers to break in. An analysis from 2024 pointed out that Google’s reliance on domain authority sometimes leads to big sites ranking for content well outside their core area, simply because Google “trusts” their domain​. For instance, the earlier example of WebMD ranking for a recycling article, or Forbes creating a whole “product reviews” section (Forbes Vetted) and ranking for product keywords, even though Forbes is traditionally a business magazine​.
These large publishers leveraged their link equity to invade niches, often squeezing out smaller niche sites that might have more relevant or in-depth content. This scenario has given rise to tactics like “parasite SEO”, where marketers post content on high-authority domains (sometimes via sponsored guest posts) to get that content ranking quickly​. Essentially, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – by piggybacking on a site with a stronger backlink profile.
However, Google is not blind to this issue. There’s speculation that Google will adjust its algorithms to dial down pure domain authority advantages when the content is not a good topical fit​.
The August 2024 update, which aimed to highlight smaller sites with original content​, might be one step in that direction. Still, in practical terms, backlinks continue to create a barrier to entry in many competitive SERPs. A new site with excellent content might still struggle to rank against established players until it accumulates comparable backlinks. This is why a balanced SEO strategy often involves both content excellence and outreach for backlinks.
One question that comes up is how to handle bad or spammy links pointing to your site. Google’s algorithms now largely ignore spam links, so in most cases, you do not need to disavow links.
The disavow tool is there for extreme situations (like a history of manipulative link building or a negative SEO attack). The Link Spam Update’s ability to neutralize bad links means Google often handles it for you. Excessive use of the disavow tool isn’t a recommended practice in 2025, as Google’s John Mueller has noted – focus on building good links rather than pruning the bad unless you have clear evidence those bad links are causing issues.
In summary, backlinks in 2025 are still a critical ranking signal. The number of quality links you have can make the difference in outranking competitors. A strong backlink profile builds your site’s authority and trust in Google’s eyes, complementing your on-page efforts.
The best approach is earning high-quality, relevant links through excellent content and outreach, rather than trying to game the system. Case studies continue to show that sites with strong backlinks dominate search results: one Reverb study flatly stated, “Top-ranking pages typically have more backlinks”
One of the most talked-about concepts in SEO in recent years is E-E-A-T (formerly just E-A-T). These are the key quality factors Google’s human quality raters use to evaluate content and websites: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. While E-E-A-T itself is not a direct algorithmic ranking factor (Google doesn’t assign a numeric E-E-A-T score to your site), it manifests through various signals and can heavily influence rankings, especially in YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) niches like health, finance, legal, and safety​.

Google’s mission is to provide users with relevant, trustworthy information. E-E-A-T is essentially a framework to assess content quality and credibility​.
In 2025, establishing a strong E-E-A-T is crucial for SEO success. With the web flooded by content (including AI-generated content), Google is placing even more emphasis on surfacing content that users and experts trust.
Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines – which are used by human evaluators to rate search results – place great importance on E-E-A-T. While these guidelines don’t directly change rankings, they inform Google’s algorithm developers. In effect, Google tries to algorithmically reward sites that would get high E-E-A-T ratings from humans. That means things like:

In 2024 and 2025, Google rolled out several core updates that seemed to target E-E-A-T signals. The addition of Experience was explicitly to encourage content from people with actual experience. For example, product review updates from Google often emphasize “first-hand usage” of products (like clear evidence the reviewer actually tested the product).
Another reason E-E-A-T is in focus is the onslaught of AI content and misinformation. Google needs ways to ensure the information it serves is accurate and reliable.
Content that lacks human insight or has factual errors will likely perform poorly as Google turns the dial-up on these quality checks.
Google reps have said E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor like “page speed” or “mobile-friendliness.” You won’t find an E-E-A-T score in Search Console. Rather, Google uses many signals to approximate E-E-A-T. For instance:
One clear statement: “While E-E-A-T itself isn’t a direct ranking factor, Google uses a variety of signals that align with the concept of E-E-A-T to determine the quality of a website, which can have an impact on ranking performance.”​
In other words, if your content “ticks all the E-E-A-T boxes,” it has a good chance of performing well in search​. This means SEO practitioners should optimize for E-E-A-T elements even if they can’t measure them on a dashboard. For example:
The impact of E-E-A-T is often most visible in core updates. The 2018 “Medic” update and subsequent tweaks saw many sites in YMYL sectors tank or surge seemingly based on E-E-A-T-related factors. Sites that added expert authors, improved content quality, or better aligned with user intent often recovered or gained. Those that had thin content, anonymous authors, or possible trust issues often lost rankings.
It’s worth noting that E-E-A-T is not just for content; it’s site-wide. Your whole website should exude trust. That includes having clear contact information (real business address or customer service contact if applicable), a privacy policy and generally looking professional. Scammers or fly-by-night sites often lack these; legitimate businesses have nothing to hide. These little things can indirectly support trustworthiness.
Recent trends:

With AI content rising, Google is doubling down on E-E-A-T to differentiate quality. Google even started rolling out an “About this author” feature and highlighting author information in search (for sites that provide it)​. This suggests authorship and expertise are being surfaced more. Additionally, Google’s algorithmic ability to gauge E-E-A-T is still evolving​. They may not perfectly measure it today, but they push the ecosystem by telegraphing that E-E-A-T is essential, and then they adjust algorithms in that direction. 
One SEO agency commented,
“We believe Google wants to drive home the point that Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness are essential – but its ability to evaluate this is still evolving… now is the time to start building E-E-A-T signals across your website to avoid a crash when the next Google update comes along.”​
​In short, future-proof your SEO by investing in E-E-A-T now. It not only helps you rank better today (in indirect ways) but also insulates you from being hit by a future update that more directly measures these qualities.
To encapsulate: E-E-A-T is a holistic approach to quality that successful sites in 2025 embrace. It influences content creation, site design, PR, and more. A site with strong E-E-A-T will likely have:
By focusing on these areas, you not only improve your chances with Google but also genuinely improve your website for visitors – which is the ultimate win-win for SEO.
Search engines ultimately want to satisfy users. So it stands to reason that they might use user engagement metrics – like how long someone stays on a page, whether they bounce back to search results, etc. – as indicators of content quality.
However, the relationship between engagement metrics and SEO is a nuanced one in 2025. There’s ongoing debate and some myths around what role metrics such as session duration, bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR), and dwell time play in Google’s ranking algorithm.

Google has consistently stated that they do not use Google Analytics data or similar onsite engagement metrics in their ranking algorithm. They argue that these signals are noisy, easily confounded, and not available for all sites (not every site uses Google Analytics, for instance).
In a somewhat blunt statement, Google’s Gary Illyes said: “Dwell time, CTR… those are generally made up crap. Search is much more simple than people think.”​ He explicitly noted that CTR is not used as a ranking factor​.
And John Mueller has said pogo-sticking is not a signal used, as it’s hard to interpret (a quick return could mean the user found their answer instantly, not that the result was bad)​. So officially, Google does not count bounce rate or dwell time as direct ranking signals​. They try not to use such user interaction signals in the core algorithm due to the difficulty in interpreting them reliably​.
For example, a user might bounce because the page was bad, or because the page was great and answered the question immediately. The metric alone doesn’t tell the story. Similarly, session duration could be long because the content is engaging, or because the user left the tab open and walked away.
However, there is some gray area: Google almost certainly monitors aggregate user behavior to some extent to evaluate results. It has been suggested that if a certain result has an unusually low CTR over time (meaning users consistently skip it), Google might downrank it, and vice versa. Google also conducts a lot of A/B tests in search results and measures what people click and how they behave to inform those tests. So while they might not have a “dwell time ranker,” they do care about user satisfaction which often correlates with these metrics.
Additionally, Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) openly uses dwell time as a ranking factor. In the Bing world, a long click (long dwell) is a positive signal, a short click (quick bounce) is a negative. Google’s algorithmic approach is more cautious publicly, but many SEO experts suspect Google isn’t entirely ignoring the patterns of user behavior.
There’s an often-cited RankBrain experiment where Google could be using machine learning to adjust results based on user interaction data for certain queries – though details are not clear.
SEO experiments and correlational studies have shown mixed results:
Google’s Search Quality Chief has implied that they do measure when users return to the SERP quickly (pogo-sticking), though officially they say it’s not a direct ranking signal. It may be used in evaluating algorithm changes: i.e., if after an update, more people are quickly bailing from the #1 result than before, maybe that ranking change was bad.
The bottom line from Google: Engagement metrics are “highly controversial” and Google denies using them directly​.
However, indirectly, they matter because they reflect whether users are satisfied. And satisfying users is the ultimate goal of all of Google’s explicit ranking factors (content, links, etc.).
Regardless of whether Google uses these metrics, SEO professionals track them because they provide valuable feedback. If you see a page has a high bounce rate and low time-on-page relative to your other pages, that’s a flag that the page might not be meeting user expectations.
You can then improve that page (make content more engaging, improve the intro, add better visuals or calls to action). Doing so often improves your conversion rates or user retention and can improve SEO performance indirectly (users might share the content more, or you might get better conversion which leads to more reviews, etc.).
Think of engagement metrics as a diagnostic tool:
One metric that definitely matters is click-through rate (CTR) on the search results. While Google says they don’t use it in the core algorithm, a very low CTR could mean your title or description isn’t enticing, or it’s not matching the query intent well. If everyone searching a query ignores your result, eventually it might fall because others get more clicks (though Google might just reposition things naturally).
Optimizing your meta title and description to improve CTR is thus a key on-page task. It won’t directly boost rank by some algorithmic magic, but more clicks = more traffic (obviously) and potentially more user signals of engagement once they land.
Engagement metrics also factor into personalization and search engine experimentation. Google might show a user more of what they previously engaged with (for instance, if a user consistently clicks one site’s results, Google might show that site more prominently for that user in the future). This is hard for SEOs to control but underscores that winning user favor is important.
Some Google patents and leaks have hinted at use of engagement data. The leaked Google “API” document referenced earlier not only mentioned an Original Content Score but also suggested Google uses “clicks and post-click behavior” in ranking​.
If true, that’s a nod to user engagement being part of the algo, at least in some capacity. Google likely uses such signals in a refined way, perhaps feeding them into machine learning models that adjust rankings for certain queries (maybe in Google’s RankBrain or neural matching systems).
However, given Google’s public stance and the complexity, SEO experts generally advise: do not chase engagement metrics as direct ranking levers. Instead, focus on what improves those metrics naturally: better user experience and content relevance. It’s telling that even skeptics of using these metrics admit that “a good CTR is a good CTR, and making people spend more time on your website may lead to more conversions. So you don’t need to give up tracking these metrics.”​
In other words, even if they aren’t ranking factors, they are success factors. A page that holds a user’s attention is usually a successful page.
Case in point: A comparison of two articles might find that one has an average on-page time of 2 minutes vs another’s 30 seconds. The first likely provides more value. If users consistently stay longer on one, that’s the kind of content you want more of. Google’s algorithm, through various means, will probably reflect user satisfaction in the long run (if not via direct signals, then via outcomes like earning backlinks or getting return visitors).
Practical tips to improve engagement:
To conclude this section, think of engagement metrics as the mirror: they reflect how well your SEO and content efforts are actually satisfying users. If the reflection is poor (people leave quickly, or don’t click you at all), you need to adjust something. Even if Google’s ranking algorithm ignores bounce rate per se, a high bounce rate is your clue that the page isn’t optimal. When you fix it, you’ll likely improve user satisfaction, which can lead to better word-of-mouth, more sharing, maybe more links, and ultimately better rankings in an organic way.
One could argue that the future of SEO will increasingly blur the line between user experience and search rankings. Google wants to algorithmically reward what users reward. So engagement metrics might not be fed in as raw numbers, but the spirit of them – user happiness – is certainly fed in through myriad other ways.
In sum, engagement metrics matter, but mainly as an internal metric for SEO improvement rather than a direct Google ranking factor. Track them, improve them, but don’t try to “game” them for SEO. By legitimately improving engagement, you often end up improving your SEO outcomes indirectly. It’s all part of the bigger picture of delivering quality experiences, which is the heart of SEO in 2025.
SEO has traditionally been divided into on-page (or on-site) factors and off-page factors. On-page includes everything on your website: content quality, keywords usage, HTML tags, site structure, technical setup, user experience design. Off-page primarily refers to backlinks and external signals like brand mentions, as well as elements like social media presence (though social signals are not direct ranking factors, they can indirectly lead to links/traffic). 
Engagement metrics sometimes are considered a third category, but they largely result from on-page quality (and user interaction) rather than being an independent pillar. In 2025, achieving top SEO performance requires a holistic balance: you need strength in on-page content and technical SEO and robust off-page credibility. Neglect one and your results will likely be suboptimal.
On-page factors can be seen as the foundation of SEO – necessary but not always sufficient on their own for competitive rankings. Key on-page elements:

Off-page factors, mainly backlinks, serve as validators of your site’s authority and relevance from the web’s perspective. If on-page tells Google “This is what my page is about and how good it is”, off-page tells Google “Others agree this page (or site) is valuable.” Content and links have a symbiotic relationship in SEO. High-quality content is what earns you links; and links are what elevate your high-quality content above other sites’ high-quality content.
Consider competitive niches: often many sites have decent content on a topic (especially by 2025 when everyone knows they need good content). The tie-breaker is often off-page. For example, say there are 10 good pages about “how to invest in stocks” – the ones on Investopedia or NerdWallet might outrank the one on a small personal blog largely because Investopedia/NerdWallet have thousands of authoritative backlinks (off-page strength).
That said, off-page alone cannot carry poor content indefinitely. Google’s helpful content and core updates have shown that sites with great link profiles but weak content can fall. We saw hints of this when Google acknowledged small sites with original content should rank when relevant​, and through product review updates that didn’t just favor mega-sites with authority but rewarded niche sites that provided better review content (some smaller review sites saw upticks when they had more in-depth reviews than big publisher sites).
So the scales are balancing: historically off-page (links) might have been weighted extremely heavily (leading to those authority moats), but Google is trying to ensure relevance and content quality carry more weight too.
If we think historically, circa mid-2010s one could argue backlinks were king – you could rank a mediocre page if you pointed enough strong links at it. Google’s Penguin (2012) and subsequent link spam fighting reduced the ability to do that with spammy links, but quality link building still reigned.
In the late 2010s and early 2020s, with RankBrain and BERT, Google got much better at understanding content and user intent, which made on-page content quality a bigger piece of the pie. They also got stricter on content (E-A-T, core updates). So content started to matter just as much as links. Many SEOs now say content and links are the two core ranking factors, with technical/UX enabling them.
Engagement and behavior signals are like a third dimension but, as discussed, they influence the success of on-page content. Good content tends to lead to good engagement (and also good links). So often these factors align rather than conflict. It’s rare to have a page that is super engaging to users but has no links and still ranks on page 1 – unless it’s a very low-competition query. Similarly, a page with tons of backlinks but a terrible user experience might rank for a bit, but eventually, either Google’s updates or user avoidance can drop it.
If one must quantify, one industry study or expert might phrase it like: Content and on-page SEO account for about 50% of ranking success, backlinks 40%, and technical/UX 10% (when baseline technical needs are met). These numbers aren’t official but illustrate that both on-page and off-page are crucial and their relative importance can vary by query. For instance:
A comparative analysis from an SEO perspective is to see how errors in one area can bottleneck performance:
Increasingly, Google’s algorithmic goal is to align these factors. The best-case scenario for SEO is when on-page and off-page work together: you publish great content (on-page) that naturally attracts links (off-page), and you facilitate that by ensuring the site is technically sound and user-friendly (technical on-page). Then users visit, have a great experience (engagement), which further solidifies your site’s reputation and so on.
Google itself, when asked “what are the most important ranking factors,” often cites content and links as top factors (with RankBrain as a third). This was confirmed by a Google engineer in a Q&A back in 2016 and still holds true: content and links form the core. Everything else supports those or refines how they’re evaluated.
Modern SEO experts emphasize balance: Rand Fishkin (former Moz founder) often notes that having fantastic content with no amplification (no one knows about it, hence no links) won’t get you far – you need promotion and link outreach. Conversely, all the promotion in the world won’t save uninspiring content in the long run because people won’t stick around or share it.
The Semrush 2024 ranking factors study essentially had content relevance as factor #1 and some measure of link/domain authority also in the top factors​.
For SEO professionals, the question isn’t “on-page vs off-page, which is more important?” – it’s ensuring both are addressed:

A comparative analogy: On-page SEO is like preparing a store (stocking quality products, decorating it nicely, organizing shelves), off-page SEO is like getting word-of-mouth and references so people come visit the store. You need both a good store and a good reputation. If you have a great store but no one knows about it, you’ll have low foot traffic. If you have a ton of people coming but the store is a mess, they’ll leave and tell others not to bother.
Data-driven recommendations for 2025:
Ultimately, the relative importance of factors is less useful to ponder than how they work together. For example, NerdWallet (a top finance affiliate site) has incredibly comprehensive content (on-page) and has amassed a huge backlink profile through years of marketing (off-page). Plus it invests in site speed, UX, etc. It’s firing on all cylinders. That’s the model to emulate: be the best on-page result and the most referenced off-page.
Drawing from all the above insights, here are the key best practices for SEO in 2025 and strategies looking ahead:

1. Prioritize Quality Content with E-E-A-T: Make every piece of content count. Focus on people-first content that is original, comprehensive, and trustworthy. Before publishing, ask: Is this genuinely helpful and better than what’s already ranking? Utilize experts or your own experience to add depth. For YMYL topics, invest in expert reviews or co-authorship to bolster credibility. Follow Google’s content guidelines to ensure it’s “helpful, reliable, people-first content”​. This forms the core of your SEO strategy.
2. Optimize On-Page Elements for Clarity and Intent: Ensure titles, meta descriptions, and headings align with the search intent and entice clicks. Use schema markup where appropriate to enhance how your content appears in SERPs (e.g., FAQ schema, review stars). Structure content logically with clear sections (use H2/H3) so both users and search engines can digest it. Don’t forget image alt text for accessibility and slight SEO benefit. On-page SEO is also about answering related questions – consider adding an FAQ section or Q&A content that covers common queries around your main topic (this can capture featured snippets and voice search queries).
3. Leverage AI as a Writing Assistant, Not a Writer Replacement: Embrace AI tools to increase efficiency – use them for outlining, drafting, or updating content – but always apply human editing and oversight​. Develop internal workflows (like the CRAFT framework mentioned in the Search Engine Land article​) to review and “humanize” AI outputs. The aim is to combine the speed of AI with the wisdom of human experts.
By doing so, you can scale content production without sacrificing quality, which is increasingly important as websites that produce frequent, high-quality content can cover more keywords and build topical authority.
4. Invest in Link Building through Relationships and Value: Given the enduring importance of backlinks, allocate resources to earn high-quality links. Tactics to focus on:
5. Enhance Technical Performance and UX: Page experience matters – pass Core Web Vitals where possible, ensure mobile usability, and fix technical errors promptly. Not only will this prevent any algorithmic demotion on the basis of site quality, but it improves user engagement and conversion. Keep an eye on new technical SEO developments: for example, Google’s shift to INP for core vitals, or any new guidelines on crawling (like how they handle JavaScript).
Regularly use tools like Google Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights to catch performance issues. Also, design your site for a great user experience: intuitive navigation, accessibility (e.g., alt tags, proper contrast), and no intrusive interstitials. A satisfied user experience can indirectly boost SEO through better engagement and sharing.
6. Monitor and Improve User Engagement: Use your analytics to find pages with high bounce rates or short dwell times and investigate why. While these metrics aren’t direct ranking factors, improving them usually correlates with better user satisfaction and can only help your SEO efforts. Consider A/B testing different content layouts or title rewrites to see what keeps users longer or gets more clicks.
Especially pay attention to SERP click-through rates – if a page is ranking but not getting many clicks, refine its title/description to better match what users seek. High engagement and satisfaction can also lead to more word-of-mouth and repeat visits, strengthening your brand – and brand queries in Google are a positive signal of trust/authority.
7. Build a Strong Brand and Online Reputation: Branding and SEO are more intertwined than ever. A strong brand often means higher click-through rates (users trust a known name) and more leeway in Google’s algorithms (Google might algorithmically boost or at least closely monitor sites that have a lot of direct traffic or brand searches). Work on your brand presence: consistent listings on review sites, active social profiles (even if no direct SEO value, it’s about user trust), and customer reviews/testimonials.
Ensure your business information is accurate and consistent across the web (important for local SEO too). Authoritativeness is in part about being known as a go-to source; branding helps achieve that. Google’s recent features like “About this author” and “About this result” mean it’s pulling info about your site’s reputation to show to users​, so cultivate a positive footprint.
8. Stay Adaptive and Informed: The only constant in SEO is change. Follow industry news on algorithm updates (Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Google’s own Search Central blog). When a major core update hits, analyze how your site was affected and read reputable analyses of what changed. Conduct periodic SEO audits to reassess your strategy in light of new developments (for example, if Google starts showing a lot of AI-generated answers in SERPs, think about how you can still attract clicks, maybe by targeting more long-tail or providing content that complements AI answers).
Also, keep an eye on competitors – if they implement something new (like a fancy interactive tool or a content hub) and succeed, consider if it makes sense for you.
9. Focus on Holistic Metrics of Success: Don’t chase one metric at the expense of others. It’s easy to get tunnel vision (e.g., obsessing over PageRank or Core Web Vitals scores or a single keyword ranking). Instead, define a set of KPIs that matter to your business (organic traffic, conversion rate from organic, keyword visibility across a breadth of terms, etc.). Use those to guide strategy rather than Google’s algorithm signals alone.
For example, session duration and pages per session might be your focus if you run a content site that makes money via ads – improving those will indirectly improve SEO, but more importantly boost revenue. Or lead generation from organic visits might be the main goal for a B2B site – sometimes a slightly higher bounce rate is okay if the ones who stay end up converting well. In short, align your SEO strategy with user and business metrics, which naturally leads to long-term stable growth (because Google ultimately aims to reward sites that users love and that are successful).
10. Prepare for the Future (Voice, AI, and Beyond): Looking forward, consider emerging search behaviors. Voice search and multi-modal search (Google Lens, etc.) are growing – structure your content to answer conversational queries (FAQ format helps) and ensure your local SEO is strong for “near me” voice searches.
Google’s AI snapshots (Search Generative Experience) have started to change how results are presented​. To remain visible, you may want your content to be the kind that Google’s AI cites (which likely ties back to E-E-A-T and structured, snippet-friendly info). Plan for more zero-click scenarios and think of SEO not just as getting the click, but also as branding – if an AI summary pulls info from your site (even if no click), having your brand mentioned can be valuable.
Explore opportunities like FAQ schema or HowTo schema which might feed into new search result formats or voice assistants. Essentially, be ready to adapt your content format as search evolves (e.g., making sure your content can be easily parsed by AI).
In implementing these best practices, always remember the ultimate guiding principle: deliver value to users. This is the North Star of SEO. One study beautifully put it, “‘Quality’ has to do with bringing substantial value to your readers. Review your content with this as your North Star.”​ 
If you focus on providing value – whether via content, user experience, or trusted information – many of the SEO pieces will naturally fall into place. In 2025, SEO success comes from being the site that best answers the query and is backed up by a solid reputation and technical excellence.
SEO in 2025 is a multifaceted discipline that goes beyond simple tricks or singular focus. The findings and case studies we’ve explored highlight a few overarching themes:
For business owners and marketers, the actionable insight is that SEO is an ongoing, integrated process. You can’t just fix title tags or buy some links and call it a day. Success comes from weaving SEO best practices into your overall digital strategy:
We’ve seen through various examples that when done right, SEO efforts can yield impressive results – whether it’s a 490% traffic growth in a year from case studies​ or dominating competitive search niches like CNN did for a major news event by covering topics exhaustively​. The common thread is a comprehensive strategy touching all bases we discussed: technical excellence, content depth, authoritative links, credible reputation, and user engagement.
In 2025, with competition intense and Google’s algorithms smarter than ever, the advantage goes to those who execute on all fronts in a balanced way. By applying the practices outlined in this report – supported by data and examples – SEO professionals and business owners can improve their search rankings, grow organic traffic, and most importantly, deliver real value to their customers and readers. And as the search landscape continues to evolve, staying educated (with reports like this, industry updates, and experimentation) will ensure you remain ahead of the curve.
Remember, SEO is not about gaming the system; it’s about understanding the system and aligning your goals with what search engines are ultimately trying to achieve – a great user experience. The year 2025 confirms that when you build for users and back it up with smart SEO tactics, the results (and rankings) will follow.​
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Learn the basics of Instagram SEO to optimize your profile and content, and help your target audience find you in search results.
With over 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms with a built-in search engine. And these days, users aren’t just scrolling their feeds — they’re actively searching for brands, products, and content using keywords, hashtags, and even the Explore page.
This is where Instagram SEO comes in. By optimizing your content for search, you can increase your visibility, engagement, and followers.
But where do you start, and what actually works in 2025? To find out, we interviewed several social media experts who have mastered the art of Instagram SEO. They shared what to do and not to do to appear in Instagram’s search results. Keep reading on for their tried-and-true tips.
Download a free social SEO checklist and follow pro tips for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn to get your posts seen by more people.
Instagram SEO is the practice of tailoring your Instagram content to achieve maximum discovery in search results on the platform. Instagram search results can include relevant content, accounts, audio, hashtags, places, and Reels.
When a user enters keywords related to your business in the Instagram search box, you want your account or content to appear at the top. And following search engine optimization best practices for Instagram can help you achieve this.
To illustrate the importance of social media SEO, Hootsuite ran an experiment comparing optimized and non-optimized Instagram posts. The main takeaway: SEO-optimized posts can earn 30% more engagement.
Here’s a list of the ways Instagram SEO tactics can benefit you:
Looking to boost your Instagram SEO strategy? Hootsuite’s free Instagram SEO tool can help you increase your visibility, engagement, and followers on the platform.
Using the tool below, you can create SEO-optimized captions for your Instagram posts that will help get them in front of the right audience.
Here’s how to use it:
According to Instagram, four SEO ranking factors help determine what and how content is shown in search results:

A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri)

In this Reel, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri explains how to ensure your content gets recommended on Instagram in 2025.
One more thing: Your content must follow Instagram’s Recommendation Guidelines to appear in search results, and your account can’t violate any Community Guidelines.
In this search, some accounts rank higher because I follow mutual accounts. If you search the same phrase, your results would look different from mine. Give it a try!
If you’re new to SEO, here are three easy steps to get started with optimizing your content on Instagram.
Before you can tailor your content to appear in the right searches, you need to understand your target audience’s mindset.
Some questions to ask yourself or your team:
Pro tip: You can use social listening tools such as Hootsuite to discover your audience’s preferences, common questions, and frustrations.
Within Hootsuite, you can generate a word cloud to identify related words to add to captions and hashtags.
Once you’ve answered the questions in step one, you’ll have some good starting points to kick off your keyword research.
This research aims to narrow down the phrases, words, and relevant hashtags for your business that your audience uses when searching for things related to your business.
Here are some tools that you can use to do keyword research:
After step two, you should have a good list of keywords and phrases to integrate into your content. We suggest grouping them by theme, product, or whatever makes sense for your business so that you have separate groups of keywords to test and rotate through.
You can add keywords to your content in a few ways:
Note that currently, only captions are searchable, so you should add any SEO keywords and hashtags in your post caption, not comments.

A post shared by Hootsuite 🦉 (@hootsuite)

To get the best insights on what’s working for Instagram SEO in 2025, we interviewed Evelina Milenova, SEO & Growth Manager at Opinion Stage, and Ali Cameron, Disability Advocate & Creator of Seated Perspectives.
When doing keyword research, it may seem simple to guess which search terms your audience is using. However, Cameron strongly warns against this trap:
“Instead of relying on what you would call yourself or your service offerings, think about the words your target audience would use to describe or search for you.”
To streamline the process of incorporating relevant keywords into your content, Milenova recommends these steps:

A post shared by Ashley Lemieux- Wellness Coach (@ashleyklemieux)

Ashley Lemieux posts about motherhood as one of her content pillars and reflects that naturally with many parenting-related keywords in this caption.
Given users’ short attention spans and scrolling behaviors, writing extended captions on Instagram may seem counterintuitive. However, Cameron explains the potential SEO benefits:
“Captions offer great keyword real estate. Try to find a balance in storytelling and introducing keywords that align with your target audience.”
Source: @seated.perspetives
This carousel features a lengthy caption but balances keywords and storytelling to compel viewers to read the whole thing.
As explained in the ranking factors section above, boosting the popularity of your Instagram account and content can help your SEO, especially through high engagement.
Milenova’s tip to increase your popularity: “Lean into the most promoted formats on the Explore page, such as Reels and carousels (with music added).”

A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri)

Engaging with accounts that already rank for your target keywords helps Instagram understand what niche your account fits into through the user activity ranking signal.
“To appear more often in ‘for you’ and ‘suggested’ results, you need to engage with more accounts. These accounts can include potential customers and related businesses.” shares Milenova
Alt text describes your content for users who use accessibility tools like screen readers. Alt text is essential for SEO because it helps Instagram understand what’s in your content and which search queries to place it in.
While alt text may offer another opportunity to improve your SEO, Cameron advises keeping its intended purpose in mind: “Make sure you’re not compromising the true intent of alt text (accessibility) by injecting it with keywords.”
You can add alt text when publishing a post by tapping Advanced Settings > Write Alt Text.
One pro tip from Milenova: “Adding alt text can feel very time-consuming, especially for carousel posts. One thing I do is bulk-upload all images into ChatGPT and ask it to create alt text under 100 characters.”
For more tips, check out our full guide on Instagram alt text.
Although Instagram hashtags may not be as vital for reach as they used to be, they can still offer valuable benefits for searchability.
“While you don’t need to stuff your caption with hashtags anymore, you can still use 3-5 that feature commonly searched terms. When using hashtags, remember to use camel case to make them accessible.” shares Cameron
Posting at the right time is crucial for gaining early engagement with your content, which is one of the popularity ranking signals. Knowing the best times to post ensures your content gets a search boost while remaining fresh and relevant.
Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature (found under Analytics) tells you the best times to post on Instagram (and other platforms). The recommendations are based on your account’s past performance and tailored to your audience and social media activity patterns.
The Best Time to Publish tool goes one step further and suggests different times based on four key goals:
This feature allows you to match each piece of content to a specific business goal and optimize your posting schedule for maximum effectiveness.
Find out when your audience is online and optimize your posting schedule for maximum engagement. It’s so easy.
If your business has physical stores or operates in specific locations, you should highlight this in your Instagram profile to appear in geographically relevant searches.
You can add a location within the Contact options on your profile (only available for Instagram Business accounts). You can list a country, city, or precise address.
Source: @cocobubbletea.nl
Milenova offers a bonus tip: “Add your location to your handle or profile name, which is more searchable than just adding it in the bio or address field.”
Posts aren’t the only place to optimize for SEO on Instagram. You can also tailor your Instagram profile for maximum searchability:
Source: @seated.perspectives
“I include terms such as ‘brand coach’ ‘disabled women’ ‘branding and mindset guide’ on my profile to make it easier for my target audience to find me.” says Cameron
Pro tip: Here are two free tools for SEO optimization: an Instagram bio generator and an Instagram username generator.
Meta Verified is a paid subscription for businesses that includes search optimization on Instagram and Facebook as one of its benefits.
Source: Facebook
Verified users get the coveted blue check mark beside their username and other features like account support, impersonation protection, and enhanced profile features. Businesses must apply and meet eligibility requirements to get verified.
Meta Verified starts from $14.99 USD per month, which could be worthwhile if more visibility in search results leads to more business.
Read our complete guide on how to get verified on Instagram.
Cameron warns against using overly creative terms to describe your business in your Instagram profile.
“There’s a trend amongst service providers of calling themselves cute names like ‘branding chef’ or ‘messaging magician’, yet that would never be what I would search for to find someone who could help in those areas.”
Cramming your captions with keywords and hashtags might seem like a good way to rank higher, but it can hurt your reach and engagement.
Instagram’s algorithm favors natural, readable content. So, write captions that incorporate keywords naturally and focus on 3-5 highly relevant keywords that accurately reflect your content and audience.
Although creating videos can require a lot of effort for small businesses, Milenova says the benefits are worth it — especially for the SEO benefits.
“Reels give you many opportunities to get discovered: they take double-size real estate on the Explore page and offer SEO keyword opportunities with captions and subtitles.”
Instagram SEO follows the same best practices as SEO elsewhere on the internet. Do audience research to identify keywords you want to rank for, integrate those keywords into your content, captions, and profile, and follow Instagram’s Recommendation and Community Guidelines.
You can check your SEO on Instagram by searching keywords or hashtags related to your brand and seeing how high your content ranks.
Tip: Search for an account that doesn’t follow you and hasn’t interacted with your content.
SEO hashtags are words or phrases optimized for search and discoverability and used within a post caption. Note that you must put hashtags in the caption for the post to be rankable in search results.

A post shared by Hootsuite 🦉 (@hootsuite)

In the above example, some SEO-friendly keywords would be “viral,” “engagements,” “audience,” and “social,” which would help the post appear to users searching for information about social media marketing and how to go viral.
Use Hootsuite to schedule Instagram posts at the best time, respond to comments, track competitors, and measure performance—all from the same dashboard you use to manage your other social networks. Start your free trial today.
Easily create, analyze, and schedule Instagram posts, Stories, Reels, and Threads with Hootsuite. Save time and get results.
Laura Wong is a Canadian social media strategist based in Amsterdam. She is the founder of SchoolofSocial.io, an online platform that helps anyone land their dream social media job. Besides social media, Laura is passionate about travel, photography, entrepreneurship, and finding the best bubble tea in every city she visits.
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Download your cheat sheet and checklist to start building content that works harder.
Large AI Overviews on SERPs are affecting visibility and causing a dramatic decrease in traffic.
Join us for a data-backed session where we break down how to detect, diagnose, and eliminate unnecessary branded ad spend.
Large AI Overviews on SERPs are affecting visibility and causing a dramatic decrease in traffic.
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Large AI Overviews on SERPs are affecting visibility and causing a dramatic decrease in traffic.
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✅ Ways to improve visibility, clarity, and trust across every location you manage.
Join VP Krystal Taing and Content Marketing Manager Paul Modaley from Uberall as they break down how real customers make decisions and how your local SEO strategy can influence them. 
View the slides below, or check out the full webinar for all the details.
 

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