The focus of the session is to provide insights into the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) playbook for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The session aims to provide detailed information on how to identify, diagnose, and eliminate unnecessary spending on branded advertisements. The SEO role has been historically reactive, often being called upon to enhance site rankings with little input into the overall process. SEO professionals are given key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to visibility, engagement, and revenue, despite having no control over the underlying systems. These metrics often depend on the performance of separate teams such as content, engineering, brand, and product.
In the past, SEO teams were often compared to building inspectors, brought in at key phases when the site’s structural components were laid out. Ideally, they would review the site after the framing was complete, checking aspects like information architecture, navigation and links, and technical performance. However, they were often only involved after a site’s launch, tasked with solving issues that were already buried beneath visually appealing designs.
The old model, despite its drawbacks, made sense in the early days of search, when websites were simpler, and ranking factors were more forgiving. SEO practitioners would identify crawl issues, adjust metadata, optimize titles, fix broken links