What to Focus on in the Era of AI Search
Search is changing, there’s no doubt about it. The SEO world is undergoing a significant shift.
But the recurring claim that “SEO is dead” couldn’t be further from the truth.
The real question is: what should we focus on in these times of change?
Why All the Panic?
Clicks are declining. AI Overviews in Google Search and the rise of AI-powered search bots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Claude, and others, are transforming how users find and consume information. This information is often presented in a cohesive summary, frequently without direct links to source webpages.
And even if a source link is provided if the user already has the information they were looking for: why would they click?
The bottom line: clicks, especially for informational queries, are declining and will continue to do so.
The SEO Industry’s Reaction
Many of my colleagues are now focused on clawing back those lost clicks, producing more content that ranks in classic search, and gaining visibility, citations, and links in AI-powered search results.
Key strategies include:
- Adding more relevance to content
- Incorporating proprietary data
- Understanding how LLMs retrieve and process information
These are all valid and necessary steps to future-proof your online presence. But before diving into vector databases and prompt engineering, you should ask yourself:
Do I really need to understand…
- Cosine similarity
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Embedding models
- Grounding
- Vectorisation
- Relevance scoring
… and more?
Or is there something else worth focusing on first?
From More Clicks to More Confidence
Understanding your users, their hesitations, objections, and concerns while browsing your site, enables you to address these issues directly.
This builds trust during the decision-making process and helps convert visits into results.
Forget meaningless clickbait. Prioritise clarity and reassurance, and you’ll see actual conversions – not just traffic spikes.
Winning means achieving better outcomes from the traffic you already get, not just chasing more of it.
Stop focusing on top-of-the-funnel fluff that’s only tangentially related to your products or services.
How to Identify and Address User Concerns
Maybe you’ve created detailed user personas and optimised your PDPs and service pages around those personas. That’s a solid start, but it’s not enough.
Break down silos in your organisation. Get marketing talking to sales and customer support to gather insights:
- What objections do prospects raise?
- Where do users get stuck in onboarding?
- Why do some abandon their journey entirely?
This is gold dust. Use it, not just on your website, but on social media, in podcasts, on YouTube, and in forums where people are discussing your brand.
Focus on the User to Win in the AI Search Era
This user-first approach boosts satisfaction, time on site, and recommendations. In short—it improves your E-E-A-T, and with it, your chances of appearing in AI Overviews or being cited in ChatGPT, Gemini, and the like.
You’ll improve conversions and organic reach—without needing to become a data scientist.
A Little Helper
Even if you know your customers well, it’s entirely possible that some of their concerns have slipped under the radar.
That’s where AI can help.
To make this easier, I’ve created a free GPT tool—no registration required.
You simply input the URL of any service or product page and let it run. You can also add extra context like target location or audience.
Want to generate FAQs based on those concerns? Just type “yes” and it will create them for you.
I hope this article helps you see that traffic is no longer the only metric that matters. And maybe the tool will help you uncover barriers you hadn’t considered.
Here’s the link to the tool:
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6851436724c48191ad0e9854d341a08b-customer-pain-points-on-website