Richard great article. One thing I’m curious about as this shift accelerates how do you see businesses balancing traditional SEO strategies with AI visibility optimization? Do you think there will be a point where review freshness structured data and AI citation share become more important than traditional rankings and website traffic?
Great question Chad. Simple answer yes!! SEO isn't going away, it is your foundation for visibility on AI. What companies built with SEO in the past 20 years will continue to work, moving forward there are additional steps you need to take.
To answer your second part, my personal opinion based on what i've seen is review freshness and consistency is the most important thing you can be doing. I look at reviews this way, its a piece of content about you and your company that you didn't make yourself. Its the most powerful trust signal you can have. Also, customers are not going to websites as much anymore, they are trusting AI to vet that professional for them. You want to be one link removed from those search results.