AI SEO Strategist

The Emerging AI SEO Strategist and Market Impact

The seismic transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence on SEO places the “AI SEO Strategist” as a key player in this new era.

For SEOs and marketers, the increase in options demands higher skill levels and a strategic approach to determine the most effective investment. Success involves a hybrid approach that involves balancing traditional SEO fundamentals with AI strategies.

This strategist is key because AI tools automate tedious processes, provide deeper insights, and help businesses adapt to changing search behaviors and algorithms. This is crucial in an era where traditional tactics are evolving and Google’s AI Mode is changing search dynamics.

The SEO and media network space is evolving beyond traditional retail, creating both new opportunities and new complexities. The intent is to become the “trusted voice” in AI-powered answers.

AI SEO is Business Opportunity

• Retail Media is Crowded: The market for retail media networks has become saturated, and a period of consolidation is expected. Emerging technologies and protocols are foundational to AI SEO and business growth opportunities.
• Knowing your Narket Space: The trend has expanded beyond retailers. Major brands in healthcare, finance, banking, travel, and food service, like Chase, United Airlines, and Marriott, are now creating their own media networks.
• New Revenue Streams: These companies are leveraging their strong brand reputation and valuable customer data to open up new lines of revenue through media sales.
• Execution is Key: The success of these new networks will depend on whether these companies can effectively run a media business and if there is enough advertiser demand to sustain them.
• Marketer’s Challenge: While offering more advertising choices, this rapid expansion has also created a fragmented market, making it difficult for marketers to decide where to allocate their budgets.
• Consumers are More Price Sensitivities: This escalates the need for audience research to more effectively deliver value.

The Paradigm Shift: From Traditional SEO to AI-Powered Search

Fundamental changes in search behavior transition SEO from navigating blue links to direct AI answers and conversational search.

The new paradigm is conversational, answer-oriented search, and far more influential. In the following, think of how we Capture, Nurture and Close sales has new opportunities.

• Agents replace websites: Already, AI agents are becoming the primary interface between the user and the information they seek.
• From Navigation to Answers: Users are moving away from navigating websites to getting direct answers from AI.
• A New Set of Rules: AI search doesn’t play by Google’s known rules. It’s not link-based. It’s not keyword-based. It’s not about ranking.
• The Rise of Conversational Search: User interaction is shifting from a simple “search” to an ongoing “conversation” with AI. The Power of Conversation is occuring when searchers dialogue with AI.
• Increased Agility: Influencing AI search can be significantly faster than traditional SEO, with visibility achievable in days for those with the right expertise.
• A Holistic Approach: AI SEO cannot be siloed from brand trust; they are intrinsically linked.
• Mapping User Journeys to Prompts: The focus is now on understanding and optimizing for the prompts users will employ in their AI interactions.

“AI isn’t driving the change in Google Search — users are. Younger audiences are shifting to video, forums, and creator content.” – Liz Reid, VP of Google Search ^[1]

Users are the real drivers behind the strategies and skills adopted within AI SEO expertise.

AI SEO Agent: Model Context Protocol Integration

MCP helps access data for improved capabilities working directly with the content on websites.

Think of MCP as a form of your HTTP output. MCP allows for a seamless connection between AI models and your website’s data. MCP follows a client server model to let LLMs access data and provide improved analysis and smarter content strategies.

SEO professionals can use Google’s Vertex AI and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to create, optimize, and distribute content in an era dominated by large language models (LLMs). With MCP, Claude by Anthropic works directly with your website’s content.

Understanding how Content is Evaluated

This new approach’s value is underscored by the fact that customers acquired through AI recommendations are reported to be 4.4 times more valuable than those from traditional Google clicks. ^[2]

Over 50 Percent of new content on the Internet is now AI Generated (AI Slop). In an internet where over 50% of new content is AI-generated, redundant content, authentic expertise stands out.

A key technical aspect of this is understanding how search engines like Google are evaluating content. For instance, an internal Google system codenamed “Goldmine” scores potential page titles based on factors like how well the title matches the query and flags for poorly constructed, spammy, or misleading titles. ^[3]

The Goldmine system acts as a pre-filter, weeding out low-quality candidates before they ever reach users. This is necessary in the sea of weak AI-generated content.

Agentic eCommerce SEO

“Agentic eCommerce” means where autonomous AI agents make purchasing decisions for consumers. Agentic e-commerce is reshaping SEO by shifting from website-centric optimization to optimizing for autonomous AI agents. Its a process that complements, rather than replaces, traditional SEO.

These agents can make purchasing decisions on behalf of consumers. This new model, also called Agentic AI SEO, requires businesses to excellent data management.

SEO AI visibility is data management includes:

1. Product structured data.
2. Google Merchant Center product feeds.
3. Content discoverable and understandable for AI search environments.

I’m finding it easier to win clicks for eCommerce sites over informational sites.

Evergreen content, is now often answered within an AI summary. Evergreen information content is less likely to send a click because AI summarizes the answer and satisfies the user. Meaning, you have to work hard to give users a reason to visit your website.

LLM & AIO Optimization Techniques for SEOs

Effective AI SEO consultants are adopting a fresh set of strategies and techniques focused on Large Language Model (LLM) and AI Overview (AIO) optimization. The goal is to structure and optimize content in a way that LLMs can easily understand and cite.

1. Structure content for LLMs: This involves creating content that is easily digestible by AI, with clear headings, structured data, and a conversational tone.
2. Build brand authority: The emphasis is on establishing the brand as a trusted and authoritative source through expert-level content hubs, strong author bios, and a robust digital footprint across multiple platforms.
3. Track visibility and revenue over traffic and rankings: The metrics for success are changing. It’s less about how many people visit your website and more about your visibility within AI-generated answers and the revenue that visibility drives.
4. Shift focus to AI-Driven leads: The ultimate goal is to appear in AI answers that directly lead to qualified leads and sales.

Significant opportunity emerges when you identify and cover new trends — or establish them yourself.

Where to Keep Your Focus

1. Your truth: What you are trusted for by others and on the SERP. What is worth pursuing per your goals. What will it cost you? Do you have the skills/staff agreement/finances to do it.
2. Keep your loop open: Gains won today can be lost tomorrow. It requires continual monitoring, iterative workflows, and re-alignment with user needs.
3. Keep optimizing your models, agents, and gems: Hallucinations, leaks, outdated practices, and changes in user needs all require continual human oversight and updating.
4. Value Content Production: is crucial in AI SEO because it is the only way to create the high-quality, original, and trustworthy content that search engines like Google prioritize

Content Velocity & Content Quality

Getting your content production right means comprehensively meeting audience needs.

Anyone can write, but few writers meet the audience’s needs. SEOs often get content wrong and optimize for search engines. I find more success taking an SEO Relevance Engineering approach.

Consistently publishing fresh content that is helpful to user needs sets a higher standard for “content quality.” But today, it takes much more than that to maintain a competitve edge.

An AI SEO strategist needs a blend of core SEO skills, technical knowledge, data analysis abilities, and specific AI proficiency. Essential skills include search query research, technical SEO, content creation, data analysis, and strategic business planning.

They must also have AI literacy. That means a strong understanding of AI and automation tools, prompt engineering, and the ability to interpret AI-driven data to inform strategy. There is no way to gain this without hands-on experience.

Successful AI SEO experts need the following skills and concepts:

• Context Engineering: I’m placing the “context engineering” skill over “prompt engineering”. Why? People associate prompts with short, common task descriptions given an LLM. However, an enterprise level LLM app requires the art of context engineering to fill the context window. Its data analysis approach is science-like to provide optimal and trustworthy outcomes.
• Query Fanouts: Understanding how AI systems issue multiple related queries to gather comprehensive information for a single user prompt.
• Query Entities: Focusing on building the brand as a recognized entity that AI can understand and connect to relevant topics.
• Co-similarity: Analyzing the relationships between different pieces of content to ensure a cohesive and authoritative narrative.
• WebRun Cloud Cache: A feature for Generative AI that significantly reduces costs and latency for repeated content.
• “Google Web Guide”: Google’s experimental “Web Guide” feature uses AI to cluster search results into topic groups
• Bot Publishing: Invalid traffic consumes server resources, impacts marketing and SEO campaigns performance, and brand trust.
• Encoding Personas in SEOntology: Example: enriching content with schema:Audience (and related properties like audienceType) to encode personas in SEOntology. By utilizing schema markup, you are defining and targeting specific user personas within the content’s semantic structure.
• Semantic Layer: – Functions as a file system that provides structure that assists AI interpretation and connected information. This is true if using ChatGPT, Gemini, OpenAI, Perplexity, or other AI-powered conversational and search tools.
• 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁’𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆 – An agent’s memory is informed via context in the prompt passed to LLM that helps the agent to better plan and execute.

The need is for high-level technical AI SEO skills

AI broadens what SEO means. AI’s integration into SEO is transforming many traditional SEO tasks, leading to job market disruptions. For example, SEO jobs now are called things like “GEO/AI + LLM Strategist,” “AI Search & SEO Manager,” or “AI Growth Hacker.”

For me, this is a role I’m enjoying and will continue to invest in. Take a look at the opportunities. The remuneration for these roles reflects their critical importance.

• OpenAI posted a SEO job for a content strategist. (Salary is $310k to $393) ^[4]
• AI roles top the income charts in 2026 — with base salaries from $175K to $340K. ^[5]
• The average annual salary of an AI business development manager in the US is $196,491. ^[6]

Keeping an agile mindset means knowing what to anticipate. Here are a few of my thoughts.

Future AI Search will likely devalue:

• Thin content robotic pages created to influence LLMs.
• Repetitive, low value-added “best” listicle articles.
• Overly self-serving content.
• Sites using duplicate content for GEO. Content Quality will remain important.
• Overuse of AI “chunking” at the expense of quality UX.
• Off-topic content and low field coverage on an business entity’s “truth”.
• GEO spam tactics for GEO like prompt injection

How do you maximize the “ups” and avoid the “downs” of search trends?

Your Guide to the Future of AI Search

The integration of AI into SEO is here to stay. It is a fundamental evolution of how businesses connect with their customers. Tomorrow’s successful marketers are those who embrace change and cultivate the skills necessary to thrive in an AI-first world. This new landscape requires continuous monitoring, iterative workflows, and a relentless focus on user needs.

An AI SEO consultant is your essential guide in this new and exciting era of digital marketing. Hill Web Marketing can help you know and build on your “truth” — what your brand is trusted for and what is worth pursuing based on your goals.

By optimizing your models, agents, and content, you can stay ahead of the curve. High-quality, original, and trustworthy content remains the cornerstone of successful AI SEO; it is the only way to meet the needs of both your audience and the AI that serves them.

How the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) can Influence Better AI Output

AI should be working for us, not the other way around. Both people and search engines favor a human centric approach.

Structured prompt input:

Provide context through carefully crafted prompts and by reviewing and editing the generated text for accuracy, bias, and relevance. The AI constructs a precise, structured request based on the data feed’s schema.

 

This ensures the query for information is unambiguous, leading to a more reliable and predictable outcome.

 

You can provide an indirect or delayed function call that is organized according to a specific data pattern. Conversely, a direct function call executes immediately. Your structured invocation can use an intermediary or predefined model to sort when, where, and how a function or method should be executed.

Structured on site information for improved LLM performance:

Semantic triples offer clear node relationships. If you tie concepts and entities together in your writing, the LLM can draw more accurate data. For example, this data can be supplied directly from you, within your Product Pages, via robust and valid Product schema markup.

Provide “Knowledge” for your Gems:

When creating “Gems” in gemini.google.com/app, ensure accurate and brand-consistent responses by adding “Knowledge” for a custom Gem. Your AI results will leverage this knowledge to define personas, your personal expertise, and give it behavioral guidelines. This information shapes the answers provided by the Gem.

How humans influence AI output in NotebookLM:

One way to ground your output when using NotebookLM is to upload documents that become the sources it draws from. You can provde up to 50 sources.

• “Discover sources” lets you draw from your Google Drive.
• Web links.
• Videos – YourTube, MP3 and WAV.
• Audio – Upload an audio file for NotebookLM to transcribe. This text can them become a source.
• Your notes.

Your notes: Provide the AI with the necessary information to generate a more accurate and useful response by clicking the “Notes” button in the right-hand panel and add your own, in-the-moment instructive inputs.

This provides context and boundaries used for higher relevance to your topic and the way you want its output expressed. It will sound, and be, more like “you” than what it will otherwise source.

Human oversight for LLM automated workflows:

HITL improves agentic AI output by strategically integrating human oversight and expertise at critical points in an automated workflow. This hybrid approach, essential for managing highly autonomous AI agents, ensures better accuracy, reliability, and ethical alignment.

You may be that human who validates, corrects, and fine-tunes the system’s decisions. For example, you can modify the agent’s internal state or edit its proposed output directly before allowing the process to continue. Tools like LangGraph are helpful.

Turning AI Search Disruption into AI SEO Opportunities

SEO is transforming due to new ways people search and AI technology. Your new opportunity? Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), is one way you can reshape discovery, engagement, and conversions for your products. AEO is the practice of optimizing content to be featured in AI-generated answers. This encompasses when multisearch is used to gain answers.

Gain an effective AEO framework that prepares you for tomorrow’s AI-driven search reality

FFind out how to increase your AI visibility; request your personalized Marketing Plan Backed With AI Measurement

Resources:

[1] https://searchengineland.com/liz-reid-google-ai-behavior-shift-463444

[2] https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-search-seo-traffic-study/

[3] https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/google-goldmine/

[4] https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/content-strategist-chatgpt-com-at-openai-4291186665

[5] https://www.ssbm.ch/top-12-highest-paying-ai-jobs-in-2026-seo-edition/

[6] https://www.nexford.edu/insights/highest-paying-ai-jobs