The SEO Expert’s 2025 Toolkit: Are You Ready for Change?
Significant changes are coming in the digital world in 2025! Guiding content awaits you for SEO professionals who want to improve themselves and prepare for the future!
The world of SEO is changing faster than ever. Artificial intelligence, big language models (LLMs), and alternative platforms are reshaping the search experience. Ranking on Google is no longer enough; you must understand user intent, establish brands as authorities, and be visible across platforms.
As we prepare for 2025, I have prepared a roadmap for you to keep up with this change. Let’s get ready for the future together.
1. Artificial Intelligence: Your Partner, Not a Competitor
Artificial intelligence is a tool that makes SEO more accessible and faster. However, many experts still don’t fully utilize these tools’ opportunities. From keyword research to understanding user intent, artificial intelligence can make our work more accessible in many areas.
A Practical Application Suggestion
Screaming Frog’s OpenAI API integration allows you to analyze your content at scale to identify relevant pages on your site. Try this tool to optimize your internal links and improve the user experience. Using the same integration, you can also enable AI to generate components such as page title, description, image alt, etc., while crawling a site.
2. Large Language Models (LLMs): The New Playing Field
Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity AI and Google Gemini are reshaping SEO strategies. We need to keep up with search engines and advanced tools.
Why is it Important for SEO Professionals?
LLMs are changing the way users access information. Users are now turning not only to Google but also to platforms like Perplexity. As SEO experts, increasing visibility on these platforms has become one of the new areas of expertise. Prepare your SEO strategies for the future by developing yourself in this field.
3. Content Generation with Artificial Intelligence: Be Balanced and Authentic
Artificial intelligence is enabling great speed and efficiency in content production. However, it is essential to manage this process correctly because content produced solely by AI is often superficial and mediocre.
My Favorite AI-Powered Content Creation Tools
Jasper AI: Ideal for producing quality content by creating a unique writing style for brands with its “brand voice” feature.
ChatGPT Canvas: This relatively new model allows us to produce quality content with the proper prompts and edits.
SurferSEO: An excellent tool for producing and optimizing SEO-friendly content. Thanks to its natural language processing capability, it allows for entity and topic-based analysis rather than keyword-based.
Grammarly: A must-have for both grammar editing and content strategy.
NotebookLM: Google NotebookLM works like an assistant to process your data and provide you with the most effective information. Using AI in this way allows you to manage your time more efficiently and draw creative conclusions from existing resources. If you haven’t tried a tool like this, now is the time!
A Practical Application Suggestion
Create a custom GPT for the brand for which you will produce content with ChatGPT. To get better-quality content, upload the spelling and spelling rules of the language you will produce content in as a PDF file. Ensure that the created content is uploaded to the site after being reviewed by your customer.
Google’s Official Position on AI-Generated Content
Google has a clear stance on AI content: “Authentic, high-quality content that adds value to the user will be recognized, even if AI generates it.” You can read Google’s statement for more information.
4. Online PR: The Hidden Power of SEO
Brand authority has become one of the most essential elements of SEO. However, creating a strong brand is not only possible through the efforts of SEO experts; you need to convince your customers of this investment.
How to Convince Your Customers?
Talk with Examples and Data: Provide concrete data such as “Brands increase brand searches by 30% with online PR efforts”.
Share Success Stories: For example, tell how a brand experienced increased organic traffic after being featured on news sites.
Get Professional Support: Consult an agency that specialises in Online PR.
They can help you identify the right publications to target and create compelling content that will resonate with your audience.
LLMs and Online PR
LLMs pull information from trusted sources. Media coverage through online PR efforts will ensure that these tools reference your brand.
5. SEO on Alternative Platforms
SEO is no longer limited to Google. Users now get information from YouTube, TikTok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and social media platforms.
What Can You Do?
Bing Webmaster Tools: If you haven’t already, you can create a Bing Webmaster Tools account for your websites and submit XML Sitemap files. Some serious studies show that ChatGPT is fed from the Bing search engine pool. The better you introduce your sites to Bing, the more your visibility on ChatGPT can increase.
ChatGPT and Perplexity: Create content optimized for these platforms by analyzing users’ frequently asked questions.
LinkedIn: Increase your visibility by sharing regular content.
6. Face Change and Stay Motivated
Change is not always easy, but it is essential for growth. To cope with changes in the SEO world, you need to improve your technical skills and your emotional resilience.
Tips to Beat Imposter Syndrome
Imposter Syndrome is a psychological condition that leads a person to believe that his or her achievements are due to incompetence or luck. People with this syndrome think that they did not get where they are because of their talent or intelligence and that one day, everyone will realize this “truth”. SEOs suffer from this syndrome more than once in their professional lives. The following may help you at this point;
Take Small Steps: Try a new tool or take a course every week. Small steps lead to significant results. If you haven’t already, read the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. It successfully explains how small daily steps can have a substantial cumulative effect over time. For almost 150 weeks (roughly 5 years!), this book is one of my main motivations for writing a newsletter; the other is to prove to the younger generations how dedication and perseverance can lead to success. If I am lucky and survive, I plan to continue this newsletter until 2044 🙂
Get Support from Communities: Attend SEO events and be active in digital marketing communities. You can contact me to chat.
Remember Your Story: Review your successes in this industry. Everyone has a different learning process.
Don’t Compare Yourself with Others: Remember that many shared SEO success stories do not benefit the brand. SEO experts who say they have succeeded in every project may generally not reflect the truth. Do not feel inadequate in the face of such stories. It’s important to remember that these individuals’ most outstanding achievement lies in their ability to manipulate and convince other SEO experts and companies of their fabricated success. Don’t fall into this trap.
Be prepared: You will face an SEO experience in which rankings in search results will lose their importance. Are you ready? Prepare yourself and your customers for it now.
7. Keep Learning: Weekly Newsletters and YouTube Channels
To stay up-to-date in the SEO world, you must keep learning. In my weekly newsletter, I cover a wide range of topics, from the latest SEO trends to the use of artificial intelligence. Barring any setbacks, my newsletter and videos will continue throughout 2025.
Weekly Content You Can Follow:
SEOs Diners Club: Don’t miss my latest SEO and digital marketing notes.
The AI Journal: A newsletter I subscribe to for tracking developments in artificial intelligence.
Marketing Against the Grain: A YouTube channel hosted by the CMOs of Hubspot and Zapier that I find very useful. Each week, they review a new AI tool or method.
Kevin Indig, Eli Schwartz, Mark Williams Cook, Will Reynolds, Mike King, and Rand Fishkin are marketing professionals whose newsletters and posts I regularly follow. Even though their disciplines differ, I benefit from their creative thoughts. This is precisely what we will need in 2025; we must approach SEO and Digital Marketing from different perspectives, not just technically.
Fundamentals of Generative AI: I attended this great course last June, which is for those who want to learn the fundamentals of artificial intelligence.
Coursera—AI for Everyone: Andrew Ng’s course helps you understand artificial intelligence from a broader perspective.
Deep Thought: I just finished reading this book by Garry Kasparov, which examines the relationship between artificial intelligence and humans. It is a very useful book for realizing what we can achieve together with artificial intelligence rather than seeing it as our competitor. I recommend it.
In 2025, SEO will become more strategic and creative! Fields like artificial intelligence, LLMs, and Online PR will be critical to standing out in this world. Take action now, improve yourself, and turn this transformation into an advantage! Remember: Change is not something to fear, but a great opportunity!
Mert Erkal is the founder of Stradiji, which has been providing consultancy services on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SEO Friendly Content Production and Optimization, and Conversion Optimization since 2009. SEO consultancy of enterprise companies is Mert's unique expertise. He has been sharing and commenting on weekly critical developments from the SEO world for about three years with his newsletter "SEOs Diners Club." With the advantage of remote working, he continues to provide SEO consultancy to English-speaking countries, especially the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
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