AI SEO Isn’t Replacing Traditional SEO—It’s Doubling Your Workload (And Here’s Why That’s Good News)

I’ve been building websites since 1995, and I’ve watched SEO evolve through every major shift—from keyword stuffing to mobile-first indexing to Core Web Vitals. But what’s happening right now with AI search is different.

It’s not replacing traditional SEO. It’s adding an entirely new job on top of it.

And if you’re a marketing director or CMO trying to maintain visibility in 2025, you need to understand that these are two separate disciplines that require two separate strategies.

The Reality: Your Traffic Is Moving, Not Disappearing

Let me be blunt about what’s happening:

• Click-through rates to top organic results have dropped significantly since AI Overviews launched
• News sites have seen traffic from Google fall dramatically
• AI Overviews now appear on a meaningful share of queries

But here’s what people miss: the demand for answers hasn’t gone away. It’s just being satisfied differently.

Traditional search optimizes for documents that win clicks on a results page. AI search optimizes for facts, entities, and evidence that win a place inside the answer itself.

Both matter. Both require work. And pretending AI SEO is “just SEO” is like saying mobile optimization was “just SEO” back in 2015.

Traditional SEO Is Still Your Foundation

Before I get into AI optimization, let me be crystal clear: you cannot skip traditional technical SEO.

Everything I build for clients starts with the fundamentals:

• Semantic HTML5 that’s clean, accessible, and crawlable
• Core Web Vitals that pass Google’s thresholds (LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1)
• ADA compliance following WCAG 2.2 AA standards
• Performance optimization with lazy loading, deferred JavaScript, optimized images, and CDN integration
• Schema markup for Organization, Person, Service, Article, FAQ, and BreadcrumbList
• Mobile-first responsive design that works flawlessly on every device

This is the baseline. If your site doesn’t load fast, isn’t accessible, and doesn’t have clean technical SEO, AI optimization won’t save you.

Traditional SEO gets you ranked. AI SEO gets you cited. You need both.

What Makes AI SEO Different: 12 Tactics That Didn’t Exist Before

Here’s where it gets interesting. AI search engines—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Bing AI Mode—don’t work like traditional search. They break queries into multi-step reasoning graphs, retrieve information at the passage level, and synthesize answers from multiple sources.

That creates opportunities for optimization that literally did not exist in the 10-blue-links world.

1. Prompt Graph Coverage

Traditional SEO treats a query as a single unit. AI engines break complex queries into sub-tasks.

When someone asks “best project management software,” the AI is actually answering:

• What is project management software?
• What features matter?
• Which tools lead the category?
• What do they cost?
• Who are they best for?

AI SEO move: Create atomic, well-structured passages for each sub-question. Don’t just write for the main keyword—write for the reasoning graph.

2. Passage-Level Retrieval Optimization

Traditional SEO ranks URLs. AI search retrieves specific paragraphs.

AI SEO move: Structure your content so individual passages are self-contained, semantically rich, and citation-ready. Use clear headings, semantic HTML, and structured data at the section level.

3. Citation-Ready Evidence Packaging

AI engines need to justify their answers. They favor content with structured data, tables, statistics, and explicit evidence.

AI SEO move: Package your expertise in formats that are easy to reuse:

• Data tables with clear headers
• Bulleted lists with semantic markup
• Statistics with sources cited
• Step-by-step processes with HowTo schema
• FAQ sections with FAQPage schema

This is why every site I build includes comprehensive schema markup and semantic HTML—it’s not just for Google crawlers anymore. It’s for AI models that need to understand and cite your content.

4. Neutrality Engineering

AI models are tuned to avoid promotional language. They overweight neutral, non-promotional sources.

AI SEO move: Separate your educational content from your sales copy. Create genuinely helpful resources that answer questions without pitching. Save the CTA for the end.

I write content that teaches first and sells second. That’s what gets cited.

5. Brand-Entity Memory Alignment

Traditional SEO cares if your page matches the query. AI cares if your entity is understood consistently across the entire corpus.

AI SEO move: Build a consistent brand entity across:

• Your website with Organization and Person schema
• Wikipedia (if applicable)
• LinkedIn profiles
• Industry directories
• Guest posts and earned media
• Community documentation

Every mention should reinforce the same entity attributes: who you are, what you do, where you’re located, what you’re known for.

For City of Oaks Marketing, that means consistently reinforcing: Alison Iddings, Raleigh NC, custom WordPress development, technical SEO, AI-ready architecture, 30+ years web development experience.

6. LLM Seeding in Trusted Sources

Search engines don’t absorb your content into their ranking algorithm. LLMs do.

Research shows AI engines have a strong bias toward earned, neutral sources like Wikipedia, government sites, standards bodies, and community documentation—far above brand-owned marketing pages.

AI SEO move: Get your expertise into the surfaces AI models actually trust:

• Contribute to industry documentation
• Answer questions on Stack Overflow, Reddit, Quora
• Publish on Medium, LinkedIn, and industry publications
• Update Wikipedia pages (where appropriate and following guidelines)
• Create open-source resources

You’re not asking “how do I rank this URL?” You’re asking “where will the model learn the canonical version of this concept?”

7. Competitor Co-Occurrence Hijacking

Comparative prompts drive buying decisions. AI engines handle these by pulling in multiple entity clusters.

AI SEO move: Create neutral comparison content that positions you alongside competitors:

• “WordPress page builders vs. custom code: when to use each”
• “Comparing website migration approaches”
• “Custom themes vs. pre-made themes: cost, performance, and maintenance”

The goal is to become part of the default peer set the model thinks about when anyone asks for options in your category.

8. Source Blending Strategy

Traditional SEO optimizes for Google’s index. AI search pulls from:

• Your website
• Wikipedia
• Reddit and forums
• Documentation sites
• Academic papers
• News articles
• Social media

AI SEO move: Optimize for corpus composition, not one index. Have a strategic presence across multiple surfaces where AI models learn.

9. FAQ Schema and Direct Answer Formatting

AI engines love FAQ content because it maps perfectly to how they construct answers.

AI SEO move: Add FAQ sections to:

• Your homepage
• Every service page
• Blog posts
• Product pages

Use FAQPage schema for every Q&A pair. Write direct, citation-ready answers that start with the answer, then provide context.

This is standard practice in every site I build. It helps traditional search (featured snippets) and AI search (direct citations).

10. Anti-Hallucination Engineering

When AI models don’t have enough information about you, they make something up.

AI SEO move: Provide consistent, well-documented information across multiple trusted sources. The more canonical information available, the less likely the model is to hallucinate details about your business.

11. Mention vs. Citation Optimization

In AI search, there are three states:

• Invisible – The model doesn’t know you exist
• Mentioned – You’re in the training data but not cited
• Cited – You appear in the answer with attribution

AI SEO move: Track where you’re mentioned vs. cited. Optimize the content that’s close to citation-worthy by adding structure, evidence, and neutrality.

12. Training-Surface Expansion

An entire industry is forming around AI SEO, with market estimates projecting tens of billions in spend over the next decade.

AI SEO move: Choose where and how AI models encounter your version of reality. Be strategic about:

• What content you publish publicly vs. gate
• Where you syndicate your expertise
• How you structure your knowledge base
• What you contribute to community resources

The Uncomfortable Truth: You’re Doing Two Jobs Now

Here’s what this means in practice:

Traditional SEO is still required:

• Technical optimization for crawling and indexing
• Keyword research and targeting
• Link building and domain authority
• On-page optimization for ranking factors
• Core Web Vitals and performance
• Local SEO and Google Business Profile

AI SEO is now also required:

• Entity optimization across multiple sources
• Passage-level content structuring
• Citation-ready evidence packaging
• FAQ schema and direct answer formatting
• Neutral content creation for earned media
• Multi-surface presence strategy

You can’t skip either one.

Traditional SEO gets you ranked in search results. AI SEO gets you cited in AI answers. Both drive traffic, authority, and conversions.

Why This Is Actually Good News

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a breath. Here’s the opportunity:

Most of your competitors are still confused about this. They’re either ignoring AI search entirely or assuming their existing SEO will carry over.

It won’t.

The businesses that invest in both traditional SEO and AI optimization now will dominate visibility for the next 5-10 years while everyone else plays catch-up.

And here’s the best part: much of what makes great AI SEO also makes great traditional SEO.

• Semantic HTML helps both crawlers and AI models
• Schema markup improves both rich snippets and AI citations
• FAQ content wins both featured snippets and AI answers
• Fast, accessible sites perform better everywhere
• High-quality, well-structured content wins in both worlds

When I build a custom WordPress site for a client, I’m not choosing between traditional SEO and AI SEO. I’m building a foundation that excels at both.

What You Should Do Right Now

If you’re responsible for your company’s web presence, here’s my advice:

1. Audit Your Foundation

Make sure your traditional technical SEO is solid. If your site is slow, inaccessible, or built on a page builder that generates bloated code, fix that first.

2. Add Comprehensive Schema

Implement Organization, Person, Service, Article, FAQ, HowTo, and BreadcrumbList schema across your site. This helps both traditional search and AI citations. Use Google’s Schema Markup Validator to test.

3. Create FAQ Content

Add FAQ sections to your homepage, service pages, and blog posts. Use FAQPage schema. Write direct, citation-ready answers.

4. Optimize for Entity Consistency

Make sure your brand entity is described consistently across your website, LinkedIn, directories, and any earned media. Use schema to define entity relationships.

5. Build Passage-Level Content

Structure your content so individual sections are self-contained and semantically rich. Use clear headings, semantic HTML, and evidence-based claims.

6. Track AI Citations

Start manually testing your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Track when you’re mentioned vs. cited. Optimize accordingly.

7. Expand Your Training Surface

Contribute your expertise to trusted sources: industry publications, community forums, documentation sites. Get your knowledge into the surfaces AI models actually learn from.

The Bottom Line

AI SEO isn’t replacing traditional SEO. It’s an additional layer of optimization that requires separate research, strategy, and implementation.

You’re doing two jobs now. And that’s okay.

Because the businesses that master both will own visibility in the AI era while their competitors are still trying to figure out what happened to their traffic.

I’ve been building websites for 30 years and optimizing for search engines since before Google existed. This is the biggest shift I’ve seen—bigger than mobile, bigger than voice search, bigger than any algorithm update.

The question isn’t whether AI search matters. The question is whether you’re going to adapt before your competitors do.

If you need help building an AI-ready website with a solid technical SEO foundation, that’s exactly what I do. Custom WordPress development, technical SEO, AI optimization, and performance—built right from the ground up.