12 SEO Predictions for 2025 (And How to Prepare!)

• SEO in 2025 is going to be drastically different than ever before.
• Data and community insights reveal unexpected predictions for the future of SEO.
• Key areas of focus will include AI, ranking signals, market gaps, and user signals.
• Diverse traffic sources and building brand recognition are becoming increasingly crucial.
• Predictions highlight significant shifts in content creation and SEO strategies.

SEO 2025 is going to be insanely different than it's ever been before.
Why? Because based on my data, trend spotting and experience, as I was planning this video, I realized that my 2025 predictions were so freaking weird I thought I was trippin.

So just to make sure I was still sane, I decided to crowdsource what you, the community, thought was gonna happen next year.
And what I found is that a lot of very smart people feel exactly the same.
It's getting weird.

In this video, I'll share with you my top 12 predictions on how SEO is gonna change and most importantly, what you can do to prepare.
We're gonna talk a lot about AI, the most important new ranking signals to focus on, the huge market gaps, and opportunities that are open right now.
Antitrust lawsuits, the fatal small website, publishers, and your mom.

But real quick, I want to let you know that my SEO agency, the Search Initiative, has a thousand dollars off discount going on till the end of the month to get a free audit.
Head on over to thesearchinitiative.com and put your details into the form and we'll let you know what we can do for you.

Now back to the video!

All right, let's get this party started discussing the ranking factors that you need to focus on in 2025.
Especially in comparison to previous years, SEO prediction has:

1. Turning your website into a brand becomes a new focus.
   SEO publications have been saying for years that you should focus on treating your website as a brand.
   That part isn't new. What is new is that SEO professionals are proving with actual data that Google is indeed preferring brands these days.

And more importantly, they're also proving how Google is deciding if a website is a brand or another rinky-dink SEO cash grab.
This correlation study showed that helpful content update winners had a larger ratio of brand search versus backlinks, which I agreed with.
And many of you, the community, agreed too.

Now, I'm not trying to downplay our biggest observation skills, but it's quite obvious.
I mean, just look at the search result for Best Testosterone Supplements.
My ass used to rank number one for this keyword. Now it's only mega brands like WebMD.

In my opinion, the main factor that Google uses to determine if a website is a brand or not is brand search volume.
Are people actually searching for Matt Diggity, Matt Diggity Affiliate Lab Review, and Matt Diggity Net Worth? Come on, guys.

In fact, here's the traffic graph for one of my affiliate sites that I sent.
Don't try this at home—fake bought traffic.
In fact, that's the only thing we did and bam! The August Core update traffic went up.
I have a video coming out on how to do this, so make sure to subscribe.

That said, in my opinion, the best way to generate brand search volume is to go multi-channel with your traffic.

Which brings me to my next SEO prediction for 2025: Traffic diversity gets cranked up as a ranking factor.
SEO as the sole traffic source is becoming less reliable for certain types of websites.
So it makes sense to diversify by getting traffic from places like video, email, social media, and PPC.

And what many smart people have realized is that when you have activity on other channels, you actually get a better result with your SEO.
When the Yandex leak hit the Internet, we found that if the percentage of traffic you get from search engines is too high, that can be viewed as a negative ranking factor.

My favorite place to diversify my traffic is YouTube.
Clearly, if you need help getting started with YouTube, check out my Done-for-you video agency, Epic Video.
I also love PPC, but only if you can generate profitable campaigns.
PPC also has the bonus effect of generating brand search volume.

And surprise! I also have an agency that can help you out with PPC—Diggity Media.

My next SEO prediction is that Google will rely more on user signals in its algorithm.
Google actually always has said that they don't use click data, but oops... just kidding, guys.
The Google code leak actually had a spec module called navboost that was entirely focused on click signals.

The user signal I think they considered most is goal completion.
When users click on your website, are they getting their goals met?
Did you end their search journey, or did they click back on their browser and pogo stick down to the next result?
A very bad user signal.

Some of you guys also think that shorter two to three-minute long articles are preferred by today's algorithm.
A theory I can get behind.

Prediction number four: Content and links remain the core ranking signals in SEO, but the value of content goes down and the value of links goes up.
Google is getting absolutely flooded with AI content.
According to this article from Earthweb, 7.5 million blog posts are published per day.
With everyone and their grandma now able to spam out content with the press of a button, to save money analyzing it all, Google will do what they've always done—rely more heavily on links to decide whether content is good or not.

Now moving on to the topic of AI.
My next prediction is that AI search engines will start to significantly steal market share from Google.
Like channel viewer Chris, my bet is also on Search GPT.
I mean, it's just a better search experience. You get your question answered right away instead of getting a list of 10 places where you might find your answer.
Mostly Reddit, I might add.
And there's no ads for now.

Plus, it's run by OpenAI, whose adoption rate track record puts a PD freak off to shame.
To add, Google's recent loss in the antitrust hearings makes them vulnerable to disruption, and if users start switching over to AI search engines, that brings me to my next prediction.

AI SEO is going to become a thing—optimizing your website to appear in AI search results.
Now I'll be the first to admit that so far I'm a newbie getting optimized for Search GPT, but I'm running a lot of tests and so far it's working.
I'll make a video on this when I've locked down the process, so subscribe so you don't miss it.

By the way, here's a quick word from the sponsor of this video—Search Intelligence.
This campaign got us big links in websites such as Life, Haackr, Wells Online, Daily Record, and about 20 other news websites.
Let me show you how we've done it.

We knew that people will be flying a lot this summer, and we knew that journalists will be writing about this topic a lot.
So on behalf of our client, we put together a nice guide about how to fall asleep on the plane.

Then we used Macrack to find journalists who write about travel.
Then we put our advice in a nice email and sent the tips to the journalists.
Within just a few days, the links started landing, securing our client natural placements in really big websites just like this, this, and this.

This is a great example of how you can leverage seasonal trends to earn links to our website.
Anticipate what journalists want to write about at all times and give them the stories that they need.
They will reward you with some great juicy links.
I hope this is helpful.

Now back to the video.

Next prediction: AI overviews will be completely rolled out by the end of 2025.
In a knee-jerk reaction to the launch of Chat GPT, Google came out hard AF with AI overviews in the search results.
But they soon recalled the hell out of that move when people started noticing hallucinations—like when you Google "I'm feeling depressed" and they recommend you jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.
That would certainly solve the depression, but come on now.

That said, these embarrassing screw-ups are getting fewer and farther between these days.
So I'm guessing by Q2/Q3 2025, we'll be back with AI answers being baked all over the Internet.
I mean, we wouldn't want to send traffic to actual websites, would we?

Informational queries like "Are strawberries good for you?", "How to set up a Webcam?" or "Is SEO dead?"
These keywords are screwed in any display ad informational content sites that happen to live past the helpful content update purge.
Yeah, those are unfortunately a ticking time bomb.

So my suggestion for you is the following: Focus on bottom-of-the-funnel keywords and massive CRO to get the most out of the search volume.

Next prediction: AI content continues to perform well and content scalability hits another level.
Yes, last year OpenAI said that it's mathematically impossible for AI detectors to, quote, "reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content."

But even if it were detectable, Google's own search guidance about AI content says they'll reward high-quality content however it's produced.
As a result, people are printing websites with AI and spouting massive traffic boners despite what SEO Twitter wants to believe.

But my SEO prediction, along with my buddy Niels, is that AI content generation will evolve into the following:
Rather than creating an article, you just add your website details.
The software will figure out the best content that you could possibly rank for, write it for you, update old and stale content, and all you really need to do is set your daily spend.
I know one company that's already working on this—Surfer.

Next prediction is a two-parter.
The good news? I think Reddit is going to lose traffic in 2023.
Reddit got the biggest traffic boner ever to rise because Google gave them page one rankings for, well, just about every keyword.

But clever SEOs quickly found out that gaming Reddit by buying upvotes is the easiest ever.
Reddit as a user experience is dead now, and Google's gonna have to take some SEO love away from their sweetheart.

The bad news? The other megasites that rank for all the keywords that Reddit doesn't rank for—
I think aren’t gonna get even more traffic. Google loves brands. Google loves backlinks.
Sites like the New York Times have these like Diddy has baby oil.

Okay, okay, I'll stop with the Diddy jokes.

Maybe next prediction: Content sites, particularly content-focused websites that monetize with affiliate and display ads, are unfortunately still gonna be extremely hard to rank.
This all kicked off during the September 2023 helpful content update that seemed to particularly go after these types of sites, much to the detriment of Google's actual search result quality.

As a reaction, SEO Twitter rightfully protested the unfair devastation it had on small publishers.
They got Google's attention, and in the August 2024 Core Updates release notes, they say that the update takes into account the feedback we've heard from some creators and others over the past few months.
They aim to connect people with a range of high-quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful original content.

But were there big recoveries? Did things get better for content sites?
Not really. I mean, my portfolio had a couple of recoveries of 10 to 20%, but it was random as hell.
The site that I did the most work on barely moved.

That said, there are sites like House Fresh, that did a lot better.
But this begs the question: did House Fresh recover just because they were one of the loudest on social media?
Honestly, who knows.

But what I do know is that this algorithmic gesture for small publishers was cute, if anything, and it's probably a sign of things to come.

That being said, there is a silver lining behind all of this.
And that's my next prediction: Affiliate SEOs will diversify into the greener pastures of e-commerce and local lead generation.
Hell, that's what I've done already.

It's my belief that affiliate SEO is the hardest category of SEO that there is.
Hear me out: the barrier to entry is nothing.
Startup costs nothing. Anyone can register a domain, get it hosted, install WordPress, and start reviewing products.

Combine this with the uncapped income ceiling of the affiliate model, and you have a perfect storm of attracting hungry, motivated, and skilled SEOs, making affiliate SEO competitive as hell.
But with Google currently blocking the business model, what are these SEO killers gonna do?
Probably what I've been doing this whole year—diversifying into e-commerce and lead gen.

It's been freaking great compared to affiliate.
I'm not gonna lie, this is easy. Right now, it's a gold rush.
So if you're looking to diversify, this is where I'd start. And I'd start soon.

Next prediction: Despite SEO getting harder and harder, the folks that stick around will continue to make more and more money.
I've been doing SEO since 2009, and there's this very predictable pattern that always happens.

People do their SEO, rank websites, get clients, make money, then Google drops an algorithmic bomb and many people get knocked on their asses.
A lot of these people quit SEO forever. But the people that stick around figure out the new way of doing things.

And there's less competition now because so many people left.
This is the SEO Golden Age, and we're about to enter another one.

That's what Diddy said. Thanks for watching.
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