In this episode, I sat down with Al Safati, CEO of Clarity Digital to talk about how SEO is changing and evolving.
With over 26 years of experience in digital marketing, Al knows the ins and outs of SEO better than most. We first met at Digital Summit in Dallas, and this conversation felt like a continuation of that great exchange about search, content, and email marketing.
Is SEO Still Relevant?
Al’s answer was clear—yes. Traditional SEO still drives a significant amount of traffic, especially for transactional searches and local business queries. But AI is reshaping how content gets discovered and consumed. Marketers who ignore SEO risk disappearing from both search engines and AI-driven platforms.
The Foundations Still Matter
Even as AI summaries and overviews become more common, the core elements of SEO haven’t gone away:
- Technical SEO: Keep your site crawlable, fast, and user-friendly. Page speed and mobile performance remain crucial.
- Quality Content: Original, useful content is more important than ever. AI thrives on context and depth, not keyword stuffing.
- Digital Footprint: Your brand presence across the web—podcasts, guest articles, social posts—feeds into AI models. Don’t limit yourself to your website alone.
Preparing for AI-Driven Search
Al shared three key areas marketers should focus on as AI search grows:
- Concise but complete content. Cover all aspects of your product or service without relying on bloated copy.
- Useful FAQs. When they answer real customer questions, they help both traditional search and AI systems understand your offerings.
- Reputation and sentiment. What people say about you on Reddit, forums, and review sites influences AI-driven overviews.
A Shift in Metrics
One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was how KPIs are changing. SEO success won’t just be about rankings and traffic anymore. Instead, marketers need to think about multi-touch attribution and how different channels—SEO, AI search, email, and social—work together to drive results.
The Takeaway
SEO is not dead, but it is evolving. Marketers must balance the foundations of traditional SEO with the new realities of AI-driven search. That means embracing technical best practices, creating original content, expanding brand presence, and monitoring reputation across the web.
As Al put it, “If you abandon SEO, you’re going to disappear from the AI map.”
Connect with Al on LinkedIn
Visit the Clarity Digital website here
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