SEO Is Alive: Real Data That Kills the Internet Hysteria - Sid Lal, Bruce Clay Australia
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They’ve been saying “SEO is dead” for years but the numbers tell a very different story. In this data-packed session, we’ll uncover the real story and show you why Google remains a powerful driver of visibility in 2025 & how it is nearly impossible for LLM based search engines to replace Google. SEO evolving and we will show you what’s still working, and the actions you should never stop taking if you want to stay competitive. SEO has never just been about ranking on Google—it’s about building your BRAND online. If your brand is visible wherever your audience is, you’re not just chasing rankings, you’re building a moat around your business. Expect actionable takeaways, myth-busting moments, and a renewed confidence in your search strategy. Key Takeaways: The Real State of SEO in 2025. Discover fresh, hard data that cuts through the “SEO is dead” noise and shows exactly why Google remains a critical growth channel. Learn the proven SEO tactics that continue to deliver results Beyond Google: Unlocking Multi-Platform Organic Growth in the Diversified Search Landscape
SEO Is Alive: Real Data That Kills the Internet Hysteria - Sid Lal, Bruce Clay Australia
- 1. KEYNOTE SEO Is Alive: Real Data That Kills the Internet Hysteria Sid Lal MANAGING DIRECTOR BRUCE CLAY AUSTRALIA SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA ~ AUGUST 13 - 14, 2025 DIGIMARCONAUSTRALIA.COM | #DigiMarConAustralia
- 2. KEEP CALM SEO IS ALIVE Real Data That Kills the Internet Hysteria SEARCH
- 3. ONLY 10X CONTENT SID LAL Managing Director, Bruce Clay Australia • TedX Talk on Digital Marketing Just Google “Digital Marketing TED talk” • SEO Master Class Instructor – Australian Marketing Institute • Speaker at Ad Tech, SES, iMedia, DigiMarCon & various other platforms • Digital Marketing since 2000 Twitter: @siddlal | e: slal@bruceclay.com Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/siddharthlal
- 4. ONLY 10X CONTENT ABOUT BRUCE CLAY • Founded 1996 • Invented advanced SEO web architecture • Proprietary SEO software • International offices – USA, Australia, Japan, UAE, India • 100+ digital experts • “Search Engine Optimization All-In-One for Dummies” • Strategic digital marketing solutions • Over 5000 SEO Professionals Trained Globally
- 5. ONLY 10X CONTENT REAL DATA = REAL STORY (News Category) Source: ahrefs.com
- 6. ONLY 10X CONTENT REAL DATA = REAL STORY (e-com category) Source: ahrefs.com
- 7. ONLY 10X CONTENT SHIFT IN CLICK BEHAVIOUR Impact on CTR isn’t uniform across industries Source: https://www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/ctr-google-2024-q4 Same study found that certain verticals are experiencing gains: •Legal & politics sectors saw a 7.39% point increase in CTR & 68.66% rise in search demand. •Education sector recorded ~6% increase in CTR for top results. When AIO appear, CTR for top 4 organic results in informational queries like “what, when, how” lost a combined 7.31% points in CTR
- 8. ONLY 10X CONTENT Strong Correlation Between Google SERPS & AI Visibility Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-on-innovation-part-2-more-insights-from-546000-ai-overviews/527947/
- 9. ONLY 10X CONTENT And Seen Across The Web
- 10. ONLY 10X CONTENT GenAI CHATBOTS RELY ON SEARCH Here is the Proof Source: https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1397241/dl?inline
- 11. ONLY 10X CONTENT HOW AI MAY IMPACT ORGANIC TRAFFIC Does this call for new metrics for measurement?
- 12. ONLY 10X CONTENT CUSTOMER JOURNEY – BUYING CYCLE Each brand moment matters and every time a consumer interacts with your brand, it raises the value of your brand in their eyes.
- 13. ONLY 10X CONTENT COMPLEX CUSTOMER JOURNEYS Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-aunz/consumer-insights/
- 14. ONLY 10X CONTENT Google Search – Most Trusted Index The Secret Test Step 1: Create a Term That Doesn’t Exist “Invented Fake Term” Step 2: Create a page with unique content around the “invented fake term” Step 3: Update robots.txt file to block all bots with the exception of Google Step 4: Submit Page to Google For Indexing Step 5: Get Indexed on Google Step 6: Submit your query (Prompt) on ChatGPT
- 15. ONLY 10X CONTENT Google Search – Most Trusted Index The Results ChatGPT Plus returned a valid answer based on the test. All other models either: Returned nothing Said the term didn’t exist Or made something up without referencing the page This confirmed two things: Google was the only search engine that knew about the term The AI responses reflected the exact phrasing, structure, and concepts from the made-up page Sources: https://acme.bot/blog/chatgpt-web-search-uses-google-search-and-not-bing-search-with-proof/ https://backlinko.com/chatgpt-using-google-search
- 16. ONLY 10X CONTENT Google vs OpenAI Google is the trusted source of truth for LLMs It is nearly impossible for LLM based search engines to do what Google has been doing for the past 27 years, i.e. Indexing the Internet & trying to surface higher quality, more trusted content. Google is a market leader for multiple reasons: Technology Data monopoly from its assets like Chrome, Android, Google Maps, GBP War Chest – It sits on billions of dollars of cash reserves & is generating massive amounts of cash each year. Distribution – It is the default search engine on Apple, Firefox & many other ChatGPT on the other hand (OpenAI) lost $5 billion (Spent $9 Billion to make $4 billion In 2024). How long can ChatGPT sustain millions of free users & losses like this? OpenAI is incurring significant losses due to the extremely high costs of developing, training, and running its large language models (LLMs). These costs include: Compute power-Running AI chatbots at scale is incredibly expensive, estimated to be over $15 million per day for OpenAI. Training models-The cost of training models alone was around $3 billion in 2024 Salaries-OpenAI spends a substantial amount on employee salaries, over $700 million in 2024 & the standard business expenses like salary, rent etc.
- 17. ONLY 10X CONTENT Challenges For GenAI Chatbots Regulatory environment There is a growing legal battle between content platforms and AI developers over the use of vast amounts of publicly available data. The New York Times vs OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement Reddit vs Anthropic (Claude chatbot) Getty Images vs Stability AI (the creators of the Stable Diffusion image generator) Authors class-action lawsuits vs OpenAI Music Labels (Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group) vs. AI Music Generators (Suno, Udio) As we speak laws are being proposed in many countries about data scraping from websites.
- 18. ONLY 10X CONTENT GOOGLE SEARCH – MOST TRUSTED INDEX Google Knowledge Graph 500 Billion Facts About 5 Billion Entities (2020) It’s a system that understands facts and information about entities from materials shared across the web, as well as from open source, special coding and licensed databases. Knowledge Panel Information boxes that appear on Google when you search for entities (people, places, organizations, things) that are in the Knowledge Graph.
- 19. ONLY 10X CONTENT GOOGLE SEARCH – MOST TRUSTED INDEX Google Knowledge Graph Source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-knowledge-graph/
- 20. ONLY 10X CONTENT Google Search – Most Trusted Index What This Means for SEO in the Age of AI Previously we only optimised for Google & knew that by default we would also get ranked on other search engines like Bing, Yahoo etc. SEO has become even more critical because now you don’t just optimise for ranking on Google but also for appearing in LLM based search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude If your website, get indexed & ranked in the Top 10 it increases your chances of being cited in AI searches.
- 21. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Structured Data Structured data (Schema markup) explicitly describes entities and their relationships using machine-readable formats like JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDF. Schema.org has defined over 800 types of schema. Some important ones for SEO and content are: WebPage, Organization, Product, Person, LocalBusiness). Ensure entities are properly connected using attributes like @id and sameAs By explicitly defining entities and their relationships, you help search engines "connect the dots" and better serve your content to the right audience, which can lead to increased organic traffic and improved conversions.
- 22. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Structured Data
- 23. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Semantic HTML LLMs, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, do not render JavaScript (i.e. they don’t scroll or click) when they process webpages for training data or user queries. Semantic HTML ensures that the core content and its structure are accessible and understandable directly from the raw HTML, making it much simpler for LLMs to identify the main content compared to pages filled with numerous non-semantic <div> or <span> tags Get a competitive edge with semantic markup
- 24. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Semantic HTML Source: https://www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/why-semantic-html-still-matters/
- 25. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Technical SEO Checklist Source: https://www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/why-semantic-html-still-matters/ • Page Speed (CWV) • Mobile Friendly • HTTPS • Site Architecture • URL Structure • Robots.txt • Canonicals • Meta Robots • XML Sitemaps • Site Navigation • Internal Linking Structure • Crawl errors (404, 500)
- 26. ONLY 10X CONTENT CONTENT Blog Content Checklist • Catchy Title to improve CTR • Tone of voice to match your TA • Author Picture • Author Bio • Date Published/Updated • Main keyword phrase/topic/entity mentioned in first 200 words • Semantic words • Internal Linking • External Linking • Custom images • Sub-headings • Well researched article • Add quotes from experts • Add original research
- 27. ONLY 10X CONTENT CONTENT Blog As A Link/Citation Magnet
- 28. ONLY 10X CONTENT CONTENT The Dangers of Using AI For Content Mass produced AI content is SPAM. It results in website bloating (lots of low value pages on the site), and while Google might discover these pages it will only crawl a fraction of them. The most dangerous consequence is damage done to your domain. Once your domain is labelled as LOW VALUE by Google it is very difficult to reverse and therefore the site will find it difficult to rank. Google Update: Scaled Content Abuse
- 29. ONLY 10X CONTENT CONTENT Keep the E-E-A-T check in mind Trust is the most important member of the E-E-A-T. E.g., a financial scam is untrustworthy, even if the content creator is a highly experienced and expert scammer who is considered the go-to on running scams! Experience – First hand or life experience about a topic (AI can’t replicate this) Expertise – The extent to which the content creator has the knowledge or skill for the topic. Authoritativeness - The extent to which the content creator is known as the go-to resources for the topic.
- 30. ONLY 10X CONTENT CONTENT Some examples that can help you cut thru the clutter Long Tail Optimisation – Create content to target the long tail queries Interactive Widgets – Think calculators, tools, quizzes Videos – AI search thrives on video-based content Tips & Tricks – Snackable, actionable content Case Studies & Whitepapers – Establish thought leadership (Link/citation magnets) Contests & Giveaways – They drive engagement & visibility (Link/citation magnets) Data & Statistics – Share research-backed insights such as customer insights, unique data sets. (Link/citation magnets) Expert roundups – interview subject matter experts to get perspectives not available elsewhere. (Link/citation magnets) Newsjacking – Tap into trending topics
- 31. ONLY 10X CONTENT CONTENT AI & Query Fan Out Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnKaUXbwL20&t=2s Query fan-out is a technique used by Google's AI-powered search issuing multiple related searches across subtopics to generate comprehensive responses to user queries.
- 32. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation” Search Engines as well as AI-driven tools like ChatGPT prioritise trusted, authoritative sources and guess what? The more people actively search for your brand, the more Google and AI models recognise you as an authority. Want a simple way to track your brand? Measure your brand’s search volume using tools like Google Keyword Planner (GKP). How to Build an SEO/AI Resilient Brand Online? Leverage every resource at your disposal: Owned Media (your website, email lists, social channels) Paid Media (Ads on Google, LinkedIn, Meta, YouTube, traditional advertising) Earned Media (press mentions, backlinks, guest features) Pro Tip: You don’t need to create new content for every platform. Repurpose smartly across multiple channels.
- 33. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation”
- 34. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation”
- 35. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation”
- 36. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation”
- 37. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation”
- 38. ONLY 10X CONTENT Core SEO Strategies Are Fundamental To AI Visibility Build Your Brand – “Search Everywhere Optimisation”
- 39. ONLY 10X CONTENT Free SEO Quick Audit + Free 30 Minute Consultation* Free SEO Audit valued at $1000 covers: • Competitor Intelligence (Traffic, Top 20 keywords, Domain Authority, Content- Top 10 pages) • Industry Insights (trending keywords, keyword clusters, PAA data (questions), audience insights) • Brand Strength • Your Keyword Rankings (Top 20) • Website Speed Performance *Valued at $1000 and limited to the first 5 people only. Hurry send email to Sid Lal on slal@bruceclay.com with subject: Free Audit
- 40. CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE • Private and confidential. Not for Public Distribution. • This material, including all images and references, is for the sole use of the intended recipient's and may contain confidential and privileged information. • If you are not the intended recipient and receive this material, you may not use, disclose, copy, or disseminate this information. In addition, please immediately destroy all copies of this material including electronic copies and contact Bruce Clay Australia. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. • Trademarks are the property of their respective holders.