AI didn’t kill SEO. It made the basics matter more. Every few months, a new “AI SEO hack” goes around. Right now it’s listicles: “Top 10 companies in X” pages that rank the brand that wrote them at number one, made to get picked up by ChatGPT and AI Overviews. Google’s John Mueller recently talked about this in an interview with David Iwanow. Here’s what I took from it: Shortcuts don’t last. Something works, everyone copies it, half of them do it badly, and the algorithms catch up. If your whole strategy depends on one trick, you’re left with nothing when it stops working. Build on a solid base. Listicles aren’t spam by default, but they have to be useful to the reader. AI search is still new and changing fast. The sites that hold up will be the ones search engines and AI tools actually want to show people. Know what your SEO agency is doing. Bad tactics aren’t new. Keyword stuffing and hidden text worked for a while too. Business owners should ask their vendors exactly what they’re doing and why. Technical SEO matters even more now. Mueller says AI systems are built on top of SEO. They crawl a bit differently, for example, for training versus fresh content, but he calls that “another flavor of technical SEO.” It’s not a reason to throw out what works. My takeaway: many “new” AI SEO tactics are old ones with new names, like cloaking, directories, and reciprocal links. What lasts is the same as always: a good user experience, content that reaches the right audience, and a brand people actually know. Basics before hacks. Every time. What’s the most overhyped “AI SEO” tactic you’ve seen this year? 👇 Credit: Roger Montti at Search Engine Journal, covering John Mueller’s interview with David Iwanow. #SEO #TechnicalSEO #AISearch #GEO #DigitalMarketing #Google