Quick Summary
With all the changes in technology and rapid growth of AI agents and tools, SEO is adapting. I have been listening to the SEO in 2025 podcast and enjoying the short insights and SEO tips from professionals on what SEO will look like in 2025.
In this post, I look at some of the more common themes I’ve noticed and my understanding of them in the episodes, so far. It may all change as the year progresses! Up to now, I have noticed EEAT, entities, user intent, and niche content working on topical authority are the areas to focus on. Keywords, while always relevant, seem to have a slightly different place in SEO. These are all areas of SEO that were relevant before, but the order of relevance and degree of relevance is changing.
Table of Contents
- Why Helpful Content Wins in 2025 (EEAT)
- Topical Authority: Become the Go-To Expert
- Go Niche: Use Long-Tail Keywords That Convert
- Understand User Intent and Write Accordingly
- How to Optimize for Voice Search and AI Overviews
- Content Formatting: Structure for Humans and Bots
- Content Updates: Don’t Let It Go Stale
- Shift from Keywords to Entities
- Final Thoughts: Smarter SEO for a Smarter Web
- FAQ: SEO in 2025
Why Helpful Content Wins in 2025 (EEAT)
Google’s no longer just matching keywords—it’s evaluating the quality and credibility of your content. That’s where EEAT comes in:
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
If your content shows real-life experience, solid expertise, and reliable sourcing, it’s far more likely to rank. Case studies, original data, firsthand stories, and citing trusted sources all work in your favour. Why? Well, it’s always been important to create content with EEAT in mind. However, now with so many people using AI-generated content, it’s easy to create content that does NOT have the characteristics of EEAT. Creating EEAT content will stand out to search engines.
How to create Topical Authority and become the Go-To Expert
Generalists don’t stand out anymore. Instead, Google favors sites that go deep into one subject, or have topical authority.
If you want to be the expert in your niche?
- Focus on one topic
- Build a content hub with internal linking
- Avoid heavy JavaScript (AI bots struggle to read it)
- Keep your layout simple and crawlable
This way, both users and AI tools know exactly what your site is about. Creating topical authority will lead to content satisfying EEAT. It’s hard develop topical authority without diving deep into a subject and thus generating content that displays expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness.
Think about Going Niche by Using Long-Tail Keywords That Convert
Trying to rank for head terms like “SEO tips,” is getting harder and harder and the bigger players and sites will be the “winners” for these terms. Instead try and rank for more specific queries like “how to optimize a Squarespace blog for Google in 2025.” In other words, look for the long-tail keywords.
These long-tail keywords usually have lower search volume but much higher conversion potential because they match clear user intent. This is exactly what you want, users that have a higher probability of converting and conversion leads to higher ROI.
Use tools like:
- Google’s “People Also Ask”
- AnswerThePublic
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ubersuggest
- SpyFu
to find the long tail keywords for your specific niche.
Understand User Intent and Write Accordingly
Search intent is the why behind a query. Once you understand you user’s intent, your content becomes instantly more valuable leading to the results you want from your website visitors leading to greater ROI. Being able to match the content you create to your ideal user’s mindset, you’ll be able to guide them towards conversion.
Below is a list of the different user intents; what the intent means to the user; the optimal type of content to create to provide this intent.
| Intent Type | What Users Want | Best Content Types |
| Informational | To learn or get answers | Blog posts, guides, FAQs, how-tos |
| Navigational | To reach a specific site/page | Clear site structure, homepage links, optimized titles |
| Commercial | To compare options before buying | Product comparisons, reviews, case studies |
| Transactional | To make a purchase or take an action | Product pages, CTAs, checkout flows, discounts/promotions |
How to Optimize for Voice Search and AI Overviews
More and more people are using voice tools to do their searches. Many people are on their mobile devices, driving, going from one place to the other and also searching for things online. Their hands are busy so they’re using their voice.
When people ae searching in Google, AI Overviews are providing the answer more often now. People aren’t even scrolling down to see you website. This means your website content has to have the potential to show up in AI overviews and AI agents to eventually be referenced and viewed by your customers. These types of tools, like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews love clear, direct answers.
So in order to be considered for these types of content,
- Use question-based headers
- Offer short answers under 50 words
- Use definitions and list formats
- Avoid jargon and be clear
Also, formatting matters: headers, bullet points, and summaries make your content easier to skim and parse through for both AI and humans.
Format you Content with Structure for Humans and Bots
No one has time to sit and read a long, wall of text. However, do have just enough time to skim the important point or the headlines. So when creating your web content consider
✅ Use H2s and H3s to break up sections
✅ Add a summary at the top and a conclusion at the bottom
✅ Include FAQ and glossary-style chunks
✅ Apply schema markup (FAQPage, Article, Product) when relevant
Think of each section of content as something that could rank on its own, rather than trying to rank the entire post/content.
Update Content to prevent it from going stale
SEO content has a shelf life. Even if the topic, ideas and content of your content is evergreen, the components that are associated with SEO do have to be updated. Now, with the surge in AI coming into our internet world and search, the SEO has to adapt, thus making the SEO components of our content outdated. What ranked well last year might be outdated today and needs to be refreshed!
Depending on your industry, run content audits:
- Every 4–6 weeks (for fast-paced industries)
- Quarterly (for stable niches)
Updates can include:
- Fixing broken links
- Refreshing stats
- Reworking underperforming sections
- Reformatting for AI-readability
- Consider updating your content for any of the areas mentioned in this post
Shift from Keywords to Entities
It’s no longer about stringing keywords together, it’s about writing around entities. (Entities have always be there, but it’s more relevant than ever now.
So what is an entity? Examples of entities are a real-world object, person, place, or concept, such as, “Pilates,” “Airbnb,” “Email Marketing Software.” The entity is what you’re writing or talking about.
Focus your content around these entities instead of obsessing over keywords, keyword clusters and fitting words into your text. This will help your site appear in the Knowledge Graph and will also strengthen your topical authority.
For your own understanding, create a visual knowledge graph for your site with connected themes and internal links. This will not only help you understand what each webpage is about and how to connect the internal links, but it will also help you create the architecture for your website.
Final Thoughts on what SEO will look like in 2025
It has never been about gaming the system or outsmarting Google. In 2025, it is even less about gaming the system. It’s about understanding the internet, how the components in it work together and how people are using it. That means:
- Writing with intention
- Focusing on value and expertise
- Structuring for both AI and users
- Keeping things fresh and relevant
In 2025 and to level up your SEO this year, start by shifting your mindset from tactics to strategy. Making a point to understand and make a plan before doing this will also help future-proof your site.
FAQ
EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google uses these signals to decide if your content is high-quality and trustworthy. stands for Experience,
Keywords are search phrases. Entities are real-world concepts (like “digital marketing”). Writing around entities helps Google better understand and rank your content
If you’re in a fast-moving industry, audit your content every 4–6 weeks. For slower industries, every quarter works well.
Short, clear answers with headers, bullet points, and FAQs. Use definitions and get to the point quickly.
Focus on a niche, publish multiple related articles, and interlink them. Over time, your site will become the go-to resource in that area.
- What SEO Will Look Like in 2025 - May 8, 2025
- How to use ChatGPT to create a project for an old website - May 2, 2025
- What Are the Top SEO Terms You Need to Know? (With Examples) - May 1, 2025
