Welcome to The B2B Marketing Brief! Your front-row seat to the ever-evolving world of B2B marketing. Where we keep it real—sharing wins, tackling pain points, and uncovering growth opportunities. Each edition is packed with stories, tips, and the latest trends to help you master the art of B2B engagement. Get your cup of coffee, and let’s get marketing!

In this issue:

• Is Traditional SEO Dead?

• SEO Isn’t Dying, It’s Getting Smarter

• Toys vs. Tools: The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Evaluating AI Brand Monitoring Tools

Is Traditional SEO Dead?

TL;DR: No, traditional SEO is not dead. BUT – and it’s a vast but.. it is evolving at pace.

The core principles of SEO, such as high-quality content, relevance, and authority, remain crucial. However, businesses can no longer rely solely on ranking for keywords to drive traffic. Instead, they must adapt to AI-driven search landscapes by focusing on brand trust, engagement, and diverse content distribution.

SEO is now about:

• Owning first-party data and building email lists.

• Creating engaging multimedia content like videos, podcasts, and interactive tools.

• Becoming a trusted brand that AI systems reference in search results.

• Understanding AI-driven algorithms and optimizing for AI-generated summaries.

Rather than being a death sentence for SEO, AI is forcing a transformation that rewards those who innovate and stay ahead of search trends.

But How to Drive Traffic Despite AI-Dominated Search?

Here are 6 rules to keep in mind:

Rule #1: Optimize for AI-Generated Snippets

Rather than fighting AI, adapt your content to be the source Google selects for its AI-generated responses.

How to:

• Use clear, concise answers (bullet points, short paragraphs).

• Structure content with FAQs and key takeaways.

• Incorporate schema markup to improve content visibility.

Rule #2: Focus on Brand Authority and Expertise

With Google's emphasis on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness):

How to:

• Build brand authority through in-depth, well-researched content.

• Get mentions in reputable sources to reinforce credibility.

• Showcase author bios and real-world expertise.

Rule #3: Prioritize Long Tail and Conversational Keywords

AI search relies heavily on natural language processing (NLP), making long-tail queries more relevant.

How to:

• Optimize for question-based searches ("How to...") and conversational phrases.

• Use semantic search optimization rather than just keywords.

Rule #4: Leverage AI for Content Creation and Strategy

AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Semrush, SurferSEO, and Clearscope can help create content that aligns with AI search priorities.

How to:

• Generate data-driven content based on trending topics.

• Use AI analytics to find search intent patterns.

• Optimize content for voice search and multimodal AI search.

Rule #5: Diversify Beyond Google Search

Since AI-driven answers reduce reliance on Google, explore alternative traffic sources:

How to:

• Video SEO (YouTube is a major search engine in itself!)

• Social media (TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram trending content)

• Email marketing (own your audience through direct engagement)

Rule #6: Encourage Engagement and First-party Data Collection

With AI taking over search, it's critical to build direct relationships with your audience.

How to:

• Encourage sign-ups for email newsletters.

• Create interactive content (polls, quizzes, webinars).

• Build communities where users return for exclusive insights.

While AI-generated answers are shifting how users interact with search engines, SEO is far from dead. The focus is now on optimizing for AI-driven search experiences, building brand authority, and creating engaging, value-driven content that drives users to act beyond just clicking a link. By adapting to AI search trends, businesses can not only survive but thrive in this new SEO era. So why just rank – when getting it right means your innovative brand can reign?

SEO Isn’t Dying, It’s Getting Smarter

(But only if you are 🧠 too) but who’s listening?

It’s safe to say we’re way past wondering if AI is influencing the way people search. Think Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. Your client’s nephew searches TikTok before even thinking of Chrome.

He’s not alone, and we’ve got the data to prove it. A 2025 Statista report found that one in ten U.S. internet users already turns to generative AI as their first stop for online search. That was 13 million people in 2023, and it’s expected to grow to 90 million by 2027.

It’s not a surprise to us marketers. When was the last time YOU tabbed away from ChatGPT to ask a search engine something? Same.

We’re here to break it all down: what’s changing, why it matters, and what you need to do right now to stay visible.

Search Used to Be Linear. Not Anymore.

Remember when SEO was just about keywords, metadata, and a technically sound site? Same. But now, the “top of the funnel” often starts inside a chat box and ends with zero clicks. Your audience is asking questions, getting AI-powered answers, and sometimes not even seeing your beautifully optimized landing page.

Keyword-and-tech specs are still crucial. But AI is changing how your content gets surfaced.

1. Search engines are pushing AI-generated answers to questions ahead of traditional results and paid ads.

Search engines—especially Google—are flooding the top of the page with AI-generated answers. A 2025 report from Authoritas discovered these “AI overviews” are appearing in 30% of searches and nearly 75% of problem-solving queries. Your potential buyer asks a question, and boom! An AI box delivers the answer. No scroll, no click, and almost no chance to gain some sweet brand recognition unless you’re in that box.

2. Users are asking more conversational, complex questions.

Thanks to voice-to-text and NLP interfaces, people are more comfortable asking long, layered questions (“What’s the best CRM for mid-sized B2B teams that already use HubSpot?” compared to yesteryear’s “Best B2B CRM”). It’s basically a step back to when search engines first rolled onto the scene (“Where can I buy Phish tickets?”).

3. Generative models are citing sources (sometimes) and influencing what gets visibility.

Models like Gemini, Perplexity, and even ChatGPT (via Bing or plug-ins) are starting to call the shots on who makes it into the AI spotlight. But how do you earn a spot? Structure, authority, and intent. These tools reward content that’s technically clean, semantically aligned, and genuinely helpful. Educational, research-driven, and high-E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) content rises to the top. Thin, brand-first fluff gets filtered out (yay!).

How SEO Pros Are Navigating the AI Complexity

Let’s be real: AI didn’t toss the old SEO playbook. But it did scribble in the margins and rip out a few chapters. What’s left requires sharper thinking and a new set of tools.

So how are the best SEO teams stepping up? They’re using AI as an SEO accelerator (vroom vroom).

✅ Identifying semantic relationships between keywords.

Keyword matching is table stakes. Real SEO power is in knowing what your audience means. Semantic analysis helps AI understand the context and intent behind search queries, grouping terms like “customer onboarding software,” “user activation tools,” and “time-to-value metrics” into one clear use case.

This makes it easier to build content that ranks for clusters of related queries, not just one term. It’s how you capture traffic and guide users toward fewer dead ends.

✅ Spotting new intent patterns before they trend.

Traditional SEO waits for data to show up in search volume reports. AI doesn’t. It can help uncover emerging queries and intent signals before they spike in volume, giving you a head start on content the rest of the market hasn’t even thought about yet.

For example, if AI tools surface a growing search pattern around “AI tools for revenue teams,” you can create value-first content that stakes your claim before the competition catches on. Cool, right?

✅ Generating outlines, summaries, and ideas at scale.

AI can handle the heavy lifting so your team focuses on the big swings. It can spin up briefs, titles, and content calendars in minutes. Clear H1s and H2s, bullet lists, straight-to-the-point intros, and author bios that signal real expertise are crucial.

If you show it your content library, AI can also spot content gaps, help you repurpose what’s working, and move faster from idea to publication.

✅ Automating site audits and backend fixes.

Tedious but essential SEO tasks—crawling for broken links, janky redirects, and slow load times—are essential for performance and rankings. AI tools can flag issues fast, but they’re also helping SEOs get ahead by automating structured data implementation.

Want to show up in AI Overviews or snag a featured snippet? You’ll need clean markup. FAQ, how-to, article, and breadcrumb schema using JSON-LD are your new best friends.

What AI Still Fumbles (and Why Strategy Still Wins)

For all its speed and scale, AI isn’t a magic wand. It can supercharge your SEO, but only if you know when to hit the gas and when to take the wheel.

AI can hallucinate facts, misalign with your brand voice, or churn out generic content. It's great at summarizing, but not at storytelling. It mimics your tone, but doesn’t understand your POV. It knows what’s trending, but not what your ICP needs at the decision-making stage.

That’s why strategy still wins. Google knows it, too: they’re doubling down on E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. In a sea of AI sludge, E-E-A-T is the credibility check that decides who floats to the top. It’s the difference between being “just another result” and the trusted voice AI pulls from.

What Actually Works for SEO in 2025?

So no, AI isn’t the enemy. But it’s not autopilot either. To actually win in this new era of search, you need a strategy that knows when to lean in and when to push back.

Here’s what you should consider doing differently in 2025:

🔍 Optimize for “Share of Model.”

SEO teams can boost Share of Model by publishing authoritative, well-structured content and building topical depth. We rely on clear headlines, structured data, schema markup, and plainspoken, fact-based language.

Educational content (like frameworks, how-tos, and explainer pieces) often wins here. If the model sees your content as the most useful, you'll be the brand it pulls into the spotlight.

But there’s a path for commercial keywords to show up, too. Especially through product comparisons and competitive breakdowns that help buyers evaluate their options in the consideration phase.

🧠 Think in topics, not just keywords.

Keyword-stuffing has been long dead, and good riddance! In 2025, winning SEO is about building intent-driven content that mirrors how people naturally search. That means moving past robotic keyword repetition and leaning into thoughtful topic clusters, internal linking, and structured content that solves problems.

Build around how users think, not just what they type. The payoff? Stronger engagement, better rankings, and a site that earns trust from readers.

✍️ Speak to people. Signal to search.

If it reads like a bot wrote it, no one’s sticking around. SEO content today needs to do more than check boxes. That means building pages that answer real questions with clarity and confidence. Think: frameworks, visuals, POVs, and practical advice tailored to decision-makers.

A page on “B2B SaaS onboarding” shouldn't just define the term. It should speak directly to the SaaS leader evaluating new tools. It should outline the onboarding journey, highlight friction points, and help readers understand what success looks like.

The more specific and helpful your content is, the more likely buyers are to fill out a demo form, click a CTA, or bring your brand into the consideration set.

Fuel for Thought 🚀

AI won’t kill SEO. But it will kill lazy SEO. If your strategy hasn’t changed since SGE launched (or worse, since ChatGPT launched) you’ve fallen way behind.

2025 is about building content that’s discoverable, trustworthy, and aligned with how real people (and machines) search. It’s not about more content. It’s about the right content, built for humans and optimized for discovery.

Toys vs. Tools: the B2B Marketer’s Guide to Evaluating AI Brand Monitoring Tools

Remember this old chestnut? AI is only as good as the data it’s hoovered up. Aargh!

As AI tools fast become the first place prospects turn to learn about our companies, we’re reminded yet again: What they say about us depends on the data they’re feeding on.

Which brings us to the million-dollar question: What do AI search engines (think Perplexity) and LLMs (think ChatGPT) know about our brands? What are customers going to discover about our brands, offerings, and product categories when they look us up using AI? And where on earth are they getting information from?

Helping marketers answer these questions is fueling a burgeoning industry, one that’s growing faster than NVIDIA became a household name. Just a few months ago, there were only a handful of tools. Today, there are over 20. These include SEO old timers—like Semrush, BrightEdge, Conductor, seoClarity, and Ahrefs (to some extent)—to buzzy start-ups—like Airank, AthenaHQ, AmIOnAI, Bluefish AI, BrandLight, Evertune, ModelMonitor, Peec AI, Profound, RankScale, Scrunch AI, ShareOfModel, Waikay, Yext, and Xfunnel.

It feels like everyone’s rushing into the brand-visibility-in-AI market like it’s the last roll of toilet paper during the pandemic.

So that’s the rub. How's a B2B marketer supposed to work out which one to use? To separate the good from the gobbledygook?

Here are 6 questions to set you on the right path.

AI Search Optimization: Six Questions to Ask Before You Buy

Q1. First, what are you inputting? Is it just your domain? Or can you also track product names, categories, competitors, and personas?

Why it matters: Some tools only let you enter a domain, but enterprise marketers need more. We need to know if our products and brand categories are being picked up in AI search—and how they’re showing up. A domain-level result is fine for a vibe check. But that’s about it.

Q2. Which AI search engines does it check? Is it just ChatGPT? And does it differentiate between models, say GPT-4o vs. GPT-3.5?

Why it matters: Our buyers aren’t loyal to one LLM—they bounce between platforms. And within each platform, multiple models treat your brand differently. In a multi-model world, we need multi-model visibility.

Q3. Does it support semantic search—or is it stuck in 2012? This is a big one: Can it understand the meaning behind queries and the context of who’s asking?

Why it matters: AI search isn’t a CTRL+F for brand words. It’s semantic. That means its answers change based on who’s asking, how they ask, and what they’re really trying to figure out. Tools that treat every prompt the same ignore the nuance of user profiles (like a CISO vs. a junior dev) and context (buying mode vs. casual research). This is maybe the most important question you can ask.

Q4. Does it show you citations—and flag the fake or outdated ones? Can you see where it is pulling info from? And does it check if those sources are real, current, and still live?

Why it matters: Citations are your breadcrumb trail—they show where the AI is getting its info about you, your products, and your competitors. That’s gold, because it’s how you reverse-engineer influence. But here’s the catch: LLMs often cite outdated content, dead links, or just hallucinate sources like they’re fresh off a week at Burning Man. Choose tools that show citations—and verify if they’re valid.

Q5. Does it help you improve your AI search posture? Does it actually tell you how to show up more often (and better) in AI search?

Why it matters: Data is nice. Direction is better. The best tools don’t stop at telling you what’s wrong—they help you figure out where to publish, what to say, and which keywords and story angles will actually move the needle.

Q6. Is it easy to use? Does it use visualizations and summaries?

Why it matters: If your team can’t use it, it’s not valuable. Usability, clarity, and at-a-glance insights are what separate a high-impact tool from a very expensive doorstop.

A final thought: Remember how we asked ourselves what our prospects might discover about our brand through AI search—not Google (no offense, Bing)? Well, in the near future enterprise buyers won’t merely as ChatGPT, they’ll delegate discovery almost entirely to autonomous digital assistants.

In that world, AI search won’t just influence buyer shortlists—agentic AI systems will build them. And with every new LLM release, we’re getting closer to that reality—fast. The upshot? Elbowing your way into a shortlist won’t depend on what human buyers read on ChatGPT. It’ll depend on what AI agents find, know, and say about you—on AI search.

Which makes brand visibility in AI a whole new kind of competitive advantage. The AI tide is rising, time to grab a paddle.

Catch our next issue out on 28 May 2025!

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