Sell resilience and become the glue that holds an organization together

Keith says: “The SEO who secures buy-in isn't selling rankings, they're selling resilience.”

What kind of resilience are you selling?

“More specifically, it's organisational resilience.

One of the challenges that you will face as an in-house SEO, and oftentimes as a consultant for companies, is getting buy-in for the things that you're recommending for sites – and this problem evolves just like our industry evolves.

As AI has become more prominent, and discussions around ‘GEO’ (this new thing that people are trying to make happen) have evolved, we have to evolve our understanding of how to sell what we offer as SEOs to an organisation that is potentially thinking about replacing everything with automation and AI.

Buy-in has become a lot more crucial than it has ever been. It's how we stay employed, but it's also how we protect organisations from poor decisions, such as replacing the entire team with AI.”

Should both agencies and individual SEOs use resilience language to sell their services now?

“Firstly, yes, agencies should be concerned about this as well. You are going to be talking to organisations that are either a bit too gung-ho about going all-in for some of the AI/LLM efforts, or you have others that are just terrified about the challenge it presents for their organisation and their existence overall.

The fact of the matter is, we see clicks diminishing thanks to AI overviews. Google is making good on its promise to become an answer engine, not just a search engine. Some publishers are seeing reported drops of around 50% in referral traffic from organic.

At the same time, you have executives who are obsessed with automation. There are companies out there that would outsource the CEO to AI if they could, just to make more money. Organisations are rushing to replace humans with AI, often as a cost play rather than a quality play. Then, they suffer for it.

Some surveys have shown that around 55% of the companies that have replaced large swaths of their organisation with AI now regret the mass layoffs. They're having to rehire folks to fix problems. Morning Brew even reported that 42% have abandoned their generative AI pilots in 2025.

As SEOs, we have to be the sober voices in the room around these technological advancements. Agencies and consultants can help with that as well.”

What does that sober voice sound like?

“The sober voice is basically helping organisations bridge AI with human-led governance, first and foremost.

Obviously, AI adds value, or we wouldn't be considering it, and organisations wouldn't be considering it. You can't afford to be a Luddite in this situation and say, ‘Ignore this advancement altogether, and stick with what we’ve been doing.’

However, the sober voice is also helping organisations use the LOE/LOI (Level of Effort/Level of Impact) Matrix to figure out what we can implement that makes sense in this advanced technology. What classic or traditional SEO can we stick with? What can we do to bridge the gap between those two efforts? Also, how do we prioritise that, based on impact?

It's also a matter of that sober voice rebranding SEO as a strategic portion of infrastructure, not just a tactic. This is something we should have been doing for the past two decades at this point. We are a crucial part of the strategic infrastructure of any organisation. Some people are selling it as just a tactic for keywords and links and those types of things.

The types of challenges that people might be facing are often the result of not approaching executives with a strategic mindset.”

Can you define which tasks should be done by AI and which by an individual, or is the line between those two moving too quickly?

“I've personally embraced AI for several tasks.

From a branding and strategic standpoint, I think AI is wonderful. ChatGPT, for example, is wonderful for sitting down and having a conversation about: ‘Here are our challenges as a brand. What have you seen other organisations do? What have you seen in documentation that can help us come to a better solution?’

As a human, you have an obligation to listen to what ChatGPT says and sanity check it. Make sure it makes sense before you hand that strategy deck over to an executive. ChatGPT is more than happy to go, ‘This is what you should do. Would you like me to put this in a PowerPoint presentation?’ Some people might be inclined to just send that over to the executive. That's foolishness.

It can also be used for content planning, ideation, and to help execute on some of the creation of the content that you're trying to build. The governance comes into play where you are sanity checking that and comparing what has been produced against your organisational standards, as well as your brand standards.

It's a real challenge for us, as people living in a time when we could conceivably hand over a lot of these things directly to the machines, to not let that laziness take over and stop using our own logic to determine what is best for the organisation. Our jobs could easily be replaced if we took that approach, but we shouldn't take that approach.”

You say that, to secure your SEO budget, your roadmap spot, and your seat at the table, stop speaking in SERPs and start speaking in systems. What are systems?

“This goes back to what I refer to as the strategic portion of the infrastructure of an organisation, as well as a website itself.

If you review any of the information coming out around so-called ‘GEO’ or AI optimization, as it relates to the technical aspects, it sounds an awful lot like SEO. It sounds very much like classic technical SEO, specifically. The systems that we are looking to optimize are not different from what we've optimized before. We just have to take a different approach to how we curate what we want these LLMs to consume, if we can control that.

We also need to continue to optimize to rank really well in the search engines, because the LLMs are using those search engines. They're going back around. If you ask for some recent information about something, what does it do? It goes and it looks at the search engines. It looks at the information that it has there.

Those systems aren't terribly different from what we've had to optimize before, and provide strategic value from, we just have to take a different mindset from it.”

With click-shrink and AI answers expanding, you say that it's not just about traffic, it's about the connective tissue between marketing products and AI governance.

Who did the system thinking role beforehand, and why should SEO take that on now?

“SEO goes beyond just developing roadmaps and worrying about taxonomy and schema, etc. We have to become (and we already should have been) a cross-functional stakeholder for folks.

I’m in a really good position right now, as an SEO Project Manager, because I can look at the overall strategic efforts of the organisation to build out their product and think about it in a way that acts as a connective tissue between not just what we want to accomplish for the users, but what will work very well within the search engines and also within LLMs and other AI learning models.

It’s a matter of being cross-functional in that sense but also working with the legal teams and coming up with some level of organisational governance around the use of AI; AI ethics, almost. How might we integrate it with customer service without replacing all the customer service folks, for example?

Klarna replaced all of their customer service folks with AI. Now, they're desperately trying to hire around 700 people to come back in. We are the nexus point for this change within organisations. Not a lot of other people are even thinking at the level of specificity that SEOs are. We have to think about all of these functions within an organisation, as they relate to AI, and provide guidance for it.

That helps us get by, and as individuals, it helps us solidify the importance of our roles and keep our jobs.”

Are we going back to the skill sets that were required in early digital marketing, like being entrepreneurial and inventive, and also being an evangelist and an educator?

“Yes, it really is. Again, these are skill sets that we should have been developing overall, not just in the age of AI, but since the beginning of digital marketing in general.

We're in the best position to do that because we think deeply about not just systems and optimizations, but also about users – as we should have been. Google has said, ‘If you are providing user value, we will rank you,’ basically. If you're answering their needs effectively, you're probably going to rank better.

We have been that Renaissance man, as it were, because we've been both technical and human-centric.”

What path would you recommend for someone who’s just getting started in the industry?

“It's unfortunate, and I feel bad for the newer folks in the industry, because you might find yourself siloed or at risk of your job being taken over by AI. At the same time, we are the best industry to hop into and learn how to navigate your career going forward, in the age of AI.

There are so many folks in our industry just giving information away. You don't really get that from many other industries in the world, where people are saying, ‘I have expertise in this, and I'm willing to teach you how to do exactly what I do.’ Aleyda Solis is the perfect example. She is someone who is doing well in the industry but has turned around and outstretched her hand to bring people up behind her with her learning tools.

There are many others out there too, like Kristina Azarenko, who is constantly pushing out technical SEO information for folks to learn. If you want to become a system thinker, you really do need to take a deep dive into technical SEO. You should learn about what it takes to build a website.

You don't necessarily need to learn JavaScript or Python or anything like that, but learn about how sites are built, what it takes to execute the rendering of a site to a user, and how that reflects on how the bots interact with your websites as well. The more you can learn about the technology that you're optimizing, the better situated you are to become that central hub for systems’ understanding.

We've had so many challenges as SEOs throughout the past couple of decades. There’s a perennial voice that keeps popping up and saying, ‘SEO is dead!’ I’m sure you’ve heard that many times, and it never proves to be true. We are just faced with new challenges. For those of us who’ve been in it for a while, the new challenges don't really faze us very much.

We adapt, we evolve, and we become knowledgeable about this supposed challenge that we're facing. AI is no different from that.”

Keith, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“SEO in 2026 means becoming the connective tissue between product, AI governance, and content credibility.”

Keith Goode is an SEO Product Manager at the Permanente Medical Group. Find out more over at GoodeSearch.com.