r/SEOTips101

Why SEO Is Not Dead Even With AI — My Take

I keep seeing people say SEO is dead because AI can answer questions now. I don't really agree with that.

From my point of view, AI actually makes SEO more useful.

1. We still need good information. AI needs information to work with, and someone still has to create it.
2. AI can help us improve our content. It can organize ideas, research topics and make the process faster.
3. AI can help us find the right information. Instead of spending hours researching, we can use AI to find and organize what we need.
4. AI can help with SEO itself. It can help identify keywords, search intent and topics, and then help us create more content around them.

So I don't think SEO is dead.

I think AI is becoming another tool for SEO.

What do you think? Is SEO actually dying, or is it just changing?

I’m working on SEO for a website in the dry cleaning and fabric care niche. I’m currently trying to build quality backlinks and looking for some practical strategies.

Something I find interesting is that your business competitors and your SEO competitors aren't necessarily the same.

Let's say you sell accounting software.
Your obvious competitors are other accounting software companies.
But for a search like:
Imagine "How to calculate VAT"
​
your SEO competitors might be:
• An accounting blog
• A government website
• A financial publication
• A completely different SaaS company
• An individual expert

They are competing with you for the same searcher, even though they aren't competing with you commercially.
So maybe there are actually two questions:
Who competes with my business?
vs.
Who competes with me for search visibility?
How do you discover the second group?
Do you already have a process for finding unexpected SEO competitors?

Hey guys, so I've spent weeks on studying these seo/geo tools, for something im building myself. Not naming tools or linking mine, but just wanted to share. The tactics are useful part for any SaaS founder (hopefully).

Things I liked:

• I left the payment page without buying. When I came back, a discount was already applied. I never had to ask for it.
• One tool gives you a link back to your website every time you leave a review on a software review site. That helps your site show up on Google, so a review request becomes a reward.
• After my 3-day trial ended, I could still download everything I'd made. That removes the fear of losing your work.
• A 7-day trial with no card needed. They emailed me about a free website check that came with it, then sent only one polite email after the trial ended.
• Customer quotes appeared on the loading screen while I waited, so the wait felt useful.
• A 1-5 rating question right after my first piece of content was finished, when I'd just seen the value.

Things that felt pushy:

• Cancelling took 5-6 screens and about 10 minutes. I got a discount offer signed by the CEO, and another message after I said no.
• When I cancelled, I was shown a page of the company's other products.
• My content carried a "made with [tool]" line that you pay to remove (during free trial).

If any of you are in this space, or just know some interesting ways of onboarding/offboarding, or retaining customers i'd love to know.

Competitor analysis usually happens like this:
Imagine "Let's analyze our competitors."
​
You do the research, create a report, look at their keywords, backlinks, content, etc.
Then a few months later, you do it again.
But competitors are changing every week.
New pages.
Lost pages.
New backlinks.
Lost backlinks.
Ranking changes.
New topics.
Updated content.
New products.
So I'm wondering if the more useful question is:
Imagine "What changed since the last time I looked?"
​
If you could get only 3 competitor alerts every week, what would you want them to be?
I'd probably choose:
1. Major ranking changes
2. New pages/content
3. Important backlinks gained or lost

But I'm curious what other SEOs would choose.