AI SEO is one of the most searched, and most misunderstood, terms in marketing right now.
Business owners want to know whether AI can now do the job an agency used to do, whether it is safe to publish AI-written content, and whether investing in SEO still makes sense when the search results page itself is changing shape. This page answers all three, plainly and without hype in either direction.
Our position at Almond Marketing is straightforward: human-led SEO, enhanced by AI.
We use AI throughout our own work, for research, analysis, planning and automation, and we are not precious about admitting it. What we do not do is treat AI as a complete SEO strategy in itself.
AI is a tool, not a strategy. It cannot replace commercial understanding, strategic judgement, technical implementation, editorial oversight, accountability, or the kind of knowledge of your business that only comes from someone actually paying attention to it.
What Is AI SEO?
AI SEO gets used to mean two different things, and most of the confusion around the term comes from people mixing them up.
The first meaning is using AI tools as part of the SEO process itself, for keyword research, technical audits, content drafting, competitor analysis and reporting. This is about working faster and more efficiently on ordinary SEO tasks.
The second meaning is optimising for AI-generated search features, including Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, as well as answers produced by tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini. This is about visibility beyond a traditional list of blue links.
This side of AI SEO overlaps with two newer disciplines: generative engine optimisation (GEO) and answer engine optimisation (AEO).
Almond’s approach touches both. We use AI to speed up our own process, and we help clients build the visibility, structure and authority signals that support discovery across traditional and AI-driven search.
What AI Can Actually Do for SEO
Used properly, AI tools have become genuinely useful for specific parts of SEO work. The areas that benefit most tend to be the same across most businesses:
- Processing large amounts of data quickly, such as keyword lists, crawl reports or competitor content
- Drafting first versions of content, meta descriptions or briefs to work from
- Spotting patterns across search results and competitor sites
- Automating repetitive technical checks
- Summarising long reports or research into a format that is quicker to act on
- Supporting audience and search intent research at a useful scale
Used well, AI speeds SEO up. It does not replace the thinking, but it removes a lot of the friction around getting to that thinking.
A technical audit that once took a full day of manual checking can now flag many surface-level issues in minutes. That frees up an SEO consultant’s time to focus on the handful of issues that actually matter for a specific business, rather than working through a long list of low-value tasks first.
How We Actually Use AI at Almond
When we start work with a new client, AI supports several early stages of the process. This can include keyword research across hundreds of potential terms, an initial technical scan of the website, and a first pass at competitor content in the client’s sector.
Later in the process, AI can help draft reporting summaries, so our team can spend more time interpreting what the numbers actually mean for a client’s business rather than assembling the numbers in the first place.
None of that replaces judgement. It means that by the time a human strategist sits down to plan the campaign, they are working from a richer, faster-assembled picture than they would have had five years ago.
The judgement stage is where the value is created.
Deciding which three of forty flagged technical issues to fix first, based on what will move the needle for that specific business, is not something current AI tools do reliably. Deciding whether a competitor’s content strategy is actually working, or simply looks busy, takes real experience.
That is the layer separating effective SEO from a long list of AI-generated recommendations that never gets properly prioritised.
What AI Cannot Do for Your SEO
AI does not know your business. It cannot understand your commercial position in the way someone on your team, or a marketer who has worked with businesses like yours, does.
Better prompting does not fix that. It is a structural gap, not a temporary limitation.
AI cannot:
- Understand your specific commercial priorities, constraints and trade-offs
- Make a strategic judgement call and live with the consequences of being wrong
- Take accountability if a change to your website causes a problem
- Apply editorial judgement about what a page is actually trying to achieve
- Understand the nuance of your market, competitors and customers
- Notice when something does not add up because the underlying data is incomplete or misleading
This is the gap human-led SEO fills.
AI can produce a first draft of a page. Whether that page is the right thing to build in the first place, or whether it will convert the type of customer you actually want more of, is a different question entirely.
AI also cannot sit in a meeting with you, understand what is happening in your business this quarter, and adjust a strategy accordingly. That still takes a person paying proper attention.
Why Commercial Judgement and Accountability Still Matter
Software can process data and generate a recommendation in seconds. It cannot decide what your business should prioritise this quarter, take responsibility if a change goes wrong, or understand the nuance of your market in the way an experienced team can.
This is where Almond’s experience earns its place.
The agency is led by Phillipa James, who brings almost 20 years of marketing experience and has run Almond Marketing for more than 11 years. Her background spans SEO, paid search, content, analytics, customer journeys and wider marketing strategy.
That depth of experience shapes the judgement layered on top of every AI-assisted process we use. It helps us decide what to prioritise, what to ignore, and what a result actually means commercially for a specific client, not just technically for a specific page.
Accountability is the other half of this. If an AI tool gives you a wrong recommendation, there is no one to call. If Almond gets something wrong, we own it, fix it and explain what happened.
How AI Overviews, GEO and AEO Fit Into AI SEO
Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode generate answers directly on the results page, rather than simply listing links for someone to click through. GEO and AEO describe related efforts to improve visibility in generative and answer-led search experiences.
The terminology can be confusing, but the practical position is relatively clear.
According to Google’s guidance on AI features and your website, there are no additional technical requirements to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond the same fundamentals that support good traditional SEO.
That means crawlability, indexability, useful content, internal links, good page experience, clear text and accurate structured data still matter.
Our GEO service treats this as an extension of strong SEO rather than a separate discipline, with location-specific work across Essex, London, Romford, Emerson Park and Elm Park.
No agency can guarantee that a website will be selected as a source within an AI Overview or chat response. These systems make those decisions dynamically, and the criteria continue to evolve.
Good SEO, GEO and AEO practice can improve your chances of being selected as a source. It cannot promise a particular citation, ranking or number of clicks.
AI-Generated Content and SEO
AI-generated content is not inherently bad for SEO.
Google has said that appropriate use of AI or automation is not against its guidelines. However, using automation primarily to manipulate search rankings violates Google’s spam policies.
AI-written content still needs to be accurate, original, relevant and genuinely useful. Content that has not been checked, edited or grounded in real expertise tends to read as generic. Generic content rarely performs well against pages written with genuine knowledge of a subject or business.
The question is not simply, “Was AI used?”
The better questions are:
- Who checked the facts?
- What experience or insight has been added?
- Is the content genuinely useful to the intended reader?
- Does it support the customer journey?
- Is it written for people rather than produced to capture keywords?
As Google’s guidance on AI-generated content makes clear, quality matters more than the method used to produce the first draft.
Looking Beyond Rankings and Traffic
A narrow focus on rankings alone misses most of what matters commercially. At Almond, every SEO campaign is built around the wider picture:
- Business objectives
- Leads and revenue
- Customer journeys and conversion
- Brand positioning and messaging
- Technical requirements
- Content quality
- Analytics and measurement
- Paid and organic search working together
- Your internal resources and wider marketing activity
AI can help you produce more content, faster. It cannot tell you whether that content is aimed at the right stage of your customer journey, or whether your landing pages are built to convert the traffic SEO sends them.
A page can rank well and still fail your business commercially. That is a distinction AI cannot make on its own.
Is This the Right Approach for Your Business?
AI is worth using, and worth taking seriously, but it works best as part of a strategy someone experienced is actually steering, not as a replacement for one.
Plenty of business owners get real value from using AI tools for parts of their own SEO. Where most people plateau is strategy, technical depth and knowing which of the many possible actions will actually move the needle for their specific business.
Almond combines AI-assisted speed with the accountability and judgement a tool cannot provide. That balance runs through our wider marketing services, from paid search and social to analytics.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO covers two related things: using AI tools within the SEO process itself, for research, drafting and technical analysis, and optimising a website’s visibility within AI-generated search features such as AI Overviews. Almond uses AI for the first while applying human strategy and judgement to both.
Will AI replace SEO?
No. AI is changing how some SEO work gets done, particularly research, drafting and technical analysis. It has not removed the need for strategy, commercial judgement or accountability.
Search is not going away. It is diversifying, which arguably makes experienced guidance more valuable, not less.
How is AI changing SEO?
The clearest changes are the arrival of AI Overviews and AI Mode on Google, the growth of tools such as ChatGPT as search destinations, and the way AI has sped up research and content production.
The fundamentals of good SEO : relevant content, technical soundness and real authority : remain important.
Is AI content bad for SEO?
Not inherently. AI-written content can be useful when it is checked, edited and grounded in genuine expertise. Content produced mainly to manipulate rankings, or content that is thin and generic, is unlikely to perform well.
Do I still need an SEO agency if I use AI tools myself?
It depends on what you are trying to achieve. AI tools can help with parts of SEO, but most businesses need support with strategy, technical depth, prioritisation and implementation.
How do I know if my SEO agency is using AI responsibly?
Ask directly. A good agency should explain which parts of its process use AI, and which parts rely on human judgement and review.
Can an agency guarantee my site will be cited by AI Overviews or ChatGPT?
No. Be wary of anyone who says otherwise. AI systems select sources dynamically. A good agency can improve your chances of being selected as a source, but cannot guarantee a specific result.
Is it expensive to add AI to an SEO strategy?
AI mainly changes how quickly certain groundwork gets done rather than adding a separate cost layer. Almond does not charge extra for using AI as part of its process; it is simply part of how we work more efficiently on your behalf.
Want to talk through where AI genuinely fits your SEO strategy, and where it does not? Contact the Almond Marketing team to arrange a free chat.
