Marketers Must Balance Traditional SEO and AI Search as Growth Accelerates, Experts Warn – Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Despite the rapid growth of AI-driven search technologies, traditional SEO fundamentals remain the primary drivers of web traffic. Marketers must now strike a careful balance between optimizing for AI search and maintaining robust SEO practices to ensure sustained online visibility.

Who should care: CMOs, marketing directors, SEO leads, content operations managers, demand generation teams, and marketing automation specialists.

What happened?

AI search technologies are rapidly gaining traction, fundamentally changing how users access and interact with online information. These tools leverage advanced machine learning to deliver more personalized and conversational search experiences. However, despite this surge, the core principles of search engine optimization (SEO) continue to dominate as the primary drivers of website traffic. This creates a complex landscape for digital marketers, who must now integrate emerging AI optimization strategies alongside established SEO best practices. The growth of AI search reflects a significant shift in user behavior, emphasizing natural language queries and context-aware results. Yet, traditional SEO—focused on keyword relevance, site structure, and backlink quality—still outperforms AI search in driving consistent traffic volumes. This dual reality means marketers cannot rely solely on AI search optimization; instead, they must understand how these two approaches intersect and complement each other. In practice, this means reinforcing foundational SEO techniques such as content quality, site speed, and mobile optimization while experimenting with AI-driven tactics like optimizing for voice search and semantic search queries. The current environment highlights the importance of adopting innovative AI strategies without compromising the proven effectiveness of traditional SEO, ensuring brands maintain and enhance their online visibility amid evolving search dynamics.

Why now?

The rise of AI search is a direct response to growing demand for more personalized, efficient, and intuitive search experiences. Over the past 18 months, rapid advancements in AI technology have accelerated adoption of AI-powered search tools by both consumers and businesses. This trend aligns with a broader shift toward automation and machine learning across the digital marketing landscape. As AI search capabilities expand, businesses face increasing pressure to revisit and evolve their digital marketing strategies. Incorporating AI search optimization alongside strong SEO foundations is now essential to remain competitive. This dual focus enables organizations to effectively navigate the changing dynamics of online search, capturing new opportunities while preserving existing traffic streams.

So what?

The implications for marketing and SEO teams are clear and significant. As AI search adoption grows, the imperative to adapt and integrate these technologies with existing SEO strategies becomes more urgent. Marketers must invest in understanding how AI-driven search mechanisms operate and how they can complement traditional SEO efforts to maximize reach and engagement. This integration will be critical to maintaining a competitive advantage in an increasingly complex search environment. Teams that successfully blend AI optimization with SEO fundamentals will be better positioned to capture diverse user intents and search behaviors, driving sustained online visibility and traffic growth.

What this means for you:

• For SEO teams: Prioritize reinforcing SEO basics while actively exploring AI search optimization techniques to stay ahead.
• For content operations managers: Ensure content is crafted and optimized to perform well across both traditional and AI-driven search engines.
• For marketing directors: Strategically balance resource allocation between maintaining SEO fundamentals and developing AI search strategies.

Quick Hits

• Impact / Risk: Neglecting either SEO or AI search optimization risks diminished online visibility and reduced traffic.
• Operational Implication: Teams must remain agile, continuously adapting strategies to effectively incorporate both AI and traditional SEO tactics.
• Action This Week: Conduct an audit of current SEO strategies for AI compatibility and brief teams on integrating AI search optimization into existing workflows.