2025 Year in Review
Has it really been thirteen years already?
Wow, time flies.
For those who don’t know, every year I write a year in review post, just to reflect on what I’ve learned, accomplished, or how things are changing in SEO.
Sorry I haven’t written a lot this year for this blog, I have been incredibly busy creating content for clients, and working on their projects. So this year, I want to talk about what I’ve seen firsthand in the SEO industry, including what I see working and not working with clients and their competitors.
Brand Footprint is Still a Major Factor
“Brand” and the characteristics of a brand are still markers for sites that Google wants to trust. It was true in 2008 when then CEO Eric Schmidt said that was how they separated the trustworthy pages from the “cesspool”, it was true in 2016 with the proliferation of social media into everyday life, and it is true as we enter 2026, perhaps more than ever.
REMEMBER: Google can only measure what’s online, if it’s not available online, it won’t count.
Quality of Content is Incredibly Important
Google looks at the words in a page, and it in some ways, it has gotten less sophisticated and regressed, perhaps due to their AI initiatives and tweaking of the search algorithms. But the one thing that Google can measure is how users interact with web pages. This something Google representatives have said repeatedly, and it does not rely on Google Analytics.
But I tell you without a shadow of a doubt that articles that are well-written and organized, with helpful factual information, on websites that are well-designed tend to rise to to the top of rankings, when every other factor is similar.
AI is Not Your Savior
Software companies, SEO companies, and website content managers look at churning out content as a “hack” to getting more traffic, and much too often there is a rush to publish more content and not worry about publishing good and helpful content. Unfortunately, AI provides people a way to create an ocean of content, though this means it is often not reviewed. In my personal experience with clients that use both AI content and human-researched and written content, the human content tends to perform better, sometimes exceedingly better.
When I’ve reviewed client sites over the last year or two, I’ve found that when AI was used to generate content to hit a quota, those posts don’t generate a proportionate amount of traffic in relation to the amount of content being produced. AI images are also very uncanny and unsettling, and many people find them to represent a false view of reality. I anticipate the backlash against AI will become greater as the negative impacts of this technology come to light, and the diminishing returns in supposed productivity are also revealed.
As it is, many software and marketing companies, as well as regular corporations are using AI to increase output, but there doesn’t seem to be as much concern with quality of output, and that is extremely concerning to me.
Google Search Results are a Mess
Many people on social media seem to agree the the quality of search results seems to have gotten much worse from 2024-2026. Most technology companies seem to be pushing AI into every product, even if consumers don’t want this. Anecdotally speaking, it feels like Google used to be a vastly superior product and no matter what you were searching for, or what your search phrase was, Google would give you intuitive results that would give you exactly what you were searching for.
The degradation in search results since AI became an all-encompassing Silicon Valley initiative, is palpable, to say the least. Consumers must sift through results or search with very specific language to find what they are looking for, and the insightful results of previous years seems to have vanished.
It’s more important than ever before to make your company into a source of irrefutable knowledge with a distinct brand footprint, so Google trusts your website for results. By doing the difficult things, it will set your company up for success in search results, in leads, and in the real world.
There’s No Shortcut to Putting in the Work
There’s a wise saying, “How you do one thing, is how you do everything.” People don’t trust companies that take shortcuts by trying to manipulate ranking signals. There are characteristics of companies trying to take shortcuts and these are easy to spot for most discerning customers.
Fake reviews that come in waves from out of nowhere and are obviously void of details about the work.
A brand that shuns thought leadership and customer service.
Websites that generate reams of AI generated content with erroneous information, awkward phrasing, uncanny AI images, and no authoritative voice are all red flags to customers. Why would you represent your company with content that isn’t even correct? The negative perception of a company begins with these flaws and attempted shortcuts to the top.
Search engines reward brands that do things that are difficult to replicate. Trust is earned from consumers in the real world.
A good rule of thumb is, if you wouldn’t say it to a customer face to face, don’t say it on your website. Don’t outsource your thinking to a machine that hallucinates “facts” out of thin air. You wouldn’t do that in real life!
Don’t try to buy reviews or have people write fake reviews to get your numbers up. Your customer base isn’t that naive; they can tell when reviews are fake!
Work on being the best choice, and that goes for everything you do, including your website. This is how you are representing yourself in the real world! Customers make decisions based on little details, and you don’t want to disqualify yourself.
Believe it or not, machines can be dumb, but people are not. Those real user signals are important, and everything about your brand needs to have integrity if you want to rank on top for a long period of time. Stay away from things that everyone can do through automation or fake signals. Focus on being a real expert in your field, and a source of information that can’t be rivaled. That’s a lot more difficult to accomplish, which is one distinction between sites that Google trusts and ones it does not.
Do You Need a Second Look at Your Website?
Building a company for the long haul is difficult work, and that’s the wall that you must climb. Building a library of rock-solid content, earning good reviews, designing a good looking site, getting positive press in your industry and local community. These are things every company should aspire to do, to become perennial winners at SEO.
If you need a fresh set of eyes to look at your rankings and your web presence, contact Lockedown SEO and we’ll help you. There are no small fish in our world. We’re here to help you succeed and get the traffic and leads you need.
See you next year for another Year in Review post!
