It's the 6th of December and I am writing this list of SEO predictions for 2025. Two years ago I made a list of SEO predictions and 9 of the 10 predictions happened, let’s see how my 2025 predictions play out, as I hope to provide business owners, marketers, and professionals some insights into next year's possible trends. 

I believe it is vital to monitor potential trends, outcomes and predictions without falling into the “magic wand” trap, as I don’t have one, but I hope to provide some fundamental reckonings from the past year and what I feel we will see in 2025. 

Now, let’s dive in. 

My Cureated Predicted SEO Trends for 2025

This is my short list of SEO predictions for 2025, covering everything from AI adoption to search interfaces and embracing podcasts for SEO.

Scrappy and Messy Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in SEO

The obvious one: AI is here, and it's been here now for enough time for businesses to realize that adoption isn’t optional anymore. I believe businesses next year will move resources towards safe AI adoption as the current use of AI in SEO has been far from graceful. With websites plagued with AI watermarks and a lack of adoption frameworks, data is not used properly, prompt engineering is barely tapped into, and generally speaking, AI integration has been messy, unorganized, and harmful. I do believe this will change in 2025 as organizations realize their shortfalls in AI adoption and start to integrate Safe AI for SEO adoption frameworks. 

Of all the SEO processes that AI can support, I feel the following will be the focus for organizations to scale qualitative content and maximize their organic visibility:

  • Enabling AI-driven content creation, optimization, and distribution.
  • Integrate AI to support strategy: analysis of keyword gaps, content opportunities, and predictive search trends. 
  • Using AI to personalize the user experience to increase engagement rate, time on site, and other key SEO metrics. 

Search Interface Optimization

When it comes to SEO initiatives, businesses and marketers tend to focus on one search interface: typed queries into search and visual content. What happens when this starts to merge with in-app search engines, SGE (search generative experience: AI overviews), voice search, and VR drive search? 

I believe in 2025 we will see the death of single-interface traditional SEO. Websites will have to consider optimizing for multiple interfaces, search engines, and content formats.

These are the following search interface trends website owners and marketers should consider to continue to optimize for organic visibility: 

  • Voice-activated searches
  • Adapting content for short snippet-friendly conversational queries
  • AI overviews 
  • In-app search engines

User Experience (UX) Dominating SEO Metrics

It is no news that UX has an extremely close relationship with your SEO metrics. Whether you are looking at time on site, recurring site visitors, domain authority, or CTR, user experience is the common denominator of all SEO influences. 

Businesses that don’t allocate resources to optimizing their site UX will surely miss out. 

You may ask why. Well, I have an article on this, but to give you the TLDR: websites with a positive user experience have a proportionally better time on site, engagement rate, and other key SEO metrics. Users who visit your website for the first time and have a memorable and positive experience are more likely to return. This all contributes to positive signals with search engines, contributing to your website’s overall rankings and authority. 

The three major factors that UX will have on SEO are:

  • Core Web Vitals is a major underlying ranking factor 
  • Mobile-first indexing and responsive design
  • Returning users and a longer time on site will positively affect rankings

Rise of Visual, Conversational, Podcast and Video Content

As we pointed out earlier, the search interface is evolving and will keep evolving, and this will have a massive impact on SEO initiatives and strategies during 2025. But there is another very important aspect to this: the content type. Whether it's video, audio, illustrative storytelling, long-format written content like this, and others, in 2025 we will see a rise in the adoption of different content types. Websites considering alternative content types will benefit as they integrate with their larger SEO and organic visibility strategy. We will show some examples shortly.

Creating content in multiple format types has a positive SEO impact. Not only to reduce the risk of investing in one content format but also as an alternative channel to influence audiences and grow brand authority. For example, over the past 2 years, websites with prominent podcasts have grown their organic visibility much faster than websites that only relied on one format. 

I do believe businesses in 2025 will need to consider an alternative content format type to facilitate more exposure of their content on other platforms that most likely have less competition and are potentially easy for the websites to create and distribute. 

  • Increased importance of image and video SEO
  • Podcast adoption: conversational content 
  • Utilizing platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple, 

An example of alternative content format types could be taking a long format pillar page and creating an illustrated video series with optimized titles, thumbnails, and descriptions, publishing this on YouTube and social media, and linking back to your original content format. Now this is technically repurposing but the objective of embracing multiple content pieces will have an SEO impact in 2025 and beyond. 

The numbers:

  • Volume of websites:
  • Volume of website pages:
  • Volume of YouTube channels:
  • Volume of Podcasts:

As you can see the proportions are obvious, choosing alternative content formats will contribute to ongoing SEO authority and long-term Organic Visibility. As we move into 2025, I recommend websites consider these as part of their 2025 SEO strategy. 

Conclusion

As we look ahead to 2025, the changing landscape of SEO offers both challenges and opportunities. Let’s recap the key predictions from this list:

1. AI Integration in SEO: Organizations will shift towards adopting Safe AI Frameworks, leveraging AI for content creation, optimization, and user personalization to improve key metrics.

2. Search Interface Optimization: The death of single-interface SEO is near, making it essential to optimize for voice search, AI overviews, in-app engines, and beyond.

3. User Experience Dominance: UX will continue to be the backbone of SEO, influencing metrics like time on site, CTR, and domain authority, with Core Web Vitals and mobile-first indexing leading the way.

4. Diverse Content Formats: The rise of visual, conversational, and podcast content will reshape SEO strategies, encouraging businesses to explore new platforms and formats to enhance organic visibility.

These trends signal a clear shift toward a more dynamic, user-centered, and diversified approach to SEO. Staying ahead of these changes requires proactive planning, continuous adaptation, integrated adoption, and openness to experimentation.

Embrace the challenges, refine your strategies, and remain committed to delivering value to users. By adapting to these trends thoughtfully, you’ll not only stay competitive but also unlock new opportunities to grow your digital presence in 2025 and beyond.