5 SEO Trends for Small and Medium Sized Businesses in 2025

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an ever-changing landscape with new challenges and hurdles for businesses that want to expand their reach online. Historically, Google had one major update every year or so, plus a small update once or twice a year. Micro updates may have happened on a daily or weekly basis but those did not shake up SEO as a whole. AI has completely disrupted this cadence. For the past two years, Google has had ongoing updates with rollouts that can last for months. While they try to target bad actors that are trying to “game” the system, often the fallout of lost ranking extends to innocent bystanders like small- and medium-sized business. As we get to the end of 2024 and look ahead to 2025, SEOs (search engine optimizers) are predicting more of the same.

So how can you, as a small or medium sized business, weather this ongoing AI storm? Here are a couple of trends for the coming year, plus a few actionable ways to keep your online presence ahead of the next Google storm.

Google wants searchers to stay on Google for one simple reason: money. Google gets additional ad exposure and a higher chance of someone clicking on an ad if they are on a Google property. It also gets to track your clicks, scrolls, and time on various places on the page, thus collecting valuable data on your actions as a user.

1. AI Overviews and zero click searches

When you look up a restaurant, for instance, it will bring up a map with several options. Call, location, menu, order, etc. If you click on the Google-curated option, you never actually click through to the restaurant at all. All of your actions take place on Google. Even if you buy food (through the Google link), Google still gets the click, data, and exposure. The restaurant doesn’t.

With AI Overviews (AIO), Google is taking it one step further. It is now scraping your content, from your website blog, and serving it up on its page. For the 8% to 10% of searches on which the AIO appears, it uses your information to keep searchers on its platform. You don’t get the click. You don’t get the visit. You don’t get to move those visits toward a purchase. And if you want to keep Google from stealing your content, you need to “no-index” your pages, which means you are invisible and will not show up for any searches ever, effectively shooting your SEO in the foot. It’s a no-win scenario for you and an all-win scenario for Google.

All this is in the process of getting sorted out in the courts. Google was found to be guilty of monopoly behavior in August and many publishers are suing it for theft of Intellectual Property (IP). These lawsuits will unfold over the next several years, so in the meantime we are stuck with the current situation.

On the bright side, if you are one of the sources for AIO on a particular search, you will get a reference on the side of the summary. You get brand recognition, and if people want more information, they can click on your link there. Thanks for throwing us a few crumbs, Google.

So what can you do?

1. Make sure your website is technically sound. Your load speed should be less than 3 seconds. You can check it with this free link https://pagespeed.web.dev/.
2. Images are generally the biggest culprits when it comes to slow load speeds. You can review your image optimization with this SCORE presentation that I gave in May 2024: https://soracreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/SCORE-SV-Image-for-SEO-05-16-24.pdf
3. Make sure your top menu is simple and easy to understand for both visitors and Google. Most important is that you do not have “orphan” pages that don’t lead anywhere. These are called “dead links.” You can check yours with this free tool: https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/website-dead-link-checker.asp.
4. Continue to create content that resonates with your audience in spite of the fact that Google will steal it. Remember to be genuine and transparent.
   • Offer expert insights as the face of your brand (AI has no face)
   • Be opinionated (AI has no opinions)
   • Collaborate with others (AI has no friends)
   • Use wit (AI has no sense of humor)
   • Be creative (AI has no imagination)
   • Explore exciting ideas in your industry (AI has no passion)

2. Forbes and other big publishers are eating up the SERPs

Searches, especially searches for queries like “best X for Y” shopping-focused queries, are undeservedly skewed to big name publisher who are not experts in those areas. For example, “best humidifiers” brings up Forbes and NYT. This is just a cash grab by those publishers, rather than an attempt to provide good info for buyer decisions. Affiliate marketing from these kinds are articles bring in over $17 billion per year (https://affiliatewp.com/affiliate-marketing-statistics/ )

So what can you do?

1. Focus on local SEO if you have a brick and mortar business. Set up Google Business Profile and be as thorough as possible when filling out the business information. Add your business to directories like Yelp, Alignable, Hotfrog, and yellow pages. Don’t forget your industry directories too.
2. If you are a business with a national service area, GMB is still important, since it’s where you have control over the messaging of the information Google scrapes. You will need to give your actual address to get verified, but you can hide that address from public access and simply choose the service area you serve.
3. Write for your customers. Give them great info they can use in your blog articles and make sure you have actionable and easy-to-find ways to explore and purchase from your product and service pages.
4. Establish yourself as the expert. Give personal first-hand examples and ideas around your business and industry. Remember that Forbes and NYT don’t have that expertise!
5. Be accessible to your customers via social media and forums, like Reddit, Alignable, and Quora.

3. Search is extremely volatile

Google is still trying to reign in the craziness that AI brought to search. There are huge amounts of mediocre content being put out enmasse by those trying to game the system. Google is having difficulty deciphering good content from lousy. It has essentially been in a constant state of “core update” throughout 2024 and it shows no signs of stopping. Expect to be on page 1 of Google one day, and page 6 the next, then back to page 2, and so on in 2025 as well.

So what can you do?

1. Stay focused on creating high-quality, original content for your site.
2. Write your pages with customers in mind, not “winning” Google.
3. Re-examine your keywords for;
   • Main pages with business keywords
   • Product & service pages with product keywords
   • Blogs with topical keywords
4. Use narrowly-focused keyword clusters for each page so Google understand the intent of that particular page and can serve it up for the right query.
5. Make sure your key business info is easy to find for both customers and Google.
6. Optimize your product and service pages with a smooth user journey and a big, easy “buy” button so they can add to cart, book a service, or give you their email, whatever you consider a “conversion.”

4. ChatGPT vs search engines like Google

ChatGPT had over 1.4 billion visitors per month by the end of 2024 and this next year looks to only increase that number. If you don’t optimize to get mentioned in its results, you are leaving money on the table. It focuses mainly on answering questions, looks for expertise and experience, and counts social proof as a key indicator for good information.

So what can you do?

1. Most of the same SEO tactics apply for ChatGPT: Create high-quality, original content with a narrow and clear set of keywords that show intent.
2. Ask questions in a subhead, then answer it right below in the first sentence of your next paragraph in a short, clear summary. Continue to make your case and expand on that first sentence, knowing that those who want additional info can read on, but ChatGPT just wants a quick and dirty synopsis of your main point.
3. Get real customers to leave review on Google, Yelp, GMB, Bing, Alignable, Amazon, etc. Reprint some of these reviews on your website home page and/or your about page.
4. Engage with customers on social media. Pick 2 platforms and stay up to date with them.

5. Increased traffic to forums

Reddit and Google did a deal in 2024 which let Google train its AI on Reddit. As a result, this user-generated content has gotten out-of-proportion visibility on search. Quora is also getting high traffic.

So what can you do?

1. Engage with customers and questions on these forums if you have the time and inclination.
2. This is the least important of the trends listed in my mind, but still worth doing if you have the bandwidth.

Summary

2025 is going to be another year of upheaval and seismic shifts in SEO. AI is continuing to disrupt search and I don’t think we’ve seen the peak of that yet. The bottom line: Stay the course. Make sure your website is technically sound, update your top pages and your money pages for the best user journey possible. Showcase your expertise with well-written, informative blogs (this is NOT the place to use AI), and put up certifications and reviews to demonstrate your knowledge.

For more info, you can download the slide for this topic here: https://soracreative.com/courses/