• Introduction
• What Is The Role of AI In Modern SEO
• What Shouldn’t We Be Using AI For?
• Introducing AIR SEO: Whitworth’s AI Ready SEO Product
• The Future of SEO & AI: 2026 & Beyond
• AI Search & SEO: The Hybrid Approach
• AI & SEO: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

GEO, AEO, LLMAO (LMFAO more like) or whatever bonkers acronym you’re being spun, has caused quite the stir over the last year or so. To the point it’s become ever so boring, and the time has come to move on from debating terminology and get back to work.

At Whitworth, we call it AI Ready SEO, because that’s what it is. SEO is alive and kicking, and the fundamentals of the two channels are still extremely aligned.

Have we had to pivot? Yes, but experienced and credible SEOs are used to that, and most have welcomed the new dimension this has brought to our day to day.

What Is The Role of AI In Modern SEO

There is no doubt about it, AI has changed SEO forever, but good organic search marketing is still exactly that. But AI powered tools and the AI driven surfaces (LLMs) have a huge role to play and have allowed us to streamline a lot of our daily tasks. Some examples include:

Research

Although this does need a lot of quality assurance and detailed prompts, huge amounts of deep research can be performed very quickly. From audience analysis to grouping keywords and analysing search intent, tasks that may have taken weeks can now be done in hours.

Competitor Analysis

AI is very good at doing exactly what it’s told (apart from maybe ChatGPT 5 which has a bit of an attitude) but generally speaking it will follow orders and do detailed analysis for you in a jiffy. This can be very valuable for competitor analysis, as you can upload the exact metrics to compare and the competitor pages and get reports that can be interpreted pretty quickly and fed back to clients.

Content Strategy

Whilst we would advise extreme care and human review if you decide to create content using AI, it can be invaluable at the research and briefing stage. Again, completing batches of analysis that would have taken an individual or team weeks if not longer, in a fraction of the time.

What Shouldn’t We Be Using AI For?

Content Creation

There will be plenty people out there who will disagree, but by and large our stance is that creating content with and putting it straight onto your website is a bad idea. Some of it will rank well, but generally speaking there will be risks with uniqueness, AI style patterns and an inability to understand the end user that will ultimately render it ineffectual. If clicks and sessions are still your (antiquated) metrics then fine, but humans are still more likely to write persuasive copy that converts.

Not to mention hallucinations, gaslighting and out of date information (just this morning ChatGPT told me that Google Gemini was called SGE). The pitfalls are huge.

Technical SEO Audits

Even with the most detailed prompts, AI is generally very bad at SEO auditing, due mainly to its lack of human intuition. There is no substitute for a deep crawl of a website using reputable software, a manual audit and the creation of a human written, common sense SEO audit document. We test this regularly and ChatGPT’s technical audits are topline and also contain erroneous recommendations, often suggesting techniques that are dated or have even been deprecated by Google and other search engines.

You’re probably starting to get the gist, LLMs are riddled with accuracy issues and out of date information, so it’s use for digital marketing comes with some pretty important warnings.

Introducing AIR SEO: Whitworth’s AI Ready SEO Product

We have a solution to this.

Introducing AIR SEO. Our evolved SEO product that a boost your visibility in LLMs such as Gemini, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, without damaging your performance in traditional search engines. It removes any risks due to our human first campaign management but utilises the data available in order to boost your brand’s performance.

The premise is simple, it’s all the good SEO stuff that you’ve always got from a campaign with Whitworth, but AI Ready.

Not AI first, AI ready. Why? Because the vast majority of traffic in most if not all sectors is still in traditional search, particularly at conversion stage. LLMs should not be ignored and will grow quickly, but at this current point of time, your customers are predominantly using Google to discover your brand and make purchases.

So, we have devised an auditing and implementation process that allows us to optimise for the relatively smaller amount of users who are using LLMs, without diluting your SEO visibility.

It has already become very clear that a web experience that has been optimised and designed purely for AI agents would be a very poor UX. AIR allows us to leverage both audiences and attract users from a range of search engines and surfaces.

As SEOs, we are always crying out for more data, more quickly. Whether its keywords, volumes, engagement statistics, web trends or analytics; the more data we have the better we can do our jobs. Which is why the vast majority of SEO experts including myself are united in our stance, that optimising for AI search is really still just SEO.

The post AI era has provided us with just that, more surfaces and more environments to optimise for, with their own data and analytics for us to scrutinise and use for implementing our strategies. All this is just giving us even more information about what users want, so from Gemini’s fan out queries to the information being compiled by tools such as Waikay and even from some of the LLMs themselves, it’s gold dust. And ultimately, just more opportunity for your brand to be visible, ranked and cited when and where it matters.

The Future of SEO & AI: 2026 & Beyond

SEO and optimising for AI Search will always be about solid technical foundations, intricate research, identifying user demand and behaviour, brand building, pragmatic content strategy and building authority.

No matter how clever AI becomes, human led strategy remains irreplaceable. Real understanding, storytelling, and customer empathy don’t come from algorithms.

How we actually execute that is changing as it always has, but some key differences as we move forward will be:

Hyper Personalisation

Think Gmail data, search engines will adapt to user content in real time. If you haven’t already, start to let go of keyword rankings as a KPI.

Multi Modal Results

Expect growth in visual search, multimodal results, and richer SERPs.

Increased Onus on Relevance

From tools to Google’s own AI layers, optimisation will centre around relevance and real time learning.

AI Search & SEO: The Hybrid Approach

To rank well and remain compliant with Google, the following will be key as we head into 2026.

• Use AI for research, ideation, and automation. But there is no replacement for human quality assurance (QA)
• Layer in human editing for nuance, brand voice and accuracy.
• Follow EEAT principles: Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trust.
• Incorporate real case studies and reviews.
• Be transparent: credit AI use where relevant but lead with strategy.

AI & SEO: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What Is AI in SEO?

AI in SEO refers to using machine learning, natural language processing, and automation tools to improve, scale, and refine SEO tasks. From technical audits to keyword clustering, content briefs, and traffic forecasting, AI supports data driven decision making at speed.

Think of AI as your SEO assistant: It saves time, enhances performance, but still needs human judgement to steer the ship.

Does Google Penalise AI Generated Content?

No, Google’s guidance is pretty clear that as long as content is classed as reliable and human first then it won’t be penalised. But remember how stringent Google’s quality guidelines are. From traditional Panda signals to the more recent Helpful Content Updates, consider how likely AI is to create content that will be classed as high quality, and crucially, if it is likely to convert into revenue.

How is AI useful for SEO?

AI powered tools has helped many SEOs by automating repetitive tasks, offering deeper insights, supporting content ideation and streamlining other manual tasks. This has allowed SEO consultants and agencies to spend that time on money on strategy rather than menial activity.

Is There a Downside To Using AI For SEO?

Yes, without human oversight, AI can produce low quality content, over optimised pages, and even content that triggers penalties. It can also encourage lazy SEO and cutting corners and less human intuition. Whilst AI tools are incredibly useful, your SEO strategy should be led by a human expert that understands audiences and can also spot when AI tool are hallucinating.

Will SEO Survive AI?

Absolutely. It already has, with demand for SEO services at an all-time high. It’s all just SEO, but it is evolving. Professionals who understand and embrace AI will have a competitive edge, but it is also creating its own problems. SEO was different in 2020 compared to 2010 and it will be different in 2030 compared to 2020, but it will always exist.

Is AI Going to Replace Google Search?

No. Google is still by far the most dominant search engine and accounts for well over 90% of commercial organic searches. Many people use AI for tasks, research and conversational search, but most users are still using Google to search and convert.

Are AI Overviews Killing SEO?

No, they’ve changed the game somewhat but are not killing organic search. But strong content still drives clicks especially for complex, high intent queries. People’s trust can be low in AI overviews due to hallucinations however, so time will tell.

Can AI Optimise My Website?

AI can assist with technical audits, meta suggestions, and internal links. But true optimisation still needs human logic.

Keep your eyes peeled for Majestic’s SEO in 2026 book and series of podcasts and videos, where I will be discussing just why debating these acronyms is a terrible waste of time and money.

If this article has perked your curiosity, or you want to discuss how you can leverage AI & SEO for your brand, just get in touch.