Is SEO still worth it with AI Overviews taking clicks?
Yes, for most businesses SEO is still worth it, but the payoff has shifted from raw traffic toward being the source AI answers and buyers trust, so you have to measure it by leads and revenue.
AI Overviews do answer a lot of simple informational questions on the results page. Those clicks were never your best customers anyway. The searches that end in a phone call, a quote request or a purchase still send people to websites, and Google says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews tend to be higher quality.
There's also a dependency people miss. To be shown as a link in an AI Overview, a page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet in regular search. No SEO, no AI visibility.
What changes is reporting. Stop judging the program on sessions alone. Track organic leads and revenue first, then impressions, including AI impressions. If you also run ads, see how we connect the two in paid and organic are indistinguishable.
Sources: Google Search Central: AI features and your website
How do I get my business mentioned in ChatGPT and other AI answers?
AI assistants summarize what many sources say about a topic, so you get mentioned by being clearly expert on your own site and being talked about in the other places those assistants read.
On your site, write for comprehension, not keyword density. Use plain headings phrased like real questions, give the short answer first and the depth after it, and put real names, credentials and experience on the page. Vague brand copy gives a model nothing to quote.
Off your site, show up where questions get answered: Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, YouTube, industry publications and review sites. In my own testing, LLMs pull heavily from those conversations, and a brand that only exists on its own domain is easy to leave out.
This isn't a replacement for SEO. It's a layer on top of it, and the teams doing well treat search and AI as one plan. Our AI search optimization page goes deeper, and so does AI search has a citation problem.
Sources: Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
How do I measure whether my site shows up in AI Overviews?
Use the Generative AI performance report in Google Search Console, which shows how often links to your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken out by page, country, device and date.
Know its limits. The report covers impressions, not AI-specific clicks or the prompts people typed, and AI Overview traffic is already counted inside your normal Web search totals, so don't add the two together. Google also warns that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.
For ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity there's no equivalent console. What we do is keep a fixed list of the questions buyers ask in your category, run them on a schedule, and record if you're mentioned or cited, and who shows up instead. Pair that with referral traffic from those assistants in GA4.
The scorecard that matters is still leads. Visibility that never turns into a call is a vanity number. We set this up as part of measurement.
Sources: Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report, Google Search Central: AI features and your website
How do I choose an SEO agency?
Choose the agency that can tell you, in writing, what it will deliver each month, who does the work, how results tie to leads, and that you'll own every account and asset it builds.
Questions worth asking on the first call: What do you deliver in the first 90 days, by name? Who actually does the work? How do you separate SEO work from AI search work, and how do you measure each? What happens to our content, Search Console and analytics if we leave?
Red flags are easy to spot. Guaranteed rankings, secret methods, link packages, long lock-in contracts and reports that show only rankings and traffic. Google's own hiring guide warns against several of these.
Here's how we answer those questions. I'm the founder and I approve every change. Engagements are month to month with 30 days' notice, and NDAs are available on request. Reporting starts with organic leads and revenue. Start with a free audit and judge us on that.
Sources: Google Search Central: Do you need an SEO?
Can I do SEO myself, or do I need an agency?
You can do a lot of SEO yourself, especially for a single-location business, and you should hire help when the technical work, the volume of content or the competition outgrows the time you have.
What owners can handle well: setting up Google Search Console, keeping the Business Profile current, asking for reviews, and writing pages that answer the questions customers ask on the phone. Nobody knows those answers better than you, and that first-hand experience is exactly what Google's helpful content guidance rewards.
Where DIY tends to stall: indexing problems, site speed, structured data, migrations, and building a steady content plan around real search demand. Those take specialist time and tools, and mistakes there can cost months.
A practical middle path: we handle the technical foundation and the plan, and your team supplies the expertise in briefs we write. That's how most of our SEO engagements run. If you only want the diagnosis, start with a technical SEO audit.
Sources: Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Does social media help SEO and AI search visibility?
Social posts aren't a direct Google ranking factor, but an active, public presence builds the credibility and mentions that both search engines and AI assistants increasingly lean on.
My view: owned and earned media have always been the king and queen, and paid is the support act. Validation now comes from many places at once. When someone asks an assistant about your business, it's drawing on what people say about you across the web, not only on your homepage.
So don't keep everything on LinkedIn. Post useful, real content publicly on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok, answer questions in the Reddit and Quora communities where your customers hang out, and let the content sound like an actual person runs the business. Not every post will travel, and that isn't the point.
Then bring the best of it home. Turn the questions people ask in comments into pages on your site. That's how social feeds your AI search and SEO work instead of competing with it.
