Why SEO Has Become Search EVERYTHING Optimisation

I began SEO copywriting in 2009, which means I’m old enough to remember two things: the banshee-on-crack scream of a dial-up modem and when SEO centred around keywords, backlinks & clickbait headings.

Cut to 2025. Everything is a search engine.

Sure, Google’s still very much the big dog — but now it has to look out for the fast-growing puppies nipping at its paws.

TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, ChatGPT, Stevie from the gym’s group chat — if people are searching for answers, that’s where you need your brand to be.

Welcome to the age of Search EVERYTHING Optimisation.

BTW, any bass players wanting to join my band The Crack Banshees, holla here.

Table of Contents

• Google’s Still on Top — But Losing Its Near-Total Dominance
• EVERYTHING Is a Search Engine Now
• Real Quick, Tell Me About LLMs
• Same As It Always Was: Quality Content Wins
• How To Optimise for Google vs. LLMs vs. Social Media
• Human vs. AI: Who’s At The Keyboard?
• Why Blogs Are Still Crucial to SEO in 2025
• Why Your Blog (Probably) Needs a Table of Contents
• Don’t Just Survive the AI Changes to SEO: Frickin’ THRIVE!

Google’s Still on Top — But Losing Its Near-Total Dominance

Rumours of Google’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The tech giant still commands around 90% of global search share as of 2025.

Quick analogy to highlight why SEO is still very much Google-first.

👩‍🍳 You’re a baker looking to sell a fresh batch of glazed doughnuts.

I tell you that a busload of hungry tourists have just entered a house with several large rooms.

90% are waiting in the main living room
10% are waiting in various other rooms

🍩 Where do you go first? 🍩

And yes, dietary requirements (aka customer searching patterns) are a very relevant factor — but 90%, come on!

OK, you’re no longer a baker. Unless you actually are, in which case live your truth and send me your fave sourdough recipe.

Yes, Google is king — but it’s sitting on a wobbly throne.

For the first time in over a decade, Google’s dipped just below that magical 90% threshold (Proceed Innovative).

Meanwhile, Reddit has gone from the refuge of the conspiracy theorist to an unlikely juggernaut, feeding over 40% of large language model (LLM) citations, with Google sitting at a (relatively) paltry 23% (Visual Capitalist).

What does this mean for SEO? The internet’s other platforms are becoming just as influential as the Big G in shaping what people see.

Google matters. But it’s no longer the only game in town.

EVERYTHING Is a Search Engine Now

That ideal customer we’re always talking about? They’re not just typing ‘best YOUR SERVICE in MY AREA’ into Google anymore. They’re:

• Scrolling TikTok to find restaurant reviews in under 60 seconds.

• Using Instagram Reels to search for fitness tips.

• Pinning on Pinterest to plan their entire kitchen remodel.

• Networking on LinkedIn to search for mentors, career tips & service providers.

• Debating on Reddit where conversations are now surfacing directly into LLM results.

Forget quacking like a duck. If it has a search bar, an algorithm, or even a scrollable feed — it’s a search engine. And your business has to treat it like one.

Real Quick, Tell Me About LLMs

Hold up. I feel like I know … but really, what is an LLM?

LLMs (large language models) are the likes of ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini. They’re the chatbots people increasingly ask instead of Google.

How They Work (in Plain English)

• You type a prompt (“What’s the best vegan café in Brighton?”).

• The model doesn’t search live — it generates answers based on training data + recent sources.

• And where do those sources come from? A lot of the time … Reddit threads, blogs, articles &forums.

So if you want LLMs to “find” you, your content needs to live in those ecosystems.

Same As It Always Was: Quality Content Wins

This has always been an evergreen truth — like the tastiest cream, quality content always floats to the top.

This is true whether your saucer of choice is Google, TikTok, or the next chatbot that Joaquin Phoenix gets all inappropriate with.

What Does Quality Content Look Like in 2025?

Sound like a lotta work? It is.

But this is how you GET YOUR BRAND NOTICED by chatbots & Google alike.

 

How To Optimise for Google vs. LLMs vs. Social Media

Optimise for Google (putting the ‘OG’ in SEO)

• Focus on keywords in headings, meta descriptions, alt tags.

• Backlinks and internal linking are rewarded.

• Fast site speed + technical SEO hygiene.

Optimise for LLMs

• Be cited. Publish authoritative content that people can link to in forums & news sites.

• Expand on the “best steak restaurant New York”-type keywords with clear, question-answer formats.

• Create evergreen blogs that showcase expertise and back it up with quotes, testimonials, and case studies.

• This is essentially about LLM seeding — creating content that AI models want to cite.

Optimise for Social Search

• TikTok/Instagram: Captions, on-screen text, hashtags & spoken keywords.

• Pinterest: Keyword-rich pin titles, alt text, board names.

• LinkedIn: Optimise your “About” and posts with natural keywords.

• YouTube: Keywords in transcripts, titles & descriptions + engaging thumbnails.

Golden thread: Relevance, clarity & credibility.

 

Human vs. AI: Who’s At The Keyboard?

Not gonna sit here and pretend that AI hasn’t changed copywriting. Not at all.

But far from putting writers out of work — except the content farm guys who really should have been doing something other than writing different versions of “click buy now” anyway — it’s actually made human-written content way more valuable.

Why? Because with the sheer flood of AI-generated drivel clogging up the internet, human voices are the only ones people want to hear.

Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) framework is still alive and well — they even added “Experience” when ChatGPT launched, because that’s something a bot can never have.

What cuts through is real perspective: quotes from industry leaders, lived experiences & data-backed insights.

Use AI for brainstorming if you must — but layer in your human expertise. That’s what builds trust.

Why Blogs Are Still Crucial to SEO in 2025

Sure, this might sound like I’m talking my own book — and I am. But this doesn’t mean it’s not true.

• Depth: Blogs give the nuance short-form posts can’t.

• Citations: They’re prime fodder for LLMs seeking reliable sources.

• Repurposing: One blog = a LinkedIn carousel, three Instagram posts, a TikTok script & a newsletter.

• Evergreen traffic: Google still loves a well-optimised blog, especially if you keep it updated.

🛸 Blogs are still the mothership. Everything else orbits around them. 🛸

 

Why Your Blog (Probably) Needs a Table of Contents

This small but mighty upgrade can elevate your blogs to super-searchable level.

Benefits of a TOC

• SEO Boost – A TOC creates jump links that Google can crawl and show in snippets.

• User Experience – Readers can jump straight to the section they want.

• Accessibility – For skimmers, a TOC shows the blog’s value upfront.

• Professional Polish – A TOC signals authority and organisation.

Not every blog needs one — but if it’s over 500 words, you should consider it.

Don’t Just Survive the AI Changes to SEO: Frickin’ THRIVE!

So yeah, SEO is dead. Long live SEO!

As long as people search for content online, SEO is going to be essential if you want your brand to be found.

Overwhelmed? Don’t be. It just means optimising your content for wherever people are searching — whether that’s Google, social, or AI-powered tools — and directing them to where they go from browsers to buyers: your website.

The surroundings may change but the principle that I cut my teeth on nearly 20 years ago remains the same:

Create genuinely helpful, authoritative content — written by humans, for humans.

Then repurpose smartly & distribute widely.

You want your business to do more than just keep its head above water. You want it to float on an airbed sipping a Piña Colada, catching rays and dipping sunglasses.

What’s gonna keep it on top? That tasty cream we talked about.

It. Always. Rises.

👉 Say hi to discuss how SEO can help your business thrive in 2025 and beyond!