(2025-07-05) Stansik Ai Seo And How To Simplify Your Content Strategy

Paul Stansik: AI, SEO and How To Simplify Your Content Strategy. On May 7, 2025, in a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., where Google was defending itself in the remedies phase of its antitrust trial, a Google lawyer was asking Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, about search trends. Then Cue said something that made the courtroom pause.

“For the first time ever in over 20, I think we’ve been at this for 22 years, last month, our search volume actually went down,” Cue testified. A beat. Then he added: “That has never happened in 20 years. If you ask what’s happening, it’s because people are using ChatGPT. They’re using Perplexity. I use it at times.”

it’s worth remembering: Google search is still massive compared to everyone else.

if you run a company that depends on digital marketing to drive growth, it’s understandable if you’re feeling a little twitchy. Like:
“Oh no, search is dead and AI is the future, we need to change everything.”

This is a normal and increasingly common reaction.
Also, it’s probably wrong.

These platforms aren’t just competing. They’re also converging.

And that convergence is making the fundamentals of good content strategy more important, not less. Which is not what the “you need to pivot everything to AI” hot takes out there would have you believe.

Here’s what hasn’t changed. This whole content thing is still about being the best answer on the internet for your customers.
That’s the game. That’s always been the game.

And if anything, playing that game well is about to matter even more.

According to industry analysts, most queries going to AI chatbots today are exploratory rather than transactional. People tend to use tools like ChatGPT for early-stage research (learning and exploring) while they still rely on Google when they’re closer to making a purchase decision. (Stages of Consumer Buying Decision Process)

But here’s where it gets interesting: When people do use AI tools for buying decisions, the questions they ask look strikingly familiar to those that show up in high-intent search.

both channels are starting to reward the same kind of content: clear, specific, and genuinely useful at the moment of decision.

Why High-Intent Keywords Still Run the Show

the basic SEO work you’ve always done to rank for high-intent terms is exactly what will help you show up in AI-generated search, too. Even though most AI queries today are early-stage or more exploratory, the commercial questions people do feed into these tools align with the same high-intent keywords that matter for Google.

Let’s break this down in terms B2B marketers care about:

Cost: Broad terms like “project management software” are expensive and slow to rank for.

phrases like “best software for managing video feedback”, while they may not get as much traffic, are way more approachable, winnable, and affordable

Conversion: Someone searching “Trello vs Asana” is probably getting closer to being ready to buy. Someone searching “project management software” is browsing.

Focus: You don’t need 100 pages. You need 10 that answer 10 real questions your buyer is asking when they’re in-market.

So if this is so obvious, why do so many marketing teams mess it up?

The $20K Mistake

Most B2B teams will spend 3–6 months and $20,000+ on SEO consultants to arrive at a finite list of search terms they want to rank for. They’ll get buried in competitive analysis, search volume reports, and keyword difficulty scores.

Meanwhile, companies using the simpler approach are already ranking and converting.
The difference? Simplifiers vs. complicators. ((2013-12-02) Adams Simplifiers And Optimizers)

SEO attracts more complicators than any other marketing channel. And yeah, some complexity is warranted.

what a real SEO strategy is all about: drawing a line in the sand and committing to a short, manageable, measurable list of keywords focused on the kinds of searches that bring you customers, not tire-kickers.

Sadly, most companies are still guessing what those searches actually are.

The Real Shortcut: Stop Guessing What Customers Ask

Instead of paying tens of thousands for an SEO agency, most B2B companies would be better served by (a) learning what their actual prospects ask when they’re in a buying process and then (b) making sure those questions are answered before their prospects ever meet a salesperson.

Grab 10 sales call transcripts. Feed them into ChatGPT. Ask for a list of the questions your prospects actually ask.

Ask ChatGPT to stack-rank those questions by frequency and buying intent

This approach works because it starts with real customer language from real conversations, not SEO theory or search volume data.

The One Thing That Still Has To Be A Little Complicated

There is one area where some complexity is unavoidable: Technical SEO.
You can pick the perfect keywords and write incredibly helpful content, but if your website’s technical foundation is broken (i.e., page speed, mobile responsiveness, internal linking, and site structure) even the best content won’t save you.

Take page speed, the biggest killer. Google switched to mobile-first indexing starting in 2018 and completed the transition in 2023, so what really matters is how fast your pages load on phones. Google measures how fast your page loads (LCP), how quickly it responds to interactions (INP), and how much it jumps around while loading (CLS). Their logic is brutally simple: if your largest content element takes more than 2.5 seconds to load on mobile, most people will bounce before seeing your content. And Google knows it.

Reality check: Run your top five pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights, focusing on mobile scores. If anything scores below 70, you’re probably losing rankings before anyone even sees your content. Fix it before writing another post.

Final Thoughts

The real story is that AI and search are converging around the same thing they’ve always rewarded: helpful, clear answers to real buyer questions.