The Future of SEO or AIO: What I’m learning for 2026
I’ve decided to consistently write until the end of 2026 about all of the questions I find on my road and what I learn. I know it might not reach too many people, but it keeps me focused on one of my largest passions: learning. When you have such a verbal social contract, it is harder to give up on it.
Anyhow, I’m looking at my website's graph data, and whenever I finish an article, I currently just outsource SEO to AI. It is time to dig in and learn about it.
My first question, as I watch the graph trends: How do you setup your SEO? I keep hearing about AI Overviews and answer engines. Am I wasting my time optimizing for a 2015 version of the internet? Or quality always comes to the surface, in the sea of bots that internet became?
What Do Latest (2025) Numbers Show?
The numbers for 2025 are less about a single Google ranking position and more about where the search journey is ending. Even if you google, your first reply is from Gemini. So does this mean AIO is something that I’m looking to learn about? And if AI summarizes for me in Google, do I then go and visit other websites?
I haven’t considered so far that AI overviews means a zero-click for your website. My content is summarized, and the user gets their answer immediately, right? But some studies are showing that for some queries where the AIO appears, users actually click slightly more. Why? Maybe the AIO piques their curiosity, or maybe it validates that my source is the trusted one. The lesson? Being the trusted source cited in the AIO is the new featured snippet.
Also, we are still obsessed with Google, but how do I search for a product review or any info is on YouTube. he data confirms it: Search Everywhere Optimization (SEO) is now a real thing. My visibility now depends on my presence in video, social media, and third-party AI interfaces.
In short, the 2025 numbers show the traditional funnel is breaking apart. Search is less about where you are and more about if you are the clear, citable authority.
How to Use It? What Makes Sense?
So, if the game is about being a citable authority, how do I, a lone PM writing a diary, actually compete against the big publishers?
So I found a concept EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). This isn't a new concept, but in the age of AI-generated content flooding the web, E-E-A-T is no longer a soft suggestion; it's a hard algorithmic filter. That is something I’ll be exploring further, but in short is to leverage my experience and expertise to bring the quality while maintaining clairity for the machine by using structured data.
I catch myself thinking to start chasing high-volume, generic keywords whenever I think about the topic to write about, instead sticking to my idea, write about what I learned today and achieving mastery in some of the topics that I am heavily interested.
How can I turn AI to my advantage?
The big fear I have is outsourcing the thinking. But here's the realization: I can't ignore the speed advantage my competitors have. So, the rule I've set for myself is: AI is for efficiency and insight, not for primary content creation. I still write the lessons, but AI handles the drudgery and the pattern recognition.
My first use case is using AI as a hyper-sophisticated analyst. I'm dumping all my SEO into a powerful LLM like Gemini. I’m asking it questions like: "Show me the top 10 topics where I have a low authority score but my competitors rank easily. Where are my gaps?" This cuts hours of manual spreadsheet work into a 30-second prompt. AI finds the invisible cracks in my content foundation, so I know exactly where to build my next high-value post.
The second part is purely mechanical: Optimization. My human brain is terrible at remembering to implement technical Schema Markup on every single post. But I know machines crave it. So, I might use AI tools to generate the necessary code that says, "Hey Google, this is the author (me!), this is a personal lesson (Article Schema), and here are the clear steps (HowTo Schema)." AI handles the boring technical job of making my unique thoughts easy for their systems to cite.
Finally, I'm using AI to prepare for the "Agentic Future." If user agents start doing things like, "Find the best PM lesson on A/B testing failures," my content needs to be ready. This means using AI to audit my posts and ensure they have crystal-clear summaries and bulleted direct answers. The goal isn't just to rank on Google; it's to be the most trusted voice cited by the AI that serves the user. I'm turning AI into my personal editor and technical implementer—it makes my human work matter more.
What Will I Apply as Knowledge Learned Here?
Quick reply, I don’t know.
Here are my three concrete commitments based on this deep-dive:
Focus only on my topics. I will map out the five themes that are of interest to me and as I write everyday about it focus specific days to those themes
Explicitly structure my expertise. I will research Schema Mark-up (specifically Author and relevant HowTo or Article schema) on every new post to make it dead simple for the machines to cite my work and understand my content's purpose.
Audit my existing content for "Agentic Readiness." I’ll go back to my best-performing posts and break them down into clear, bulleted, and summarized sections to increase my chances of being quoted in an AI Overview.
The goal is to have fun learning and that is all to this blog.
