I've been doing SEO for 26 years. I closed my old X account a while back and now I'm starting again from scratch, so here are my honest answers to the five questions I get asked most.

“Does AI mean we can forget about SEO?” No. AI assistants often pull recommendations from sites that already perform in search. And early data suggests search usage isn't going down. Treat them as separate channels, like you would with social.

“Is SEO dead?” It wasn't dead the last 894,902 times someone said so, and it isn't now. Things keep changing, but it's still one of the best ways to be found by your audience, and Google searches are still increasing.

“Should we do SEO ourselves?” If you're an expert, maybe. If not, probably not. There's still plenty you can do in-house that helps, but you'll probably need strategic support along the way.

“How long does SEO take?” It depends. Sorry! Competition, budget, algorithm and SERP changes, past SEO work (good and bad) and brand strength all play a part. The best approach is to keep moving forward.

“Why did my rankings drop?” It's an old question, but over the last year or two the answer is usually that the content was all produced with AI, programmatically.