AI Can Create Everything Now — So What’s Still Valuable in SEO?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been away from BHW for almost 1 year, and one of the biggest things I’ve noticed coming back is just how much AI has changed the SEO landscape.

When I was last active, AI wasn’t nearly as integrated into everyday SEO workflows as it is today.

Now we have AI generated content, AI assisted keyword research, automated outreach, AI search results, AI Overviews, and tools that can produce huge amounts of content within minutes.

But it made me wonder:

Has AI actually made SEO easier, or has it simply raised the standard for what good SEO looks like?

Personally, I think the biggest change isn’t AI itself.

It’s the amount of low quality content and automation that AI makes possible.

If anyone can generate hundreds of articles or build thousands of pages quickly, then things like genuine expertise, useful content, topical relevance, real websites, and editorial quality should become even more important.

I’m also curious about how people here see the future of link building and guest posting.

Do you think AI and AI powered search will reduce the value of traditional backlinks?

Or will genuine, relevant placements on real websites actually become more valuable because there is so much low quality content being produced?

I’d love to hear from people who have been actively working in SEO throughout the last couple of years.

What has changed the most in your SEO strategy because of AI?

And more importantly:

What do you think will still matter in SEO 2–3 years from now?

Interested in hearing some real experiences rather than the usual “AI is going to kill SEO” predictions.

The worst part about AI is the content.
Even this forum gets filled with AI comments.
AI content can be OK-ish but it can't use emotions or human touches so good content is harder to get.

See, you need to look at it from the competition perspective.

with AI or without, Google (or any AIs) only have a set of results/ citations to show per search/ queries

Our job is to optimise better to gain competitive edge agaisnt our competitors, if everyone is using AI to optimise, then the edge would no longer be in AI.

Kinda like how links blast yield so much result until it got commoditised by backlinking tools like SEnuke/ GSA/ scrapebox in 2008-2013, then SEO have to pivot to better quality links building to stay competitive.

Hence, I don't believe SEO will die any time soon, we just need to pivot our current skillset to stay relevant.

You know, I was reading this post from Jake Ward yesterday about him leaving his SEO agency to build something more than just an SEO agency

I know this might not directly answer some of the questions from your post but immediately when I was reading your post, I remembered what I read yesterday because it was kinda similar to this too.

And like Peter Ngo said, which I have also always believed is the case "we just need to pivot our current skillset to stay relevant" AI or no AI.

Because some years ago, change came and people pivoted and adjusted.
Now it's AI and some years from now, it might be something else.

I'm looking forward to hearing what Jake Ward has to share on August 26. There should be some good lessons to pick up from it.