Rethinking SEO in the age of AI | Eli Schwartz (SEO advisor, author)
Lenny Rachitsky (host), Eli Schwartz (guest), Narrator, Guest advertiser (OneSchema representative) (guest)
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Eli Schwartz, Rethinking SEO in the age of AI | Eli Schwartz (SEO advisor, author) explores aI reshapes SEO: shift from keyword content to product journeys Eli Schwartz argues that generative AI and Google’s AI Overviews are killing old-school, top-of-funnel, keyword-and-blog-post SEO, but not SEO itself. Discovery-style queries and generic informational content are increasingly answered directly in search, while mid- and bottom-funnel, high-intent searches remain a major opportunity.
AI reshapes SEO: shift from keyword content to product journeys
Eli Schwartz argues that generative AI and Google’s AI Overviews are killing old-school, top-of-funnel, keyword-and-blog-post SEO, but not SEO itself. Discovery-style queries and generic informational content are increasingly answered directly in search, while mid- and bottom-funnel, high-intent searches remain a major opportunity.
He frames SEO as a product problem, not a pure marketing tactic: PMs should design SEO experiences as part of the user and buyer journey, with success measured in conversions and business impact, not rankings or traffic alone.
Programmatic, product-led SEO—like Zapier’s integrations, Tinder’s local loneliness pages, TripAdvisor and Zillow’s data-driven pages—outperforms generic editorial content, especially when tied directly to what the company actually monetizes.
AI is both a threat (mass low-quality content, top-of-funnel cannibalization) and a tool (cheaper useful content, better structured information). Companies must decide if SEO even makes sense for their model, then invest with clear expectations on cost, timelines, and conversion-driven outcomes.
Key Takeaways
Stop chasing top-of-funnel keywords; focus on mid-funnel intent.
AI Overviews and LLMs are absorbing broad, discovery queries (e. ...
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Treat SEO as a product, not a marketing afterthought.
Product managers should own SEO strategy in partnership with marketing, designing specific pages and flows for users who arrive via search. ...
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Only do SEO if there’s a real search-based buyer journey.
If you can’t clearly answer, “What problem is someone Googling right before they should find us? ...
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Build programmatic, product-led SEO experiences over generic blogs.
Winners like Zapier (integration pages), Tinder (local dating pages), TripAdvisor (hotel pages), and Zillow (property pages) use data and templates to create thousands of useful, intent-matched pages that directly showcase the product. ...
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Measure SEO by conversions and business impact, not traffic or rankings.
Vanity metrics like “organic traffic” and “#1 for X keyword” often mask the fact that visitors don’t buy, sign up, or become leads. ...
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Use AI as a tool for helpful content, not mass content spam.
AI-generated text is fine when it makes product pages, descriptions, or structured content more useful and cheaper to produce. ...
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Links are downstream of brand and usefulness, not a hack.
Buying guest posts or low-quality backlinks rarely moves the needle. ...
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Notable Quotes
“If you can’t answer the question about what it is that someone’s going to do a search on, then don’t do SEO.”
— Eli Schwartz
“SEO is not a dark art. It is simple.”
— Eli Schwartz
“Up until AI overviews, whoever won that long form piece of content would get that first click. But now that doesn’t exist anymore.”
— Eli Schwartz
“I think of SEO as a product, and I think the product managers are the people that should be thinking about this SEO question because it’s a product question.”
— Eli Schwartz
“Most companies should just not write a lot of content unless they’re a media company.”
— Eli Schwartz
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can a PM on a small team practically start treating SEO as a product problem without a dedicated SEO specialist?
Eli Schwartz argues that generative AI and Google’s AI Overviews are killing old-school, top-of-funnel, keyword-and-blog-post SEO, but not SEO itself. ...
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If you’re a B2B SaaS company with a heavy sales motion, what’s the minimal SEO strategy that still makes sense, if any?
He frames SEO as a product problem, not a pure marketing tactic: PMs should design SEO experiences as part of the user and buyer journey, with success measured in conversions and business impact, not rankings or traffic alone.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What are concrete signals that a programmatic SEO idea actually has user demand, versus being “scale for no purpose”?
Programmatic, product-led SEO—like Zapier’s integrations, Tinder’s local loneliness pages, TripAdvisor and Zillow’s data-driven pages—outperforms generic editorial content, especially when tied directly to what the company actually monetizes.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How should companies balance investing in brand building versus conversion-focused SEO when AI Overviews may capture top-of-funnel queries?
AI is both a threat (mass low-quality content, top-of-funnel cannibalization) and a tool (cheaper useful content, better structured information). ...
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In a world where AI tools can generate endless content, how will Google and other search engines reliably distinguish truly helpful pages from well-optimized noise over the next few years?
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Transcript Preview
You've noticed a significant shift in how SEO works with the rise of AI answers being integrated into search results.
Transparently, I thought this was going to be an apocalypse. Up until AI overviews, whoever won on that long form piece of content would get that first click. But now that doesn't exist anymore.
What should people do to be successful in this new paradigm?
Think of SEO as a product. The product managers are the people that should be thinking about this SEO question because it's a product question. Product people need to think about, how do we position this to the user that is not going to find out about this from a social channel? That's not going to be attracted by an ad? This is a user that's doing their own self-discovery journey. If you can't answer the question about what is it that someone's going to do a search on, then don't do SEO.
To a lot of people, SEO is kind of this dark art.
It is not a dark art. It is simple. I think step one is the step that almost everyone misses on SEO, which is ...
(instrumental music)
Today, my guest is Eli Schwartz. Eli is a growth advisor specializing in SEO and has helped companies like Quora, Coinbase, Tinder, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Zapier develop and execute their SEO strategies. He's also the author of Product-Led SEO and has a very refreshing take on how to think about SEO and win at SEO. Recently, he's been spending a lot of his time analyzing how SEO changes with the rise of LLM chatbots, Google giving you the answers straight in the search results, and also how to utilize AI in your SEO strategy. In this episode, we dive deep into everything that you need to know to be successful in this new AI paradigm. As Eli shares in the conversation, Google is just now rolling out changes to how search works and is greatly increasing how many searches include an AI generated answer at the top of the search results so things are gonna start shifting under our feet pretty quickly. If you're at all thinking about SEO, working on SEO, or are just curious about how search is evolving, this episode is for you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Eli Schwartz. Eli, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
It's a real honor to be here. You've had some amazing guests and I'm honored to be counted as one of them.
It's completely my honor. You've been working on SEO for a long time. You've been helping companies figure out how to win at SEO for a long time, over a decade. And we were chatting about what's happening in SEO and you told me that you've noticed a significant shift in how SEO works with the rise of LLMs, with the rise of AI answers being integrated into search results and so I thought it'd be awesome just to spend an entire episode talking about what people need to know about what's changing in SEO and how to be successful in this new paradigm of SEO with LMs and AI being prevalent. How does that sound to you?
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