The Future of SEO and a New Era of Thought Leadership

Can you feel it in the air? We’re entering a new era…a new era that prizes and prioritizes thought leadership.

As SEO becomes a harder and harder game to win, the only way to differentiate yourself will be through sharing your original, unique perspective. Let’s investigate what’s leading to this shift and what it means for the future of thought leadership.

Content marketing is at an inflection point

For more than a decade, agencies and marketers crafted giant content libraries that were built for Google. Every brand wanted to rank for their most important keywords, and the thrust of their marketing activity followed that goal. (This also explains why your dentist probably had a blog for a while, circa 2010.)

And now, that strategy is changing. Recently, I’ve heard from SEO content experts who see the writing on the wall: SEO isn’t the same game anymore. People aren’t using search engines to find information in the same way. And Google has turned SEO on its head by giving people answers directly on the results page without ever sending them to a marketer’s carefully-crafted website.

Agency marketer Kersa Haughey explains Google’s latest changes:

Available now if you opt-in, SGE [Search Generative Experience] provides users with an AI-generated answer to their query at the top of their results, as well as cited links and the option to ask follow-up questions. While it’s a helpful search feature, it pushes organic results further down on the page, making users less likely to reach them and challenging traditional SEO strategies.

So where does B2B marketing go from here?

Thought leadership is the antidote to boring SEO content

Enter 💫thought leadership💫.

There’s an evolution happening: from SEO-driven content (answering questions to drive search traffic) to idea-driven content (providing perspective to build authority).

For anyone who was already bored by cookie-cutter content written for (and, honestly, by) robots, this shift is exciting! There’s a push in marketing to dig deeper, tell more interesting stories, and talk to people, not search engines.

What does that mean for you? What shifts should you consider in your work?

If you’re moving from an SEO strategy to a thought leadership strategy, try this:

• Instead of answering fact-based questions better than your competitors → share your unique perspective in a way only you can.
• Instead of choosing topics based on keywords and ranking → build content based on your customers’ challenges and opportunities.
• Instead of Googling to build your next thesis → try journaling to reflect on your own perspective.
• Instead of researching what people are searching for → ask yourself, “what do I want to be known for?”

I’m convinced that the next era of content marketing will reward helpful experts: people who know a lot about their area of expertise AND have the clarity and generosity to share that expertise with others.

That’s why I’m saying, “Bye, SEO!” Bring on the thought leadership!