The modern SEO: Researcher, strategist and project manager

Search has changed – and so has the role of the SEO professional. 

What began as a technical discipline focused on keywords and rankings is now a multi-faceted role that blends strategy, research, content, and visibility.

This article explores:

• How SEO has evolved.
• What that means for practitioners.
• Where we go from here.

The early days of SEO: Simpler times, big opportunities

I stumbled into SEO by accident sometime around 1999, when the internet was a much simpler place. 

Dial-up modems were the norm, search engines were still finding their footing, and there were no smartphones, no social media, and certainly no AI in your pocket.

To get online, you had to sit at a desk and dial in. 

Search was fragmented across platforms like Yahoo, Hotbot, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves – but the buzz quickly shifted to a promising newcomer: Google.

Even then, Google felt different. 

It delivered cleaner, more accurate results with far less spam – and best of all, there were no ads (yet). 

You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but there was something undeniably special about it.

At the time, the web was mostly just websites and search engines, and online marketing was almost entirely about SEO. 

Google’s role was simple: match queries to the best websites. 

If you understood how to optimize for that, the potential was massive. 

Some of the early sites I worked on were generating millions in revenue.

Back then, SEO was still being defined.

The core tasks were basic but powerful: 

• Identify keywords.
• Get the technical setup right.
• Optimize your pages.
• Focus on content and links. 

That was it – and it worked.

The Wild West 

I don’t need to go over the history too much here, but as search got competitive, Google had to find out ways to try and ensure people were playing fair. 

This started in earnest in 2003 and continues today with the many algorithm updates. 

During this period, many tactics – good and bad, fair and unfair, black hat and white hat – stopped working. 

Often, this led to the claims that SEO was dead. 

Depending on your outlook and preferred set of tactics, you could say it was true. 

But every time SEO died, it was simply reborn. 

SEO has always had to adapt to change and weigh the risks of certain tactics against the rewards. 

2025 and search has evolved

We’ve come a long way from SEO’s early days

Google is no longer just 10 blue links to third-party websites. 

Google results today are different for every query. 

While we will still have the traditional listings, they are often pushed down the page into the nether regions. 

Ads, products, images, news, questions and answers, videos, and, most recently, AI Overviews (answers generated by Google’s AI) are now given priority. 

Google also does a pretty solid job of keeping people in the Google ecosystem. 

AI, Maps, Business Profiles, YouTube – they have it all for us to cycle around, never needing to leave the warm, comforting embrace of Google’s ad-sponsored environment. 

Most search engine users never notice this, as it is a gradual change over time. 

Most people likely don’t realize that many of the answers that would require a visit to a third-party site are now answered directly on Google.

As marketers, though, we are concerned with the outcomes and using search engines as a promotional tool. 

We notice the changes, particularly that Google now drives fewer clicks to third-party sites.

We are also in the early days of AI and on the cusp of a much deeper integration of Google’s AI into search. 

This may well improve the utility of search for users, but I suspect it will result in even less referral traffic to our websites. 

Thinking beyond ranking and clicks 

SEO, and most other digital platforms like social, do not send the traffic they once did. 

However, SEO and other tactics, when done correctly, can drive massive exposure. 

Marketing has always been about awareness and interest. 

If you drive past a billboard and see an ad for a new movie that grabs your attention, you will look up that movie when you get home. 

Organic search is now similar.

I’m not saying that organic traffic is nonexistent. Not at all.

Rather, a large slice of the action is through awareness-building tactics. 

SEO, once a dominant standalone tactic, is now part of a broader digital marketing strategy. 

Today, it’s important to maintain visibility across all relevant channels.

This is not to say that your website is not important. 

With clicks being such a precious commodity now, your website is still important for SEO and all other inbound marketing. 

Because it’s so hard to get people to your site, it must be fine-tuned so that they absolutely must convert. 

But if your SEO strategy is focused solely on your website, you’re missing a huge slice of the awareness pie.

Modern SEO must:

• Develop a clear understanding of your audience (and not just keywords).
• Understand the modern search landscape.
• Be integrated into a broader marketing strategy. 
• Be focused on maximizing visibility in the modern SERP.
• Have a clear SEO strategy that helps your content stand out.
• Utilize a simple yet well-articulated SEO plan.

Modern SEO is now about traffic and exposure. You want people to find you, engage with your content, and seek you out!

• Create personas.
• Understand your audience.
• Look at all of the possible ways (and places) in which they can search and the results.
• Aim to appear everywhere. 

---

Becoming a modern SEO

The modern SEO consultant has to evolve. 

We must be researchers, strategists, and project managers. 

The scope of the role is so broad that it is a rare individual who can deliver on all of the requirements needed. 

The job is to: 

• Do the research.
• Find the opportunities.
• Then, work with the subject matter experts to help them maximize visibility by tapping into the awareness and opportunity that search provides. 

SEO has evolved to be far closer to marketing than ever before, so think like a marketer. 

Start with the customer and then build your strategy from there. 

Let’s briefly break down these three core roles of researcher, strategist, and project manager. 

The SEO as researcher

Modern SEO starts with deep customer insight.

• Who are your customer segments?
• Where do people ask their questions?
• What words do they use?
• What platforms do they trust?
• What content formats do they prefer?
• What triggers brand searches later?

This isn’t just keyword research – it’s audience research.

SERP analysis is now an intelligence tool:

• What SERP features appear?
• Who dominates them?
• What formats win attention?
• Where do zero-click answers exist?
• Where can a brand realistically gain exposure?

Tools like the value proposition canvas can help really dig into the customer mindset. 

The SCAMPER framework can help you create content that stands out and brings something new to the table (which is really half the battle). 

Your goal here is to understand the customer and then all the many ways to reach that customer and drive awareness and traffic. 

The SEO as strategist

Armed with this research, the SEO becomes a strategist, identifying opportunities across:

• Google’s blended SERPs.
• YouTube content.
• Reddit and forums.
• TikTok and short videos.
• AI assistants and LLM prompts.
• Visual search.
• Maps, local packs, and directories.
• Brand-focused content that drives search demand.

The challenge here is that, often, the answers a customer needs are already there and they can be very good. 

The problem then becomes – how do you usurp the existing answers and earn your way into the results?

This is the job of strategy. 

Strategy should answer the question of why you deserve to be visible and to create content that has a real reason to exist and engage. 

You still have to do all the other work to promote this content, but having something that stands out and that deserves your customers’ attention is half the battle. 

Utilize strategic marketing tools like SWOT analysis for SEO.

Craft a clear, unique, and compelling SEO strategy. 

Be sure to remember that strategy is not planning. There is a difference. 

The strategist understands this and first crafts a strategy so the content deserves to be found.

Not everything will drive a click. 

But not everything has to. 

In this landscape, visibility itself is the win – planting a brand name in the mind of a searcher so they come back later via branded search (which is measurable). 

SEO for awareness. 

SEO for targeted searches for you by name. 

SEO for this landscape. 

The SEO as project manager

Modern SEO rarely works in isolation.

SEO is no longer the do-it-all marketing silo. You have to work harder. 

SEO is now just part of an interconnected marketing environment where to win you have to be everywhere. 

The modern SEO will have to pull together:

• Content teams. 
• Social media teams.
• PR and digital PR.
• Video creators.
• Product and customer teams.

The SEO often becomes the person who holds the visibility strategy together:

• Spotting opportunities.
• Briefing others.
• Ensuring content is created for multiple formats and platforms. 
• Confirming the language used is aligned with the language of the target audience.

A single content idea might power:

• A blog post.
• A YouTube video.
• Short-form TikToks.
• Reddit discussion replies.
• AI-friendly answer snippets.
• Product or help content.
• Social content.
• Forum engagement.

The SEO is the person who has to brief this all out in a strategic plan. 

They then have to work with the various experts to bring this vision to fruition. 

Don’t overlook SCAMPER here. 

It’s a helpful tool to rethink and improve your content by making changes like substitutions, combinations, and adaptations to stand out from the copycat competition.

What’s crucial here is that you don’t just do what everyone else does. 

Do something different. That is the strategic backbone you must develop to stand out in search and everywhere else. 

The modern SEO is not someone who just tinkers with page titles (which can still have some utility), but is the architect of visibility on the modern SERP. 

The researcher, the strategist, the planner, and the project manager. 

The 2025 SEO pulls everything together. 

Measuring modern SEO: Beyond rankings and CTR

This approach needs new ways to measure success.

We don’t need to discard all of the old metrics, but we do need to consider this in more detail and ensure we measure what matters. 

Some things are still measurable with traditional tools:

• Rankings.
• Organic traffic.
• CTR.

But others require a broader view:

• Impressions and visibility in SERP features.
• Brand search volume growth.
• YouTube search performance.
• Social engagement tied to search moments.
• Presence in AI assistants or answer engines.
• Share of voice in blended SERPs.

SEO success isn’t just about traffic – it’s about attention.

Tools like Search Console can still provide SEO insights and easy optimization opportunities, but don’t stop there. 

Define your measurement criteria and pull together customized reports that give you the full picture. 

Identify the right metrics to track performance and connect SEO results with overall marketing success.

The new SEO mandate

SEO is no longer just about getting clicks to your website. 

In 2025, SEO is about being present wherever your audience searches and in whatever types of results the search engine cranks out. 

From AI to images, your goal is to get there. 

The modern SEO must evolve into:

• A researcher of search behavior and SERP environments.
• A strategist of visibility for the website and beyond.
• A project manager of multi-format, multi-platform content execution.

SEO is often hard to define. 

The role of an SEO? Even more. 

There’s a reason the SEO’s favorite answer is “it depends” – for a long time, it really did.

Change is scary, and the majority will still seek the path of least resistance, which leads to ever-dwindling results. 

Be different. 

Do the work. 

Adapt and evolve now, and prepare for things to get really crazy as AI is fully integrated into search this year. 

I’ve been working in search for 25 years and have seen a lot of things come and go. 

The only constant is change, and that keeps things interesting. 

Yet, the pace is picking up now. 

We have tipped over into the new zero-click AI search landscape, and I don’t think it has ever been more interesting or exciting to be an SEO. 

SEO has always been about search – and that is still true.  

But search itself has changed.

Are you ready to change?